Primaries
Portrait of Two Last Minute Deciders
By Peter Slevin
MISHAWAKA, Ind. -- With candidates zipping across the state like jet fighter planes and the media long past the saturation point with news reports and advertisements, it is hard to find Hoosiers who have no opinion about the presidential race. Not since 1968, people say, has the energy been this high.
But Bob and Phyllis Nielsen, loyal Democrats and poll watchers at the Bittersweet Library, just could not decide.
Friends and neighbors slipped into the cool, carpeted polling station starting at 6 a.m. By 2 p.m., the 150th voter had come and gone, but the Nielsens remained unsure. They planned to cast a vote, they said, but choosing between Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama was just proving to be a problem.
"We've got till 6 o'clock," Bob Nielsen, a retired company comptroller said.
"Just really haven't been able to settle on it," Phyllis Nielsen said of her decision. "Might not make it till November. Too many negatives. They just constantly bombard each other."
"They're just so full of bull and baloney. I don't believe any of them," Jim Nielsen said, as they processed absentee ballots. "They said, 'What I'm going to do.' They aren't going to do anything without Congress. But people believe them."
Despite the ground operations assembled by the Clinton and Obama campaigns, the Nielsens said they had heard from neither camp. When it comes to decide, Bob Nielsen said, "I'll probably go in there and flip a coin."
Posted at 6:12 PM ET on May 6, 2008
| Category:
Primaries
Share This: 
Technorati
| Tag in Del.icio.us | Digg This
Get This Widget >>
Posted by: KP | May 6, 2008 7:39 PM
Barack Obama is a fataly flawed candidate. Unless you want a Republican in office you better vote for Hillary... Barack and his campaign (Axelrod, esp) are paying big money to keep this OUT of the media....http://larrysinclair0926.wordpress.com/
Posted by: ashley | May 6, 2008 7:29 PM
Ditto what "abenson" wrote.
I'm an Obama supporter, but if a flip of a coin is going to reveal who you're voting for you don't belong in a voting booth.
Posted by: binky | May 6, 2008 6:48 PM
svreader:
It's too late (especially if she loses Indiana tonight).
Posted by: JakeD | May 6, 2008 6:46 PM
Ugh. If you can't make up your mind at this late date, just do us all a favor and stay home.
Posted by: abenson | May 6, 2008 6:42 PM
WHY DON'T OBAMA'S SUPPORTERS CARE ABOUT OBAMA'S SLUMS?
WHY DOESN'T THE NATIONAL MEDIA DO MORE REPORTING ON THE STORY FROM CHICAGO THAT PROVES THAT OBAMA HAS A HEART OF SOLID ICE?
Obama talks about being "a community organizer in Chicago"
What happened after he got elected State Senator proves that he doesn't care about anybody but himself!!!
Please Watch this report on Obama, Obama's slums, Rezko, and $100M of wasted taxpayer money, from Channel 5, NBC news, Chicago's most respected TV news program.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDHsHM0laT8&feature=related
How do you explain away the fact that Barry Obama never followed up on the 11 slums that his friend Rezko was supposed to repair in Obama's district in Chicago, and continued to do nothing about the 40 slums that Rezko was supposed to repair or replace in Chicago, even after Obama joined the US Senate?
From the Chicago Sun Times:
For more than five weeks during the brutal winter of 1997, tenants shivered without heat in a government-subsidized apartment building on Chicago's South Side.
It was just four years after the landlords -- Antoin "Tony'' Rezko and his partner Daniel Mahru -- had rehabbed the 31-unit building in Englewood with a loan from Chicago taxpayers.
Rezko and Mahru couldn't find money to get the heat back on.
But their company, Rezmar Corp., did come up with $1,000 to give to the political campaign fund of Barack Obama, the newly elected state senator whose district included the unheated building....
The building in Englewood was one of 30 Rezmar rehabbed in a series of troubled deals largely financed by taxpayers. Every project ran into financial difficulty. More than half went into foreclosure, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation has found.
"Their buildings were falling apart,'' said a former city official. "They just didn't pay attention to the condition of these buildings.''
Eleven of Rezko's buildings were in Obama's state Senate district....
Rezko and Mahru had no construction experience when they created Rezmar in 1989 to rehabilitate apartments for the poor under the Daley administration. Between 1989 and 1998, Rezmar made deals to rehab 30 buildings, a total of 1,025 apartments. The last 15 buildings involved Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland during Obama's time with the firm.
Rezko and Mahru also managed the buildings, which were supposed to provide homes for poor people for 30 years. Every one of the projects ran into trouble:
* Seventeen buildings -- many beset with code violations, including a lack of heat -- ended up in foreclosure.
* Six buildings are currently boarded up.
* Hundreds of the apartments are vacant, in need of major repairs.
* Taxpayers have been stuck with millions in unpaid loans.
Posted by: | May 6, 2008 6:41 PM
If the exit polling holds in North Carolina, it doesn't matter whether they flip a coin or not. Barring something unforeseen happening, Barack HUSSEIN Obama will be the Democratic Nominee.
Posted by: JakeD | May 6, 2008 6:19 PM
The comments to this entry are closed.
Ditto abenson. Another angle: if you're so disgusted with the Democratic nominees, why not skip the primary and go support an independent candidate instead? Oh. I guess that would be "throwing your vote away."