NEWS

Conquering Bridesburg

The Obama campaign's Election Day challenges in the Northeast.


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Published: Nov 5, 2008

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SEASON SIX: Actress Sonja Sohn, aka Kima Greggs from <i>The Wire</i>, shows her support on South Broad Street.

Michael T. Regan

SEASON SIX: Actress Sonja Sohn, aka Kima Greggs from The Wire, shows her support on South Broad Street.

(CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

After the early morning rush at Fire Engine Company 33, the polling place for the 45th Ward's tiny first division, the Castor brothers, Vernon and Wayne, are finally able to sit and rest beside their "Polish Americans For McCain/Palin" signs.

"The neighborhood is changing," says Wayne, nodding his head westward. "They're driving up and down the street, slowing down in front of here, letting their presence be known." By "they," Wayne, a tall, strong man who has been a poll watcher here for decades, means his new black neighbors.

"But you know, if they're just like we are — hard-working people who keep their property clean — then there won't be a problem," says Vernon.

When I point out that Obama has been polling extremely well, and ask how the brothers would accept the first black president, Vernon says, simply, "If Obama wins, there will be a lot of rioting."

This section of Bridesburg includes some of Philadelphia's most politically diverse wards. There are polling places here where you can't find a single McCain sign. There are others where Obama placards are nowhere to be seen.

This is one of the wards that drew a lot of attention from Obama supporters, as voters here are split into working-class whites, a growing Latino population and a new influx of blacks from nearby Juniata Park and Feltonville. As the day went on, the campaign faced two types of challenges here: typical Election Day issues, and issues associated with the tensions this sort of demographic can create.

Most watchdog groups agree that procedural problems were minor and sporadic on Tuesday, and that the vote went smoothly. Ella Myers may beg to disagree.

Myers spent hours traveling in her wheelchair among three polling places, in search of one that would accommodate a handicapped person.

At her first stop, Keep the Faith Ministry, she encountered seven steep stone stairs. Joyce Lewis, the election judge, and several Obama supporters, looked at a clause from the Americans with Disabilities Act — " ... polling places shall be accessible to people with disabilities to the extent that accessible locations are within each division" — and understood it to mean that Myers could cast her ballot at the nearest accessible polling place. (That interpretation was incorrect, a lawyer at the scene said later.)

So Myers, a quiet woman, headed to Fire Engine Company 14, where she was told she couldn't vote. An Obama volunteer then escorted her to a nearby school, which also turned her down — her name, they said, wasn't on the books; she could either vote at the first location or cast a provisional ballot. Bernadette Rotchford, an Obama volunteer, adamantly refused to let her do the latter. "Those don't count," she said.

With all the sudden attention from reporters and lawyers, Myers got emotional. She wanted to go home, she told Rotchford with tears in her eyes. She wasn't going to vote. But Rotchford would hear none of it.

She put Myers in a minivan and took her back to Keep the Faith, where four Obama volunteers helped her climb down the stairs. It was slow and wincingly painful, and more so on the way back up. When Myers finally sat back in her wheelchair, she was clearly happy she hadn't quit. "I voted, I voted, I voted!" she sang.

There were neighborhood-specific challenges, too. Later that night, at the John H. Webster School on Frankford Avenue, the Obama campaign had to quiet one of its own supporters to protect its reputation.

The Webster school, as a polling place, is an amazing sight: Six divisions vote in its auditorium, and so all the demographic groups in the ward come together here. The signs on the fence ranged from McCain/Palin posters adorned with shamrocks to the basic Obama/Biden '08 placards.

During the evening rush, William Leach Sr. and his wife — McCain supporters — filed an incident report with the Committee of Seventy after they said a man wearing Obama gear confronted Leach's wife outside the polling place.

"He told her not to touch his campaign literature if she wasn't voting Democrat, and he got within inches of her face," Leach said. "She's a small woman. She was intimidated."

Leach's wife still entered the polling place and voted. "Earlier, he told people with McCain pins that the booths were broken, and tried to send them home," said Jim Finnegan, who said he was a committeeman in the ward. "We brought them in to vote anyway."

The troublemaker, who refused to give his name after an official Obama volunteer told him not to, said he was just having fun. "If they're McCain supporters, why are they listening to me?" he said. He commenced taunting McCain advocates — "You can't get rid of me!"

An Obama volunteer approached the heckler, pulled him aside and spoke with him. He left for about an hour — "I'm going to get more voters!" — and when he returned, was significantly calmer.

The remainder of the evening went off well: People showed up, cast ballots and left. There was almost no tension. Maybe Wayne Castor is right: The neighborhood is changing.

(tom.namako@citypaper.net)