Democrats counting on 'a lot of discontent'
HICKORY, N.C.
IN TRYING to relate to white, working-class voters, Barack Obama cited the job losses in the furniture and textile plants in this area at a packed high school gymnasium on Tuesday. He drew loud applause for saying how corporate profits have gone "way up" while the average family was losing income as "the cost of healthcare, to college, to a gallon of milk, to a gallon of gas" is also going way up.
Obama said this in Catawba County in western North Carolina. In both the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, Catawba voted for George W. Bush by a 2-to-1 margin. Bush won 56 percent of the vote statewide in both elections. Hickory Mayor Rudy Wright said there is little chance a Democrat could win Catawba outright. But given concerns about the economy that cut across party lines, Wright said there is a chance for Democrats Obama or Hillary Clinton to make some inroads.
"Any candidate who is successful here has to be a little right of center," said Wright, whose position as mayor is officially nonpartisan. He is a registered Republican. "You're going to see a lot of people suspicious of any efforts to change any of the rules on guns, and taxes are anathema to these folks."
But Wright said the economy, one in which the Hickory area reportedly lost 13,000 furniture jobs over the last decade, is an even bigger issue. He still remembers the day in 1959 when he was 12 and his father lost his job in a hosiery factory.
"I would be surprised if McCain's numbers are as good as George Bush's," said Wright, who owns a sign-making company.
His fiscal conservatism made him frown when asked about President Bush's stimulus checks currently being mailed to families. "For God's sake, people shouldn't be worried about spending more on stuff," he said. "They've got mortgage payments to make."
Wright added that deregulation has gone too far. "Any candidate that can tell us how they'll bring jobs back and stop the outsourcing might get our attention," he said. "What I'm hearing is that everyone is tired of each side blaming the other."
Hickory Councilwoman Sally Fox, 63, who handpaints placemats, said her customers and constituents are enraged about the price of gasoline and healthcare. "Among the people I talk to who talk openly, they feel like Hillary is speaking more in detail about those issues," Fox said.
Councilwoman Jill Patton, who is chief operating officer of a cycling sock company, said that after Obama's speech, she was at dinner with several friends. She said two Republicans who went to hear Obama said they were impressed. "One person said he'd seen all the presidents since Nixon, and talked about how eloquent Obama was," Patton said.
Tommy Shores, 41, head of a leather chair manufacturing firm, is a lifelong Republican who plans to vote for Obama in the fall if Obama wins the Democratic nomination. He voted Republican for the senior George Bush in 1988 and 1992, Democrat Bill Clinton in 1996, the junior Bush in 2000, and John Kerry in 2004. Shores, Wright, Patton, and Fox all said that Obama's controversy with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was nowhere near a hot topic compared with jobs and the fear of $4-a-gallon gas.
"Realistically, neither of them (Obama or Clinton) can win the county, but there's a lot of discontent," said Shores, who said he is discouraged by the Iraq war. "I'm about 95 percent not for McCain because he's perpetuating what we have now. Our industry has suffered from the loss of infrastructure, from skilled training at local community colleges to the lack of development of technology. We're a self-insured company. It only takes one or two employees on dialysis or cancer to have a bad year and the insurance companies stick it to you."
Mayor Wright would hardly disagree. "I'm not going to lie to you. I'm not going into this election with tremendous enthusiasm," he said.
That seemed to underscore the latest New York Times/CBS News poll that found 52 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party, compared with only 33 percent of the Republican Party.
"I always wonder," Wright said, "after I come out of the voting booth, is it going to be the same old stuff?"
Derrick Z. Jackson can be reached at jackson@globe.com.
