North Carolina's New Blues

Gallery

Grappling With Transformation

Voters in North Carolina, long a staunch red state, may be changing course.

» LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY

Not that there aren't fierce opinions among Union County Republicans about what's at stake in this election. Maryan Handy manages the small GOP headquarters in Monroe. "You're looking at the Republican Woman of the Year," she said by way of greeting, alone in the office one late afternoon. "When they leave me here by myself and I get bored, I make my own signs." She pointed to one behind her desk. "I like my dog with the lipstick best of all. I went on the Internet and put in 'pit bull' and that's the first thing that came out" -- a photo of a white pit bull whose lips Handy colored red, a tribute to Sarah Palin.

All of a sudden, she had some customers, coming in for yard signs and McCain-Palin bumper stickers. Process engineer Jeff Roberts and cattle farmer Lonnie Carpenter both were work-dusty and tired but boisterous, Roberts a certified Republican who brought Carpenter with him. He boasted of turning his Democratic buddy to the other side, but it wasn't clear that had taken much of a push.

"I don't think he has the guts to handle the job," said Carpenter. "I think he is a mouth full of 'gimme' and a whole lot of 'much obliged.' He hollers 'changes, changes,' and you never hear what the change is."

Take the war in Iraq, he said. "I think wanting to cut back troops, setting a deadline, that's bullcrap."

Roberts agreed. "War is ugly," he said. "War is dirty. You level the city, they learn. I don't think that country knows what freedom is, so they don't know how to accept freedom. McCain has been there and done that. He knows what it is to be locked up. I think McCain will fight for his people."

And if Barack Obama is indeed elected?

"I'm not going to like it," said Roberts.

"It'll be what we got," said Carpenter. "I just hope and pray that the man has not been planted here by a foreign country. I just hope he is not the kind who flew those planes into those towers. . . . We got rid of one Hussein. We don't need another."

Faith and doubt. Whose will prevail in North Carolina on Nov. 4?

Is it the faith Jeff Roberts holds that McCain knows how to fight? Is it the doubt Lonnie Carpenter has that Obama can protect and represent America?

Is it the faith Monroe Mayor Bobby Kilgore has that Obama's race won't be a barrier in North Carolina?

"If he has done anything across this country," Kilgore said of Obama, "he's helped bring people together." Kilgore had just left a Rotary Club meeting and was sitting on a patio facing a golf course. His is a nonpartisan office, and he wasn't speaking as a declared supporter of any candidate. He was speaking as a representative of Monroe who had faith against doubt.

"I hear no negativism on his race," said Kilgore. "I don't think people care. I think they just want someone to lead us. Lead us into the promised land."

Research director Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.