LET TERS
FULTON COUNTY BLUES
Undecided voters are hard to reach
I
sat in the Walmart parking lot in Fulton, Ky., talking to Darnell Green, a
verifi ed undecided voter. She won’t watch the debates that begin this week or
be infl uenced by the attack ads on TV, because she doesn’t own a television.
She doesn’t take time to read the campaign mail delivered to her doorstep or
listen too much to what she hears at work. And she doesn’t know how she is
going to make her choice for president.
Green has four adult children and nine grandchildren. She lives in an insecure
world where there isn’t enough money to send those grandchildren to college.
Jobs — including hers — disappeared when the local factory closed and home
ownership is beyond her reach. She cares deeply about her country and the
direction the winning candidate will take us.
The candidates care about people like Green, too. Undecided voters in
battleground states — about 4 percent of the electorate now — could decide the
outcome of the upcoming election and they are hard to reach. In general, they don’t
respond to the same voter contact methods that organizers use to fi nd supporters.
Green lived in Wisconsin until her employer closed the plant where she
worked.
“I wasn’t old enough to retire and I thought, I’m going to have menial jobs the
rest of my life unless I go back to school. I wanted a job that would pay all the
bills,” she says.
At 54, Green retrained for a job in communication technology. After fi nishing
the program, she was offered a position with a company that required a move to
northern Kentucky. Her children likewise have had to move for work and now live
in Wisconsin, Ohio and Texas. She travels a lot to see her family and the uncertainty
of where they will be and for how long is a source of frustration for her.
“You’re lucky if you have a job and lucky if you have a good job,” she tells
me. “Even though I belong to a union, I don’t know how long my job will last.
You never know when the doors are gonna close. That’s become a way of life.”
Green wonders if her union has the strength to advocate for the things that matter.
Job security in the face of future plant closures and health care are at the top of her list.
She has good reason to be concerned. Kentucky’s unemployment rate at 8.5
percent is also above the national average, although it is currently 16.7 percent in
Fulton County, where I am talking with Green.
In 2011, Fulton County suffered through the Goodyear Tire plant closure in
nearby Union City, Tenn. This past spring when Ferry-Morse Seed Company
decided to close, the county’s unemployment rate rose to 20.5 percent and ranked
highest in the nation.
Green doesn’t blame President Obama for her frustrations, nor does she think
that Gov. Romney has a solution. “I know what everyone says about Obama, but
it was a mess when he got there,” she says. “It was a mess when Bush was there.
It’s been a mess for a long time.”
She just hopes one of the candidates understands what it’s like to live on a
paycheck, as she does; one that she always fears may be her last. “I just feel like
America is getting depressed,” she says. “We need to go back to work to generate
more money. Something has to be done and done now.”
People in Fulton County know exactly what she means and they are doing
something. It may not be full-time work, but as I passed through on my way to
Florida, everyone was working on a festival that they hoped would bring money
into the community and they were having fun at the same time.
As Green and I ended our conversation, the 50th Annual Banana Festival was
getting under way. For a solid week, the events — scheduled every hour of every
day — would attract thousands of visitors to town. There was a banana bake-off,
the Banana Ball and the ever-popular banana bonnet contest. The festival ended
with a grand parade, led of course by the Top Banana, and included a one-ton
banana pudding, big enough to feed everyone who came.
I know that Green will vote. She believes it is very important, but she wants to
be confi dent that her choice is a good one. She is surrounded by Obama supporters
— her son, her sister, her friends — which may prove to be the deciding factor.
These are the people she will listen to more than the debates, TV ads or the
campaign brochures that come in the mail. Even though she isn’t in a swing
state, Darnell Green truly is in the political center of the country. P ersonally it’s a
diffi cult place to be right now.
Nancy Webber of Eugene is a longtime Oregon political activist and author of Ground Game, a new book that
chronicles her time in the fi eld offi ces of the 2008 Obama campaign. The book is available at Amazon Kindle,
iBook, Kobo and Inkwater Press.
4
October 4, 2012 • eugeneweekly.com
FANTASTIC RECORD
Once again Betty Taylor is the clear
choice for City Council to represent south
Eugene. Betty has done an outstanding
job of representing her progressive and
environmentally conscious district. She
listens to all perspectives and always
makes careful, thoughtful decisions.
She works hard to represent us and has a
fantastic track record of service. You can
always reach Betty by phone if you need to
talk with her about city issues.
Betty is being challenged vigorously in
this election by Juan Carlos Valle. Valle
has already secured the conservative,
pro-business, developer vote. But to win
our district he needs to cast himself as an
environmentalist and progressive. To do
this, he raised large sums from developers
and real estate interests.
Recent campaign funding reports show
he is outspending Betty 2-1, with his largest
supporter being the Eugene Association of
Realtors ($3,266). The Realtors association
has a thinly veiled agenda to expand
Eugene as fast as possible and eliminate all
development restrictions. Valle is also being
funded by the Community Action Network,
another right-wing group representing
timber and developers.
John Brown is funding him, the same guy
who fi led an unfounded complaint against
Commissioner Rob Handy just before the
last election. If this group gets their way,
our City Council will take a big swing to the
right. Why would we want to give away our
most progressive district in the city to yet
another developer representative? Betty is
a retired school teacher with the experience
and vision we need.
Eben Fodor
South Eugene
GRANGE ADS DECEPTIVE
“The Grange.” It conjures up warm,
fuzzy feelings of country life, homemade
pies and community gatherings. But The
Grange in ads we’re being bombarded
with on television and radio is none of
those things. What it is, instead, is an
attempt by greedy developers to establish
the fi rst non-Indian casino in Oregon.
If The Grange didn’t include a casino, it
wouldn’t be on the November ballot as
Measures 82 and 83. In fact, Measure 82
is not only a referendum, it’s constitutional
amendment!
It’s bad enough that tribes have been
relegated to only being able to make a
living by operating casinos, since their
entire way of life was taken from them in
the 1800s and 1900s. Now even that is at
risk because some people resent that non-
Indians can’t own casinos, and can’t stand
the fact that they can’t get their fi ngers into
every single pie.
I urge you to educate yourself about
The Grange. Look past the buzz words
“thousands of jobs,” “for our schools,”
“for Oregon,” and please consider voting
no on Measures 82 and 83. The Grange
could still be built without a ballot measure
if it drops the casino option. But it won’t
be. Because it’s all about the casino; the
rest of it is superfl uous camoufl age.
Laurel Hanley
Eugene
PETE LIKES BETTY
Councilor Betty Taylor is up for re-
election Nov. 6. I’ve worked with Betty
on a variety of issues and I want everyone
in Ward 2 to know that I wholeheartedly
support Betty in her re-election.
A lot of people know that Councilor
Taylor is the conscience of the council, but I
think that it’s important that her background
in Eugene issues goes back many years.
The UO and higher education community is
signifi cant in our ward and she’s the only
councilor who’s earned a Ph.D. (in English)
and thus has a better idea of what the city’s
relationship with the UO should be.
Councilor Taylor and I served together
on the Lane Regional Air Protection
Agency board for several years, and
Betty was chair of the LRAPA Board for
two years. I also appreciated the work
that she did in organizing a health care
forum. Mayor Piercy and I both spoke at
that forum, but it wouldn’t have happened
without Councilor Taylor’s leadership.