LEWISTON, Maine
TWO undecided voters sat on a bench in a hallway at Lewiston High School. Standing to their left were 68 voters for Hillary Clinton. Standing to their right were 46 voters for Barack Obama. Representatives from each camp tried to persuade them to come to their side.
First, 64-year-old Diane Grandmaison welled up as she spoke for Clinton. A caretaker of several elders, she said, "We must have universal healthcare. She is the only one who can give us universal healthcare."
Countering for Obama was Langston Snodgrass, 66, an adjunct instructor at Central Maine Community College. He said Obama "is the one who can reach across party lines." Charles Nero, 49, a literature and film professor at Bates College, jumped in to say he worried that Hillary Clinton might be like husband Bill Clinton and become more conservative in office.
Members of the Hillary camp shouted, "No! No!" A man from the Obama camp said, "Let him speak! We're not Republicans here!"
Grandmaison's husband, Richard, a 64-year-old retired sheet metal worker, said, "Bill Clinton took us out of the red and put us in the black. I'm a Vietnam veteran. She'll get us out [of Iraq]."
Someone from the Obama camp shouted, "Why did she vote for it?"
Several Clinton supporters blurted variations of "she voted on the information that was provided." Another person from the Clinton camp blurted out, "I'm voting for a time machine, 1992-2000! That's fine with me!"
Speaking for Obama, Matt Schlobohm, a 29-year-old political organizer for the Maine AFL-CIO, said, "The polls show Clinton's negatives going through the roof in lots of the red states. Hillary is despised by the right wing. Obama is more appealing in those states."
Finally, Lorraine Fontaine, 52, a ship electrical designer at Bath Iron Works, defended Clinton, saying, "A lot of what you hear about with Obama is idealism. But he is not saying in a factual way what he would do. You say he can reach across and break barriers. Clinton has already reached across. She has met presidents and premiers of 82 countries."
One undecided voter stayed seated and uncommitted. The other, 57-year-old David Chittim, a retired civil engineer, rose up slowly, then took a few steps to the right to cheers from the Obama camp.
Afterward, Chittim, a swing voter who for voted Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and Clinton in the '90s said that both Obama and Clinton "are highly qualified. It is still not a certain thing for me. I'm still looking at [John] McCain. But the fact that Obama has more broad support across the country is important."
Clinton narrowly won Lewiston, a working class city she stumped in on Saturday. But Obama easily won Maine Sunday, 59 percent to 40 percent to complete a sweep of five Democratic contests over the weekend. Even in this particular caucus, the enthusiasm for Obama that won over Chittim and swept through the state was evident.
Almost mirroring a statewide poll in the spring that showed Clinton 17 points ahead of Obama, the majority of the people who showed up early to take almost all the tables and chairs in the high school cafeteria were primarily Clinton supporters, generally middle-age, senior or female. But in the last hour before the caucus, scores of students from Bates College filed in and stood in the middle and back of the room. This stunned even campus Obama organizers, who worried about competing with mid-term exams despite doing a literature drop at every dorm.
"This is a huge surprise," said 19-year-old sophomore organizer Henry Parker. "I was thinking we'd get about 50 out."
Among the Bates students who came out were seniors Emily Swenson, Kate Harmsworth-Morrissey, Jeanette Hardy, and Ariel Childs. Swenson and Harmsworth-Morrissey were for Clinton, saying that while they found Obama inspiring, they found Clinton's healthcare plan more complete. Hardy was for Obama because of his opposition to the invasion of Iraq.
Childs was undecided, previously leaning toward Obama, but was swayed by seeing Clinton's pitch as a problem solver Saturday in a rousing town hall. Like the state of Maine, the sociology major ended up choosing Obama.
"It was really hard," Childs said. "But the war is a big issue to me and he was against it from the start. I think we need a fresh face in Washington to end it. We have to rethink the appearance of the US in the eyes of the world and have to rethink our positions on a global scale."
Because of decisions like Childs's and Obama's weekend sweep, the prognosticators of this amazing race for president have to rethink their positions once again.
Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com.
