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Fauquier divided over candidates' leadership abilities
Fauquier divided over candidates' leadership abilitiesBy Don Del Rosso
Times-Democrat Staff Writer
Bruce Green “nearly always” backs Republican candidates.
Tuesday proved no exception.
The 73-year-old retired airline pilot, who lives near Marshall, voted for Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
So did 57.4 percent of Fauquier voters (17,338).
Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama received 41.7 percent (12,618).
Fauquier last backed a Democrat for president in 1964.
As of about 11 p.m., 18 of 20 Fauquier precincts had reported vote totals. McCain won 17 of the precincts.
Obama won Courthouse Precinct in Warrenton by 29 votes.
About 70 percent of Fauquier's 43,981 voters went to the polls on Nov. 4.
“I'm afraid of the alternative,” Green said when asked about his support for McCain, the 76-year-old U.S. senator from Arizona. “I don't trust (Obama). I don't think he's got the experience. I'm not sure he's got our best interests at heart. He's too liberal.”
In interviews outside the Marshall poll at the Marshall Ruritan Club, Green and his wife, Doris, 72, dismissed Obama as “too liberal.”
“I wouldn't vote for Obama if you paid me,” Doris said. “I can't stand liberals.”
Pam Kalinsky, who lives near Marshall, also voted for McCain.
Kalinsky called Obama, 47, “too young and inexperienced to deliver anything he's promised.”
She also said: “I don't like any of his tax policies.”
One would more than double the capital gains tax, hurting people who would sell “investment properties,” Kalinsky said outside the Ruritan Club.
Her family owns investment properties, she said.
Kalinsky, a 57-year-old dental assistant, also disapproved of “the way [Obama's] going to socialize medicine.”
Schyler Stephenson, 24, recently graduated from James Madison University with a degree in sports management.
He voted for McCain because “I like his views on everything. He seems like a good person.”
McCain's more extensive greater “experience” also factored into his decision, Stephenson said outside the Ruritan Club
Steven Campbell, 26, of Bealeton voted for McCain because he shares many of the Republican nominee's political views.
They both oppose abortion, said Campbell, the youth pastor for the Culpeper Assembly of God Church. Campbell also objects to stem cell research.
“I believe McCain is a Christian,” he said. “I believe with Obama's Muslim background [he] would do an injustice to Israel.”
Campbell believes an Obama presidency might force Israel into a war because the country “would feel they don't have our backing.”
Kelly Wintermyer, who lives near Warrenton, backed McCain.
“They're both good candidates,” Wintermyer, 26, said in an interview outside the Opal poll at Liberty High School near Bealeton. But she preferred McCain because of his “experience. He's also a Republican and a conservative. And I think that's what our nation needs.”
Matt Van Ginhoven, a 28-year-old electrician who lives near Goldvein, believes McCain brings more experience to the job of president.
“He's been around the block more than a couple of times,” Van Ginhoven said over breakfast at Frost Diner in Warrenton. “He knows first-hand what it's like for our guys” fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Rick Grimley of New Baltimore “typically, almost exclusively” backs Republican candidates.
But not on Tuesday.
The 49-year-old engineer with Lockheed Martin Corp. in Manassas voted for Obama.
“I wanted some change of some sort, and I didn't see that with McCain,” Grimley said during breakfast at Frost Diner. “To me John McCain represented all the things George Bush did.”
Obama backers repeatedly said the country needs new leadership and a “different approach” to solving the country's problems, as a Marshall women put it.
They regard McCain as a President Bush surrogate.
And they insisted the country cannot endure four more years of the Bush administration's failed policies.
They spoke of his largely positive campaign and platform of “hope.”
They talked of his support for working- and middle-class people, tax and health care reform, a woman's right to choose and the withdrawal of troops from Iraq.
Steve Brawerman of Delaplane said he backed Obama because of “an overall feeling of who might be better for the country.”
Obama “potentially brings about a lot of good change,” said the 64-year-old radiologist over a cup of coffee at the Marshall Livestock Grill. “He inspires people the way JFK did, getting young people involved in politics for the right reason.”
After voting at the Opal poll, Dee Dee Colbert, 46, of Midland said the country “needs to go in a whole new direction....I think the Democrats are the ones to do that right now.”
Colbert, homemaker, welcomes Obama's “new ideas.”
Christopher Hensley, 21, builds computers for a Dulles-area technology company.
“I'm ready for a change,” said Hensley, who lives near Warrenton. “Eight years [of the Bush administration] is enough. And McCain is pretty much like Bush to me.”
Hensley, who voted at the Opal poll, also doubted the competence of McCain running mate Sarah Palin.
“I don't see how Palin could be a very good vice president,” Hensley said. “She has absolutely no experience. I think [vice president-elect Joe] Biden would do a good job of supporting Obama.”
Barbara Von Elm, 58, of Delaplane praised Obama's leadership skills.
“He put together an incredible [campaign] machine,” said Von Elm said during lunch at the livestock restaurant. “If he can do for the country what he did for the campaign, he'll put smart, intelligent people” in his cabinet and other important posts.
On Tuesday, Camara McGee, 23, of New Baltimore voted in her first presidential election.
McGee, a livestock grill server and Lord Fairfax Community College student, said she voted for Obama partly because she's pro-choice on abortion.
She fears a Republican president's appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court would attempt to outlaw abortion.
McGee also disapproved of McCain's “condescending attitude, his demeaning ways” throughout the campaign. “The treatment of Obama in the debates I found appalling.”
Meloday Malinsky, 43, also voted in her first election.
“We need change, and I'm ready for change,” said Malinsky, who decided to register partly because a friend told her only people who vote have a right to complain about the quality of governance.
Malinsky , who voted at the Marshall poll, believes it will take a long time to undue the damage of the Bush administration.
For that reason, Obama “is not going to be the save-all, she said.
But she believes Obama will help unite a polarized country and “set us in the right direction.”
Malinsky concluded early Tuesday afternoon: “I think his time is now. I do believe we're going to have change today and that God is looking out for all of us.”
E-mail the reporter: ddelrosso@timespapers.com
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