Ohio voters state their case

Patricia Lyons stood in wind-whipped drizzle outside a westside neighborhood polling site Tuesday evening and talked about her choice for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“She can swim with the sharks,” said Lyons, 59, a customer service representative for a local utility. “Obama . . . he is all rhetoric. Granted, it’s lovely rhetoric, but I don’t believe he has what it takes.”

Yet several hours earlier on the other side of town, Kevin Frazier zeroed in on that same “lovely rhetoric” as key to his vote for Barack Obama.

“Obama is a uniter,” said Frazier, 45, a nurse technician, as torrential rain beat against the Driving Park Recreation Center polling site. “He’s got that John F. Kennedy feel to him.”

It’s been a little more than two months since the Iowa caucuses launched the balloting for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. But rather than end the argument over who should be the party’s standard-bearer, Tuesday’s Ohio primary in some ways seemed to prolong the Democrats’ struggle over what matters more: change or experience.

And the battle lasted even longer in 15 precincts in Cuyahoga County, home to Cleveland, and farther west in Sandusky County. Polls there were kept open an extra 90 minutes because of ballot shortages, similar to problems that arose in some other primary states. Officials in Jefferson County, in the eastern part of the state, also moved some polling sites to higher ground as creeks rose.

Elsewhere in the Buckeye State, the Democratic divide fell along race and gender lines, at least anecdotally.

Voters in Frazier’s predominantly African American, working-class neighborhood said they backed the Illinois senator.

Women in Lyons’ mostly white, middle-class neighborhood around Westgate Park lined up behind the New York senator.

Virginia Bicknell, 51, a video teacher in a suburban high school, arrived at the Westgate Alternative Elementary School polling site half an hour before it closed.

Her top two choices were former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina and Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Cleveland. Even though they both were still on the ballot, she decided not to waste her vote on canceled candidacies. “I voted for Hillary,” said Bicknell. “I don’t know why she’s taking such a beating, She’s a two-term senator, she’s a lawyer -- not everything she’s done has revolved around her husband. And as a woman . . . I felt compelled.”

Across town, Shonda McFadden cast her vote for Obama, partly because she believes Clinton’s years as first lady meant she already had a turn at the nation’s rudder. “I voted for change, I guess,” said McFadden, 36, who backed President Bush four years ago. “Hillary was in office with her husband, and he did make a difference, but I just think Obama is the better choice.”

--

scott.martelle@latimes.com