If Barack Obama is going to win the state of Florida, and by extension other key swing states, on his way to the presidency in November, he is going to need a lot more people like Gary LaPorte.
The 66-year-old retiree from Spring Hill, about an hour north of Tampa in Hernando County, is probably your quintessential moderate swing voter. He is a lifelong Republican who has voted for candidates in both parties, driven more by issues and personalities than party affiliation.
For this year's election he plans to switch parties, and is drawn to voting for Obama. Yet ask him who he counts as political idols and the first name that comes to mind is:
"Ronald Reagan."
"He was a Republican," his wife, Diane, interjected with some distaste as the two awaited the start of last week's Obama rally in Tampa. Diane is a Democrat, and so she prompted her husband with a different suggested political hero: "What about John F. Kennedy?"
LaPorte is exactly the kind of voter that Obama has had trouble winning: white, older and working-class. From Kentucky — where Hillary Clinton creamed him in that demographic — to Pennsylvania to Ohio to Florida, Obama has had trouble connecting with some white voters, especially those who are less educated and less affluent. The latest Quinnipiac University poll shows Obama losing to McCain in Florida 45 percent to 41 percent.
The crowd of 15,000 at the St. Pete Times Forum last week was decidedly rainbow and skewed to the younger side: lots of African-American voters, some Hispanics and a bunch of teens, including high-schoolers who either cut classes locally to attend and some who drove from places such as Orlando, where the school year has already ended.
More and more, the mainstream press is defining Obama's electability in terms of his appeal to voters along that racial-economic divide. Consider these recent headlines: "Can Obama Win White Voters?" in U.S. News and World Report; "Can Obama win over the working class?" on cnn.com; and "Obama's Problem With Working-Class Whites: Not As Bad As You Think!" in New York magazine.
Obama has started countering by giving his back story: He was a poor kid whose dad left him when he was 2 and whose family had to live on food stamps for a while. And he tailors his issues to appeal to that same crowd. In Tampa, the pitch went this way:
• On health care: "If you already have health insurance, I'm going to lower your premiums. Working with your employer by $2,500 per family per year. And if you don't have health insurance, you are going to be able to get health insurance that is at least as good as the health care I have as a member of congress."
• On seniors: "We're going to give our seniors relief. We're not going to privatize social security. But we also want to help people save with retirement accounts outside of social security. Since our seniors are on fixed incomes, if they make $50,000 a year or less, I don't want them paying income taxes on their social security."
• On relief from gas prices: "What I want to do is provide real relief, a thousand-dollar-per-family tax cut to offset their payroll taxes. … We're going to pay for it by closing corporate tax loopholes and tax havens that aren't creating jobs here in the United States."
• On education: Obama promised a $4,000 subsidy for college if graduates agree to do national community service in repayment.
But first and foremost, he was in Florida last week for three days not to deliver a policy statement but to give us a giant bear hug, and it was red meat enough for the Tampa crowd. Twice Obama was interrupted by loud calls of "I love you;" both times he responded, "I love you back."
Never mind that it was Obama's and Clinton's decision to sign a pledge not to campaign here that left Florida bereft of Democratic presidential politics for the past months. Never mind the predictions by some pundits that Floridians might not embrace the candidates after being shunned. The Forum crowd that included supporters from Jacksonville and Gainesville and Orlando and Bradenton and three busloads from Sarasota went nuts, a louder roar than I've ever heard for a Lightning Stanley Cup playoff game or for a Bruce Springsteen show. All is forgiven, Barack.
The sustained cheer that greeted Obama after his introduction by "rising star" Congresswoman Kathy Castor, D-Tampa, was impressive, as was the sheer joy so evident in many who took the day off for the midday rally.
"It is good to be back in Florida," Obama told the crowd. "I know you guys have been holding down the fort."
Predictably, the crowd came to its feet.
Obama's real magic isn't in his attempt to reach out to blue-collar white voters; it's in the rhythm of his words, his cadence of hope and change for those who have felt shut out of the political process for years — or even a lifetime.
"I believed the American people are tired of a politics that's all about tearing each other down; they want a politics that's about lifting the country up," Obama told the crowd in recalling why he decided to run now for the presidency. "I believed that American people didn't want spin and PR from their elected officials; they wanted honesty and straight talk. And most of all I believed that the American people are tired of being divided. They want to be brought together. All of us. Black. White. Hispanic. Asian. Native American. Young. Old. Rich. Poor. Gay. Straight. They want everybody working together. Si se puede. Yes, we can."
Outside of the Forum after the speech, the most impressive thing I came across was two African-American men talking to each other on the sidewalk. One — Lomax McIntyre Jr. — was wearing a Dr. Martin Luther King-Obama T-shirt.
"It's history in the making," McIntyre said with awe. He paused. "He's already made it."
This article appears in May 28 – Jun 3, 2008.