What early voters are saying in Connecticut

Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

HARTFORD, Conn. - At 7:15 Tuesday morning, ten voters were lined up waiting to cast their ballots at the Rawson Elementary School in a mostly black neighborhood in Hartford, Conn.

Most of them later said they voted for Sen. Barack Obama, part of what appeared to be a strong turnout for the Senator in district 7.

LaShawne Houston, an employment coordinator who cast her ballot for Obama, said being at the candidate's 15,000-person rally in Hartford Monday night “was even more moving and more motivating. The young kids were out, my daughter was there; she’ll be 18 next month. Her girlfriends were there. A lot of guys that I went to school with — the guys that seemed to get into trouble — were there. That was impressive to me.”

Are those guys going to vote? “They better, they better!” she replied.

“I think I was moved because I don’t know if they were registered (to vote) in the past. These are the guys you sometimes see hanging out on the streets and just to see them walking, if they didn’t have a car, to get down there to hear him was pretty impressive – not that it should be impressive, but I know in their walks of life what they do.”

Never considered Clinton
“We need a change in the White House and that change is Obama,” said Sadie Williams, a secretary who cast her ballot early Tuesday morning at the Rawson School.

“I saw him last night (at Obama’s rally in Hartford) and I saw him in 2006 at the John Bailey dinner where he made a speech. I think he’ll do everything that he says he’ll do, especially for the working family, and Iraq, pulling the troops out. Billions are spent there every month.”

Williams said she never considered voting for Sen. Hillary Clinton or any other Democratic presidential contender.

Williams rejects Clinton’s argument that Obama lacks the experience required to be president. “Bush went in there. What kind of experience did he have?” she asked.

She said she voted for anti-war candidate Ned Lamont when he challenged Sen. Joe Lieberman in 2006.

A few voters said Obama’s relative lack of experience at the federal level was an asset, not a liability.

“I don’t feel that he has any history with the White House. We need someone with no history. Someone to bring a fresh perspective,” explained Obama voter Deborah Smith.

She, unlike most other Obama voters we interviewed in district 7, said he had considered voting for Clinton “more because I liked Bill.” But she said, “You can’t base her presidency on what Bill did.”

Video A big day for Clinton and Obama Feb. 5: Voters head to the polls in 24 states, a day that may well determine whether Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama is the Democratic presidential candidate. NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports. Today show

District 7 in Hartford is comprised almost entirely of black voters. It is part of a zip code with an 86 percent black population, where a quarter of the people have incomes below the federal poverty line, and where 2.6 percent have a graduate or professional degree, according to the Census.

For Obama in affluent West Hartford
In contrast, at the King Philip Middle School in West Hartford, just two miles away, the population is more than 90 percent white and only one percent of the people are below the federal poverty line. One third of the people in this district have graduate or professional degrees, according to the Census.

Eley Shapiro, a retired secretary, said, “I voted for Obama because we need change badly. But there’s going to be a lot of friction. I voted for him, but I don’t think he’ll make it. You know that old expression, ‘The South shall rise again’? I don’t think the Southern vote will help him any. They’re very powerful…. There’s still so much racism in the country.”

She said Obama is “intelligent and he’s decent and so far, he’s not a crook. So far. I like his stature, I like his appearance. I’m very much on that ‘cleanliness is next to godliness.'”

Shapiro considered voting for Clinton.

“I like her. I think she’s sharp. I don’t know why the country hates her.”

She said she voted for Lieberman in the Lieberman versus Lamont primary in 2006 “because he was Jewish and I am Jewish, so I voted for him. And I think that’s why the black people will vote for Obama.”

West Hartford education consultant Norma Pelletier, who cast her vote for Obama at the King Philip School, said she wanted him, if he is elected president, to “make us be liked by other countries in the world, to make peace and to establish some sort of discussion so that we’re not just everybody’s enemy.”

As for past presidents who’ve been her favorites, Pelletier said, “I really liked Jimmy Carter, but he was not the right man for the job because he didn’t have backing and the know-how to know how to get through the system. I’m a little afraid of Barack for the same reason. But I don’t know, I have to take a chance on it."

Tom Curry, msnbc.com Caryn Neff voted for Sen. Barack Obama in West Hartford, Conn. Tuesday morning

With her infant son Jack in tow, Caryn Neff, a part-time social studies teacher, drove in her minivan to the King Philip School to vote for Obama.

“More than anything, kids are very apathetic, people in general are very apathetic, and I think he stands for something that is going to be a change in Washington and a change in politics.”

Neff said she weighed voting for Clinton “mostly because as a woman I would love to see a woman president.”

But she was put off by the idea of “there being a Bush or Clinton in office for 20 years. That’s a little much.”

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