In past research, the most well-known and validated models explaining political behavior have focused on socioeconomic factors and have ignored personality variables. Based on personal interviews with 358 New York rural residents 60 years of age and over, this paper examines the relationships of political behavior and attitudes to personality differences in extraversion, openness, neuroticism, and locus of control. Controlling for age, sex, group consciousness, and education, Pearson coefficients revealed that personality factors had an independent effect on the political behavior and attitudes of the samples. Internal locus of control, extraversion, and openness were positively correlated with political efficacy, interest, and participation, and negatively correlated with political distrust, while neuroticism had high negative correlations with political efficacy and interest. Path analyses showed personality also had an indirect effect via civic orientations and, perhaps, education. This report contains 26 references. (Author/SV)