Ohio Town's Democrats See 'Hope' Differently

Gallery

Struggling Town Debates Message of 'Hope'

The Clinton and Obama campaigns have set up camp in Lima, a town that is unpredicitable in its support. What is certain is the desire for economic reform and a torn population that is trying to decide to is the right person for the job.

» LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY

He started sending e-mails to friends at 2 in the morning after a late shift at the plant last week, soliciting volunteers for Clinton. A few days later, he sat in a small meeting for supporters, where one person suggested that the group canvass all of the houses in Lima.

"Yeah, we might need to do that," Huenke said. "But there's some neighborhoods in this town where I don't want to be walking around, no matter what we're doing. We've got some slums now. You never know what's going to happen when you knock on somebody's door."

Hoping for Unity

Josiah Mathews walked out of his house dressed in a dark gray suit, with rings on both middle fingers and a scarf around his neck. He had carefully clipped his goatee and trimmed his mustache to a shadow before a full morning of meetings. At least until his factory shift started at 3:30 p.m., he had plenty of reasons to hope.

Mathews grew up only a block away in a neighborhood, South Union, where blacks were once forced to live by law. The single-story houses and apartments -- sometimes rented for as little as $200 a month -- have been worn by harsh winters, and some were abandoned long ago. Railroad tracks crisscross a half-mile behind Mathews's house, and smoke from the nearby oil refinery fogs the horizon.

During his childhood, Mathews dreamed of packing up for New York or Chicago. But during his sophomore year of high school, a few community organizations paid for him to make a service trip to Africa, and he returned with both perspective and a silent vow to repay their generosity. He would stay in Lima. He would help the town change.

Mathews worked to pay off his mother's house with jobs at a hotel, on the railroad and at a General Motors plant. He volunteered in a halfway house. Last year, he spent more than $5,000 of his own money on a losing campaign for an office on the city council. Still, progress in Lima sometimes felt "like pushing against a wall," he said. Minorities, who make up 27 percent of the town's population, hold only three or four positions on the 70-officer police force.

"You get a lot of rural people here, and all they know about black people is what they see on TV," Mathews said. "There's a blockage between the minority community and the government. It's not getting better, and that's the real problem."

Last month, a SWAT team shot a black mother and her infant son during a drug raid near Mathews's house, killing the mother. The incident brought old tensions to the surface in Lima; black pastors held community meetings, and national hate groups sent letters in support of the shooting. The Rev. Jesse Jackson visited. The police launched an internal investigation, and its conclusions are pending.

"Everybody's riled up and angry, and we don't even know what happened yet," said Carolyn Pennington, 67, a white woman who has lived in Lima for 35 years. "I was taking my grandson downtown to McDonald's, and I looked in my rearview mirror and my heart about stopped. There was a black guy riding my bumper, looking mean. I was terrified, and this old lady doesn't scare easy."

Said Mathews: "I've never once felt unsafe in my neighborhood. But you hear some things and see some things where there is just a lot of work that has to be done with race relations. We need something to unite us."

When Obama announced he was running for president a year ago, Mathews recognized the chance he'd been waiting for. In a town where a black police officer still strikes people as revolutionary, Mathews thought, what could redefine race more than a black president? Eager to volunteer, Mathews limited himself to one job for the first time in his adult life. His days are now divided in two: mornings for suits and community meetings about the senator from Illinois; afternoons for work boots, a camouflage Ford hat and a rain jacket, and a job at a General Dynamics factory that builds tanks for the war in Iraq.

"People at work tell me I'm voting for a layoff by supporting Obama," Mathews said. "But I'd rather not have a job if that's what it comes down to. This is a chance to make history."

Once a Republican stronghold, Lima could potentially swing Democratic in the general election this time around, locals said; the town voted to elect Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland in 2006. Mathews believes that Obama can win the four delegates available in surrounding Allen County only if a higher percentage of minorities show up to vote. In recent elections, minorities have made up as little as 12 percent of the local electorate.

"There's this attitude that they can't change anything, so why show up?" said Gary Frueh, chairman of the Allen County Democrats. "But they can change a lot."

Determined to turn his neighbors into Obama supporters, Mathews wore a suit and traveled around South Union last week, meeting with pastors and community activists. Then, a few hours before he changed into his work clothes, he looked at vacant buildings downtown to select a location for the Obama office. With about five other Obama backers -- many of them white -- he toured a building in the center of the town square with plenty of street parking and lots of foot traffic out front. It was a prime location, and Mathews wondered if Obama's campaign would pay for it.

"If they don't, I'll just raise the money," he said. "Or I'll pay for it myself. The bottom line is we need that place. We've got to be in people's faces downtown."

Democrats First

Huenke avoids going downtown whenever possible. He prefers to spend most nights alone in his house with his 17-year-old dog, scanning Web sites on his computer for political gossip.

Longing for company one night last week, Huenke drove 20 minutes across town to visit Carolyn Pennington, a widowed Democrat whom Huenke considers a "second mother." They sat at her kitchen table, where they had met many times during the past six months to discuss retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark as a potential vice president, Clinton's campaign tactics and the building momentum behind Lima's Democratic Party. Pennington sat under a window and wore a sweater knitted in the colors of the American flag. She lifted her glasses to rub her eyes.

Pennington told Huenke that she had just returned from the grocery store, where she overheard a young woman gushing about Obama. In the checkout line, Pennington confronted the woman. "Do you know his middle name?" she asked. "It's Hussein. Hussein."

Now, recounting the exchange, Pennington sighed. "It bothers me that these Obama people don't even know anything about him," she said. "They just don't know.

"I mean, don't get me wrong. He's all right. If he gets the nomination, well, we're going to have to vote for him and get behind him because we're Democrats above anything else. But I just don't like the preaching that he's doing. He sounds like an old Bible-thumper to me. I like being talked to. I don't like being yelled at."

Huenke nodded.

"I know what you mean," he said. "If Obama wins, I'll be campaigning for him tomorrow. We'll take the change and try to make the best out of it. There's never really any other choice."