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Voters Wonder, 'Whose City Is It Going to Be?'
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Like many in the crowd, she's not sure whom she will support; WIN does not endorse candidates. Fenty and Cropp lead in private polls, and most people mention their names before the forum.
But few seem solid in supporting a candidate, and some say afterward that Johns, Orange and Brown deserve a second look. It is hard to differentiate when almost everyone agrees.
"Everybody sort of said the same thing," says Brandon Sitzmann, who lives next door to Asbury United Methodist Church and came over when he saw all the commotion. "I was kind of wishing someone would have said no" to WIN's request for funding.
Unlike in some past city elections, voters don't seem to long for an outsider or attach any specific negatives to incumbency. "I want someone politically astute," says Carol Arledge, who is "over 55" and lives in Ward 5. "I don't want someone we have to train."
And despite their worries that the city has many problems, there is a stubborn streak of optimism.
Jim Wood, 68, lives in the Hawthorne neighborhood in Ward 4. Put him in the booster category. "We love living in this city. We used to wonder where we were going to retire. We're not going anywhere," he says.
Neither is Elizabeth Desan, hard to miss in her red jacket, seated in the balcony with the group from St. Alban's Episcopal Church. She's concerned about the inequities in the city and, at an age long past child-rearing rearing, still worried about the city's schools.
"I've been optimistic for 80 years," she says. "So I'll continue to be. I love this city."
There's one last admonition for the candidates from the Rev. Christine Wiley, a fiery speaker from Covenant Baptist Church: "Don't try to figure out if there's money left over to do the things we want you to do. Take the money from the top."
The candidates see the crowd rise as one, chanting, "Take the money from the top! Take the money from the top!" And then congregants and candidates alike are swaying to a hymn that almost everyone seems to know, "We Have Come This Far by Faith."
Staff writers Michelle Boorstein, Marcia Slacum Greene, Lori Montgomery, David Nakamura, Elissa Silverman, Nikita Stewart and Yolanda Woodlee contributed to this report.
