JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — This city is largely white, heavily Democratic, and lies in a rugged area of Western Pennsylvania that John Murtha, its late congressman, called “racist” and “redneck” in the run-up to the 2008 election of Barack Obama.
If Obama’s historic victory ushered America into a postracial era, as some observers suggest, the evidence here is murky.
The sputtering economy weighs most heavily on the minds of voters, and the idea of a black president appears to have gained a grudging acceptance. But the question of race continues to influence the political conversation in ways that often are nebulous and coded, residents and observers said. The result is that the president faces a tough challenge in Pennsylvania despite a big advantage in Democratic voters who have a long history of union activism.
Obama campaign workers recalled being chased off lawns in 2008 as they canvassed door to door; nearly all black residents interviewed in Johnstown said that race continues to affect their lives; and 34 percent of Democrats who voted in the April primary election in Cambria County left Obama’s name blank.
“They can’t stand to see a black man in the White House,” said Devon Ellis, 58, an African-American utility worker.
The numbers problem that Obama faces nationally among white men, particularly those without a college degree, appears to be writ large in Cambria County and other parts of the 12th Congressional District, which stretches from north of Johnstown to the West Virginia border.
Among white men across the nation, Mitt Romney leads Obama, 54 percent to 33 percent, according to a recent Quinnipiac University poll. Among all men surveyed in the poll, the presumptive Republican nominee leads 47 to 40 percent.
I was told Mitt was underperforming there.
“There are people who are prejudiced, but that’s the way it is,” said Joseph Antal, 72, a white supporter of Obama who is president of the state chapter of the National Association of Letter Carriers.
“It’s just a new thing, and people don’t want to get over it,” said Frank Fantauzzo, 65, campaign director for the Cambria County Democratic Committee. “People would say, ‘He’s going to make us Muslims.’ ”
Oscar Cashaw, the black owner of a Johnstown fitness center, said, “I’ve had kids as young as 10 years old ask me if Obama was the anti-Christ.”
To counter the fears, Fantauzzo said, he is talking relentlessly to Democratic voters — many of whom oppose same-sex marriage and fear more gun control — about Obama’s support for core party concerns such as health care, labor, and social services for the elderly.
Still, he added, “our job isn’t going to be easy.”
The place of race in the political calculus here is ill-defined, said Kristin Kanthak, a political science professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Reliable surveys are rare, voters are reluctant to be truthful, and racism is difficult to quantify.
However, Kanthak said, “if I were a betting person, I would say absolutely that race is mattering, and mattering in a way that most voters don’t even recognize.”
Despite these hurdles for Obama, dozens of recent interviews in Cambria County indicate that the novelty of a black president has faded among some white voters, at least in a year when jobs are topic number one.
“You’ve got to watch what you say because everybody will say, ‘oh, you’re prejudiced,’ ” said Richard Lackey, 58, a white retired school custodian who sat near the town square in picturesque Ligonier. “But the people I’ve talked about it with have the same opinion as I have: Get the job done; it doesn’t matter what you are. I don’t even care if there’s a lady in there.”
Sexist, too.
Alan Cashaw, president of the Johnstown unit of the NAACP and brother of Oscar Cashaw, agreed that voters are more concerned about the economy than about Obama’s complexion.
“When everybody’s broke, racism takes a second seat,” Alan Cashaw said. “When unemployment’s at 4 percent, that’s when you see the true colors.”
But Alan Cashaw also thinks that certain questions about Obama — his place of birth, his religion, whether he is a socialist — are “definitely code that he’s not acceptable.” Asked whether the United States has entered a postracial era, Alan Cashaw smiled and shook his head with an emphatic no....
I have, which is why I'm not commenting on this.
“It’s a proven thing now that anyone in the United States — black or white, man or woman — can be president.”
Once they have been vetted by Israel, of course.
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"Judge won’t halt Pa. voter identification law" by MARC LeVY | Associated Press, August 16, 2012
HARRISBURG, Pa. — A tough new voter identification law championed by Republicans can take effect in Pennsylvania for November’s presidential election, a judge ruled Wednesday, despite a torrent of criticism that it will make it harder for the elderly, disabled, poor, and young adults to vote.
Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson said he would not grant an injunction that would have halted the law, which requires each voter to show a valid photo ID. Opponents are expected to quickly file an appeal to the state Supreme Court as the Nov. 6 election looms.
The Republican-penned law — which passed over the objections of Democrats — has ignited a furious debate over voting rights as Pennsylvania is poised to play a key role in deciding the presidential contest. Plaintiffs, including a 93-year-old woman who recalled marching with Martin Luther King Jr. in 1960, had asked Simpson during a six-day hearing earlier this summer to block the law from taking effect in this year’s election as part of a wider challenge to its constitutionality.
Republicans, who defend the law as necessary to protect the integrity of the election, praised Simpson’s decision, while it was decried by Democrats who say the law will make it harder, if not impossible, for hundreds of thousands of people who lack an ID for valid reasons to vote.
Opponents portray the law as a partisan scheme to help the Republican challenger, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, beat President Obama. Their passionate objections were inflamed in June when the state’s Republican House leader boasted to a party gathering that the new photo ID requirement “is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state.”
Simpson, a Republican, did not rule on the full merits of the case, only on whether to grant a preliminary injunction stopping it from taking effect. He rejected claims that the law is unconstitutional and ruled that the challenge did not meet the stiff requirements to win an injunction.
“The statute simply gives poll workers another tool to verify that the person voting is who they claim to be,” he said.
But lawyers for those who sued questioned Simpson’s choice to give strong deference to the government. A key element of their appeal will likely revolve around Simpson’s decision not to put a heavier legal burden on the government to justify a law that, they say, infringes on a constitutional right.
At the state Supreme Court, votes by four justices would be needed to overturn Simpson’s ruling. The high court is currently split between three Republicans and three Democrats following the recent suspension of Justice Joan Orie Melvin, a Republican who is fighting criminal corruption charges.
In his 70-page opinion, Simpson said the plaintiffs “did an excellent job of ‘putting a face’ to those burdened by the voter ID requirement,” but he said he did not have the luxury of deciding the case based on sympathy. Rather, he said he believed that state officials and agencies were actively resolving problems with getting photo IDs and that they would carry out the law in a “nonpartisan, even-handed manner.”
Because of those efforts, “the inconvenience of going to PennDOT [the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation], gathering required documents, and posing for a photograph does not qualify as a substantial burden on the vast supermajority of registered voters,” he wrote.
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Also see: Romney Will Pilfer Pennsylvania
