Voters' views diverge over Obama flap
Leadership on race praised, questioned
HAMMOND, Ind. - Frieda Andersen and Ted Skup are both white, both live in northwestern Indiana, and both plan to vote in their state's Democratic presidential primary in May.
But ask them to reflect on the incendiary views of Senator Barack Obama's former pastor, and the ensuing controversy that has engulfed the presidential race over the past week, and you get vastly different impressions.
Andersen, an 82-year-old retired business manager, said Obama's two-decade-long association with the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who is under fire for his harsh sermons condemning America and white racism, has pushed her firmly into Senator Hillary Clinton's camp.
"Twenty years he put up with that?" she said of Obama. "He was softening me up. He was kind of even with Hillary. This cinched it."
But Skup, a 56-year-old who works for BP, said he empathizes with the anger many African-Americans feel and believes it would be unfair to punish Obama for remarks Wright has made. He plans to stick with Obama. "I think the pastor just overreacted," Skup said. "I don't use that against [Obama]."
The views expressed by Andersen and Skup illustrate the extraordinary diversity of opinion among voters in Pennsylvania and Indiana, where primaries will be held April 22 and May 6, about Obama's relationship with his church and what it signifies about his capacity to lead the country.
With a new poll indicating that the flap over Wright's remarks has hurt Obama with the national electorate, some voters say the revelations about Obama's 20-year relationship with Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ was a deal-breaker for them - that there is now no way they will vote for Obama. Others say that it would be wrong to hold Obama accountable for his pastor, or that the black anger Wright has expressed is understandable.
The dispute over Obama's ties to Trinity and Wright, coming as he and Clinton remain locked in a tight contest for the Democratic nomination, has become the biggest test of his campaign. It prompted him to give a major speech on race Tuesday and is complicating his outreach to white, working-class voters in the eight states still to vote this spring.
Surveys show that negative views of Obama have grown in recent days, and the Clinton campaign has seized on recent shifts in poll numbers to argue that Clinton has grabbed the momentum.
A national Fox News poll released yesterday, the first specifically to ask voters about the Wright controversy, indicated that while most Americans do not believe Obama shares the controversial views of his spiritual mentor, 35 percent said the Obama-Wright relationship raised doubts for them about the Illinois senator. Among Democrats surveyed, 26 percent said the relationship raised doubts about Obama, while 66 percent said it did not.
Interviews yesterday with voters in Indiana and Pennsylvania revealed the array of opinions on Obama, his judgment in remaining loyal to Wright, and his faith.
In Grays Ferry, a working-class neighborhood in South Philadelphia where racial integration has occasionally proven combustible, three older white Democrats watching preseason baseball in a bar called the Pour House said they would vote for Republican Senator John McCain, rather than Obama, but would consider voting for Clinton. Charles J. Eck, a 67-year-old retired printing-shop employee, said he was more troubled by a recent comment that Obama's wife, Michelle, made that this was the first time she was "really proud" of her country.
"The wife said she's not proud to be American and the pastor said 'God damn America,' but they've taken advantage of all the opportunities that are here," Eck said.
Bartender Joe Watson, a 65-year-old Democrat, said he had turned off the television on Tuesday when Obama's speech came on. "If he said at the beginning, 'I disagree, I'll leave the congregation, I disavow myself of him,' it would be over with and go away," Watson said.
In Hammond, an industrial Indiana city, Judith Pilipow, a 67-year-old white woman who works in a local supermarket, said Obama's long relationship with Wright and the church makes her question his judgment. She said she was never an Obama fan anyway.
"I personally would not stay in a church like that," she said. "My parents brought me up that you accept everybody."
Shopping together at Hammond's Woodmar Mall, Sharon Rarick, a 55-year-old nurse's aide, and her friend Cindy, a 54-year-old retired banker who declined to give her last name, saw Obama's association with Wright in very different ways. Both are white.
"I think if he's your mentor and he has those types of values, you're going to have those values," said Cindy. She called it "absolutely a big factor" in why she will now cast her vote for Clinton.
"Not to me," said Rarick, who is still undecided. "I absolutely would vote for Obama."
"That's his mentor. That's the one he loves - 'I want to be like him,' " Cindy argued.
Rarick responded by saying one never accepts everything a pastor says.
"If the preacher tells me to go out and rob a bank or something, I wouldn't do that," she said.
Stephanie Berliner, a 25-year-old white advertising student and administrative assistant in Philadelphia, said she had paid little attention to the controversy and was undeterred in her support for Obama.
"I don't really care what someone's religious affiliation is," she said, asserting that younger generations are more tolerant of racial diversity. "I don't think that's going to color his leadership."
Leadership is precisely what Obama has shown in recent days, said Patricia Giddens, a black 58-year-old woman from Gary, Ind. who works as a telephone operator at a local company. Giddens said she had still been deciding between Clinton and Obama when the Wright controversy broke. Obama's handling of it - and specifically his speech acknowledging the legitimacy of black and white grievances alike - convinced her he had the wisdom to be president. "He showed his character," she said. "America needs to take its blinders off. The country is still prejudiced."
Giddens added that it was unfair for whites to judge Wright's words when they do not know his experiences, nor the experiences of black America. "You can't comment or criticize until you walk a mile in my shoes," she said.
For Toula Delis, a 38-year-old dental hygienist from Munster, Ind., the dust-up is overblown. Delis, who is white, said it was Obama's inexperience, not his membership in a controversial church, that prompted her to support Clinton.
"He's got a lot of potential," Delis said, daydreaming about Clinton as the nominee and Obama her running mate.
Scott Helman can be reached at shelman@globe.com. 