Voters In New Jersey Are Looking For Change
A visit to one poll in Jersey City reveals a range of opinions, and some last moment choices in the voting booth.
Polling Station E1 in Jersey City, New Jersey. AG / PP
Andrew Garib, NYC Pavement Pieces Link JERSEY CITY, Feb. 5 Not a lot of people at polling station E1 in downtown Jersey City on the first floor of the Battery Review Senior Citizens home were struggling with their choices in the New Jersey presidential primary Tuesday.
The day did not present voters with the high stakes of a general election yet, but this year is also different than most. Without an incumbent running, and with the Democratic Party invigorated by the historic contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, voters in this district made their choices for reasons as varied and as personal as the campaigns themselves.
Ella Maradiaga, 76, knew she liked Hillary Clinton intuitively.
“When you like a person, you just know,” she said.
Maradiaga and her family immigrated to the United States from Belize in 1968, most of them settling in Nevada and she in Jersey City. Her whole family has supported Clinton over the years, including the Nevada contingent that campaigned for the former First Lady in January’s primary there.
“We care about her,” she said, unable to pinpoint the exact moment – whether months ago or decades – that she and her family fell in love with Clinton. “You don’t know who’s good or who’s bad, until the time comes,” she said. Of President Bush, she said, “I don’t hate him. But he should stop fighting the war.”
This district is heavily Democratic. By 1 p.m., 275 declared Democrats and only 66 Republicans had voted at E1. But the station has traditionally had a very high turnout – among the highest in the state, partly because of the number of seniors in the district. Poll workers said they expected more than 800 voters by the end of the day.
Jeffrey Smith, 35, took a more academic approach to his choice. He swung from Obama to Clinton and then back, settling on Obama after watching last week’s Democratic debate.
“I was paying attention to him when he first popped onto the scene,” Smith said of Obama. “And I read about him. I read his books.”
“He’s optimistic, which is something that’s disappeared from the political system,” he continued. “When you go back to the way things initially were to form there was a lot of optimism and a lot of ‘Hey, let’s give this a shot.’ It’s a big experiment and I think it worked.”
“We’re a young country, and optimism is a very important part of it,” he said. “If you look at countries like Indonesia, and the steps they’re taking to make change and how they did it, it’s not working out well yet, but it will. That’s how democracy works. There’s an optimism there – like, hey, we got a chance now.”
A bleary-eyed Mike Rodriguez, 24, who usually votes Democratic, voted for Republican John McCain instead. “Anyone who could get shot down over Vietnam and do a couple years in a P.O.W. camp has my vote,” Rodriguez said.
“I’m a former soldier and my next-door neighbors are Marines. So are my co-workers,” he continued. Rodriguez’s mother worked in a bank and his father was a mechanic. Growing up, he was a Boy Scout, and then went on to Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, ROTC in college before the Army. He served one tour in Iraq.
McCain “served this country in Vietnam,” said Rodriguez. “Then he got shot down and became a P.O.W. And look at him now – as old as he is, he’s still serving. I feel like he’s a good guy. He wasn’t a draft dodger. He’d serve great as president.”
Rodriguez considered Obama and opposes Clinton, but he hadn’t been able to pay as much attention to the news as he would have liked to. He stayed up all night leading up to Election Day, working at his job.
“McCain’s half Democrat anyways,” he said. 
Published 08.02.05 02:00:00 -0500 GMT
Posted by Andrew Garib on 08.02.05 
Created: 05.12.04 