In Allentown, Pa., Many Voters Straddle the Line Between Red and Blue
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ALLENTOWN, Pa.-Thirteen hours after his first debate with Senator Kerry at the University of Miami, President Bush put Coral Gables in the rearview mirror. It was time for Pennsylvania. And it was time for Allentown.
As Air Force One settled into Lehigh Valley International Airport, the Pennsylvania state Republican chairman, Alan Novak, spoke to a crowd of 10,000 Bush supporters in Lehigh Parkway, a large airy park. “We win Pennsylvania, and George W. Bush is re-elected president,” Mr. Novak told the audience. “And if we win here in the Valley, we win Pennsylvania.”
In 1982, Billy Joel’s hit single elegized Allentown as a place where “they’re closing all the factories down.” In 2004, it’s hard to say he had it wrong. Tattoo parlors and funeral homes dot the municipality. While the streets are clean and feel safe, “For Rent” signs cover plenty of storefronts on Hamilton Street, downtown’s main drag. The local economy is sagging under 40 years of downsizing and closures of once-plentiful textile mills. New ventures, such as the semiconductor company Agere, have struggled, with the firm announcing 282 layoffs in the area last month.
Entering that bleak arena are two presidential candidates fighting desperately for the state’s 21 electoral votes – the silver medal in the national scrum for toss-up states, trailing only Florida. Because Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are historically Democratic bases, while the state’s more rural areas are Republican strongholds, Lehigh County, of which Allentown is the seat, is considered by many to be the bellwether. Narrowly going for Vice President Gore in 2000 and up for grabs this November, the county that is 60 miles northwest of Philadelphia feels like a national political laboratory.
Indeed, polls released this week show the race is still too close to call. The latest Rasmussen survey of the Keystone state found Mr. Kerry leading the president 47% to 46%, and a recent Quinnipiac University poll of Pennsylvania voters found Mr. Kerry ahead 49% to 47% – both within the margin of error.
And while the New York Daily News reported that the president was back ing off from Pennsylvania to concentrate on other battleground states, a Bush spokesman dismissed such talk as “rumor.”
“The people in this area need to be courted,” a Democratic state representative, Jennifer Mann, said. “You have to earn their vote, and they’re not going to just hand it to you because they’re registered the same way the candidate is. And, consequently, we end up getting a lot of attention.”
On the day of Mr. Bush’s rally, a couple from Connecticut – a state that’s a dark Kerry blue – were trying to get Democratic voters in Pennsylvania to the polls November 2. “I can do a lot more here to help Kerry than at home,” a 57-year-old artist from Stamford, Polly Kurasch, said. “It’s a very big deal here.”
And Pennsylvania has been a big deal for Mr. Bush. His trip to Allentown was one of 39 visits to the state since taking office.
“He’s running for Pennsylvania like he’s running for mayor,” the speaker of the House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert, said. Mr. Hastert was in town for a fund-raising event for a congressional candidate, Charlie Dent.
Mr. Kerry has also hit Pennsylvania – and Lehigh County – hard, holding a large rally here at the fairgrounds September 10 that drew more than 10,000 people.
“The interest level, incidentally, is higher than I’ve seen it in my entire political career,” Roy Afflerbach, 59, the city’s mayor since 2002, said. The mayor was invited to, and attended, the last White House Christmas party, even though he’s an registered Democrat.
Depending on whom you talk to and how long they’ve been residents, Allentown can be a great place to live or a city with a dead-end future.
Bill Devers is most firmly a member of the second camp. A lifelong resident and a retired custodian for Lehigh County, Mr. Devers, 66, says he feels less safe in his city and laments the arrival of the “predominantly Spanish” newcomers.
“I’ve seen a lot of change here and little of it good,” Mr. Devers, who’s switching his vote from Mr. Bush in 2000 to Mr. Kerry, said.
“I don’t think I can ever forgive the president for what’s going on in Iraq. I feel sorry for the kids over there,” he said.
One of Allentown’s “Spanish” newcomers, Robert Santiago, shared Mr. Devers’s assessment of the war but said he still might vote for the president.
“I like Bush, but I hate the war,” Mr. Santiago, 32, said from the porch of his home on Walnut Street. Mr. Santiago, who moved from New York City last year, said he prizes the city’s small-town feel and its security. He is working at a J.C. Penney warehouse in nearby Trexlertown. “It’s all about how hard you work, and I like that here,” Mr. Santiago said.
He was joined in Allentown by his mother, Lydia de Jesus, who moved from the East Tremont section of the Bronx this summer. On federal assistance for health problems stemming from diabetes, Mrs. de Jesus, a native of Puerto Rico, said she supports Mr. Bush. “He has a plan for the people, a plan for the sick, a plan for everything. I don’t listen to Kerry,” Mrs. de Jesus, 56, said.
On a Tuesday night, Parkway Lanes is hopping with a league of deaf bowlers taking up several lanes. Another group, the Saturday Night Leftovers, controls another large swath of the 48-lane alley, and the group’s leader, Herb Yocum, is ready to talk politics.
“I think you’ve gotta stick with Bush. You have to stick with the man who started what we’ve got going in Iraq right now,” Mr. Yocum said. The owner of a drywall company in the town of Jim Thorpe in adjacent Carbon County, Mr. Yocum takes a drag on his cigarette when asked about the anti-Kerry ads put out by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
“Both of them should keep out of the war medals. That being said, Kerry shouldn’t have thrown them away and taken them back,” he said.
“Listen, the problem with Kerry is that he tells everyone what they want to hear,” Mr. Yocum said. “I’m the president of the bowling league, and if I told everyone what they wanted to hear, we’d never get anything done.”
The younger patrons at Parkway Lanes are decidedly less political. Asked about the presidential candidates, one shaved-headed bowler with multiple piercings simply declared: “They both suck.”
In that crowd, the soft-spoken Trina Becker stood out.
“I just don’t believe in a lot of stuff that Bush believes in, the abortion stuff,” Ms. Becker, 27, who has a 2-year-old son at home in nearby Orefield, said.
“I’m an Army brat, so I have to avoid talking politics with most people,” she said.
The Hamilton Family Diner is a friendly place sporting a familiar menu with the parochial exception of a few Pennsylvania breakfast meats: scrapple and pork roll. Driven home early from a vacation in Delaware by bad weather, Lois Tuite is enjoying the newspaper, the Allentown Morning Call, and contemplating her choices in the presidential race.
“I just don’t feel that Kerry is my man,” she said. Manager of a local country club, she said she’s a registered Republican who crosses party lines.
“Whoever gets in, they’ve got to do something about the health benefits,” Ms. Tuite, 60, said.
“I think Hillary Clinton would make a great president,” she said. “She’s really impressed me. And I didn’t like her at first.”
The next day, Harry Drendall is leaving the diner with his 97-year-old sister, Floy Flemming. Mr. Drendall, 84, is easy to notice because on one side of his jacket is a U.S. Marine Corps pin and on the other is a rather large Kerry/Edwards campaign button.
“As a former combat Marine, I’m incredibly disappointed in people like Donald Rumsfeld who have been doing a horrible job with this war,” Mr. Drendall, a retired public school music teacher, said.
“And I don’t understand how young people aren’t involved in the race. Bush is going to appoint Supreme Court justices who are against gays, against abortion.”
Despite being a staunch Democrat, Mr. Drendall says he’s not really impressed with Mr. Kerry.
“I wish he had some of Clinton’s charisma,” he said. “As for Bush, he comes across like the fellow next door – not too smart but doing the best he can.”
After talking to dozens of people in Allentown, it’s difficult to think in binary terms when it comes to November’s election. In even the most animated conversations, voters aren’t blue, red, or that elusive “undecided” color. People often say they’re for Senator Kerry or President Bush, with a thoughtful caveat.
Take Brian Collins, a lawyer whose Republicanism is undaunted by the large Kerry/Edwards sign outside the King George Inn, a popular bar and restaurant. It’s the night before Mr. Collins’s 43rd birthday, so he’s holding court with a glass of white wine, talking of Michael Moore, the city’s economy (“a black hole”), and Mr. Kerry (“a product of the Massachusetts Democratic machine”).
But after ripping into the Democratic ticket, Mr. Collins said he’s disgusted with the Swift Boat ads against Kerry.
“You should never bust on a guy’s service,” he said. “It should never matter in the end.”
Toward the end of the night, Mr. Collins was expansive on his state’s importance in the election. No one argued with him.
“We’re sitting in the birthplace of liberty,” he said. “It’s really a unique place in the world.”