Never mind polls. Pennsylvania state Sen. Lisa M. Boscola does not need numbers to understand the meaning of the voices she hears while knocking on doors in her Lehigh Valley district.
“I’m hearing, ‘Oh you know, he’s just not ready.’ I don’t know whether some of that has to do with his color. I think some of it does,” said Boscola, a veteran Democrat from Northampton County in the Lehigh Valley. “They say that they don’t trust him, and I don’t get it. What is it about him that’s bothering them?..It has to be [about his race] because they’re trying to find an excuse.”
In the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio, Nancy Garland, a Democrat who is running for state representative, says she’s hearing the same thing, even if few will say so in plain terms.
“Nobody will say that to you, but it’s, you know, the 100-pound gorilla in the room," said Garland. "I have an individual that I see that works in a hair salon … and she says [Obama is] a Muslim, and I say, ‘No, he’s not.”
Yet at the same time, many of these politicians are reporting another phenomenon—that there is one central concern at the moment, the economy, and it seems to trump all, even deep-seated racial prejudice.
“It’s finally coming around to the economy which has been first and foremost on people’s minds where I live,” said Minnesota state Representative and Assistant Majority Leader Frank Moe, a Democrat. “The unemployment rate in North Minnesota is higher than the state of Minnesota which is higher than the national average," Moe said.
Indeed, when Politico sent a reporter last weekend to Scranton, Pa., a city that has suddenly and improbably become the Rosetta stone for interpreting the political habits and racial attitudes of working-class Catholics and white ethnics, economic concerns dominated interviews conducted with dozens of voters.
While there was widespread agreement that race would play a role in voting, the consensus was that high gas prices, the Wall Street crisis and an unemployment rate that has reached seven percent in the Scranton-area—the highest point in a decade in northeastern Pennsylvania—would overtake all others in a part of the country where Obama’s candidacy has been slow to gain traction.
That development is promising news for Obama since traditionally Democratic and working class northeastern Pennsylvania is being closely watched for signs—whether racial, cultural or ideological—that he will not be able to hold a key constituency in November.
By all accounts, Obama should have little trouble winning by comfortable margins in northeastern Pennsylvania. Scranton, the population hub of the region, has normally been a reliable Democratic stronghold, with John Kerry winning 56 percent of the vote in Scranton’s Lackawanna County in 2004, and Al Gore capturing 60 percent in 2000.
But in the April Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton won the county by a landslide. Clinton could point to local ties—her father is buried in Scranton and, as a child, she spent family vacations on the outskirts of Scranton at Lake Winola—but her overwhelming 74-26 percent margin raised questions about Obama’s ability to compete in the region and whether his race would be a stumbling block for some voters.
The issue is a familiar one in other socially conservative, traditionally Democratic strongholds with high numbers of white ethnic working class voters—places like northeast Minnesota’s Iron Range and Ohio’s industrial Mahoning Valley. And the conclusion, increasingly, appears to be the same.
"In Obama’s case, he has to overcome some hurdles John McCain doesn’t have to overcome due to the circumstances of his birth," said an Ohio Democratic legislator who asked not to be named. "Getting over the trust issue, the race issue, and the inexperience issue," is important.
"I didn’t necessarily notice people switching to Obama, but they’re souring on McCain," said the legislator. "Over the past couple of weeks, people have started to—I don’t know what it is—the economy is coming back into play or losing confidence in McCain’s ability to make decisions…there’s been a marked change in the doors I’ve knocked on, in a very rural white section of my district."
“Occasionally among some of the older generation – I think of people who are like my parents in their 80s -- sometimes it has cropped up. But I think even that group is coming along,” said Minnesota state Senator Yvette Solon, who represents a district that covers the city of Duluth. “I think [Obama] was just a novelty, initially.”
Harry McGrath, the chairman of Lackawanna County Democratic Party, said he used to hear from many loyal Democratic voters who had serious reservations about voting for Obama. But in recent weeks, with the economy heading into recession, he’s seen the cultural issues recede in the minds of voters.
“I was with a union guy the other day, a politically active guy, he took a phone call, and he went white as if a family member died. He said… he just lost $150,000 in Wachovia stock,” he said. “This guy’s wife worked as a teller. It’s [the economy] is the biggest issue at this point, and I don’t see it going away.”
Avi Zenilman and Richard Cullen contributed to this report.
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