Anxiety shadows even economic 'oasis'
GM still buoys Lordstown, but horizon unclear
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First in a series on how voters in key Ohio communities see the 2008 race.
LORDSTOWN, Ohio - The
Overall, the news in the American auto industry is lousy: sinking stock prices, plant closures, possible mergers, laid-off workers, demand for trucks and SUVs gutted by high gas prices. But this is not the story of Lordstown.
Here, where nearly 5,000 workers produce truckload after truckload of Chevrolet Cobalts and Pontiac G5s, the work keeps growing, and with it hope that US automakers can compete in a radically reshaped global economy. GM, betting on a long-term appetite for fuel efficiency, is preparing its Lordstown plant for the 2010 rollout of the Chevy Cruze, a sleek compact designed to get more than 40 miles per gallon.
"It feels like we're an oasis in the desert," Dave Green, president of a United Auto Workers chapter representing workers at the facility, told us outside the local union hall.
In this environment, the stakes in the presidential election feel somewhat different than they do elsewhere across the industrial Midwest, where voters are seeing their factories close, health insurance evaporate, and livelihoods threatened. That is not to say that there is widespread contentment in Lordstown, because there's not. But interviews with voters suggest less of an urgency about picking a candidate based solely on his ability to solve the country's economic woes.
In the first stop of a weeklong trip through our native Ohio to hear from voters, Globe photographer Dina Rudick and I sat down to lunch at A.J.'s Country Cafe and talked with Jason Lehman, a 29-year-old who works for a staffing company that contracts with General Motors. He said he was drawn to Republican John McCain because he believes McCain is better suited to protect the country. We asked him whether he felt that McCain was strong enough on the economy.
"If we're not safe and secure, there's no economy to speak of," he said.
At another table, Shirley Albanese, who works for a steel company, told us that she voted for President Bush twice, but that she's with Obama. Her reason was partly the character attacks from McCain's campaign.
"I don't like how McCain is making up all the slurs," said Albanese, 58.
Shawn Ellwood, a music deejay from Niles, Ohio, was buying a Weedwacker at Sears with his son. He said Obama's promise of change drew him in - on the economy, yes, but largely on the Iraq war.
"I don't believe we should have even been in Iraq," he said.
But Kerry Roberts, a 57-year-old from Leavittsburg, Ohio, ruled Obama out when she learned about his two-decade-long membership in the Chicago church of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who delivered incendiary sermons attacking the US government. She's solidly behind McCain.
"He loves this country," said Roberts, who is retired from Sprint. "I don't think Mr. Obama loves this country."
There are, of course, plenty of people in the area deeply concerned about the economy, particularly the further you get from the bustling GM plant, an economic engine that single-handedly supports numerous area businesses.
"Everything's going to the . . . " said Sandra Stargell, a 61-year-old from Warren, Ohio, who works for
"I know McCain's not," she said. "He thinks the same way Bush does."
Even in Lordstown, the past several weeks of economic turmoil have stirred anxieties: rumors of layoffs, fears of a sudden change in course by GM, worries that the credit crunch - which has restricted consumers' ability to get car loans - will severely depress new car sales.
"Just in the last three weeks, you hear concern out in the parking lot, in the plant," said Rich Austin, a 66-year-old from Cortland, Ohio, who works for the GM staffing contractor. "A lot of that uncertainty has come back."
Surrounding Trumbull County voted Democratic in the past two presidential elections, but it is clear many voters here would have preferred Hillary Clinton, who crushed Obama in the primary in the county. Green, who is organizing on Obama's behalf, has heard a litany of personal objections to Obama - "I just don't like him" and "I just don't trust him" and "there's just something about him I don't like" - owing to Obama's foreign-sounding name, his race, and his young age.
But Green said that there is enough anxiety about the future for him to steer such conversations to issues, where Obama and Clinton rarely parted.
"Everyone right now is scared," said Green, dressed in a black Obama-Biden T-shirt. "That's a good thing for our candidate."
Later, Green was nice enough to take me deep inside the GM plant. But he soured on me when I sheepishly told him that I had bought a
"It's our jobs," he said.
Scott Helman can be reached at shelman@globe.com. Dina Rudick can be reached at drudick@globe.com
