Campaign Remote : Reflections of Voters on Presidency

Warren Hopper, a bearded, broad-shouldered, 34-year-old lineman for Duke Power Co., leaned back in the living-room recliner in his modest house in this small-town corner of North Carolina, bouncing his year-old son on his knee.

“Ever since I was a kid I wanted to live in that house up on the hill,” Hopper said, gesturing in the general direction of a solidly built field-stone house not far away. “I used to go by it every day on the way to school. I really want it, and now I think I’m going to be able to get it.”

Brighter Prospects

With large fingers tickling tiny ribs, Hopper coaxed a gale of giggles from his little boy as he contemplated his brightening prospects in a part of America where a cup of coffee still costs a nickel and there are 108 churches, no bars and little crime.

It is a scene far removed from the rhetorical din and bombast of the campaigns being waged in both major political parties over the 1988 presidential election, but Hopper and many of his neighbors, almost unawares, are on their way to playing a pivotal role in that contest.

In towns and cities all across the land, Hopper and others like him are the “swing voters”--the Democrats, Republicans and independents whose shifting allegiances often tip the balance in national elections. This time, they are likely to determine not just who the next President of the United States will be, but how effectively he can lead the nation at a critical juncture in its history.

And today the readings from Rutherford County, though early, unfocused and tentative, seem troubling.

For one thing, the campaign, for all its furor, remains remote to people here, even though North Carolina and most other Southern states will begin holding presidential primaries and caucuses as early as this week--on Super Tuesday.

Moreover, from their early impressions, residents here have experienced fleeting moments of apprehension that the multitude of candidates do not care about the things they care about.

Perhaps most disturbing of all, when friends and neighbors here sit down to talk about what should be done to cope with the nation’s manifold problems, the voters talk of action considerably tougher and more concrete than most of the candidates have dared suggest thus far.

To illustrate the distant nature of the campaign, for example, during a recent conversation with more than half a dozen local residents, almost half did not realize Super Tuesday was at hand; they had assumed it would take place next May, when the local Democrats and Republicans hold their primary to choose candidates to run for county offices.

Indeed, even though this conversation took place the day after the much-ballyhooed Iowa caucuses, that first-in-the-nation step down the road to choosing the next President had made a similarly faint impression here:

“I accidentally saw it when I was rewinding my soap opera” on the videotape recorder, said Betty Hodge, laughing. Hodge, an attractive woman with short dark hair and a quick smile, is the wife of a schoolteacher and mother of two girls.

‘Stop Bickering’

When it comes to the candidates’ messages, another resident put the common feeling here in blunt terms: The candidates, he said, should “stop bickering among themselves and tell us what they would do.”

“I don’t know what any of them are going to do,” agreed Rudolph Parton, the balding, stocky owner of a company that makes wood parts for the furniture industry. “I’m way down here and they’re way off up there, and all I know is what they say on TV or in the papers, but then, in practice, what are they going to do when they get in?

“It’s a shot in the dark.”

In Rutherford County, the blacktop roads wind through pine woods and fallow fields, past clusters of houses that once were farm villages and now provide comfortable, neighborly homes for workers in the small factories and rejuvenated textile mills that nestle among the hills.

Five-cent coffee makes Smith’s Drug Store in the county seat of Rutherfordton a central meeting place for visiting and exchanging gossip. A block up Main Street stand the courthouse and the customary statue of a Confederate soldier.

It is the kind of place where more than 1,200 people--a third of the population of Rutherfordton--show up every Tuesday night all winter long for the high school basketball games.

Rutherford County also has a recent history of siding with winners. It went for Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984. Then, in 1986, it turned Democratic again and helped Terry Sanford claim a Republican seat in the Senate. “I always vote for the man; we’re not big on political parties down here,” more than one resident put it.

As the 1988 presidential campaign develops, The Times will look at a variety of places like Rutherford County. It will seek to hold up a mirror to America, not so much to spot the eventual winner as to explore the all-important question of whether two seemingly interminable years of presidential politics will finally produce a government that reflects the people’s views and concerns.

Will the campaign end with a new President who is able to lead from strength? Or will it end instead with a politician who becomes President but cannot provide decisive leadership because his campaign failed to build public support for particular programs and proposals?

The danger, as Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) said last week, is that the campaign will produce a winner who offers “painless panaceas while risking failure in assuming office with no clear mandate for governing. . . . The real question of the 1988 election is not who wins, but whether the winner can effectively govern America.”

Recent conversations with likely voters here suggest that Nunn’s apprehension may be well founded.

At Quincy’s Steak House one recent night, taxes and what the next President should do about them was a lively topic of conversation when seven friends gathered to dine on sirloin, shrimp and chicken. Strikingly, at a time when leading candidates in both major parties are struggling to outdo each other in abhorring higher taxes, these voters were ready to shoulder a burden they consider necessary for the country and their own future welfare.

“We’ve got to balance the budget,” said one of the two Republicans at the table, Rudolph Parton, the operator of the wood parts company. “I think if we have to raise taxes, whatever it takes, do it.”

“I do too,” said Sue Womick, a supervisor at a local dressmaking plant and a lifelong Democrat. “I think there should be a way where everybody pays their fair share of taxes. I mean, I would be willing to pay, say, 10% across the board, a flat rate.”

The idea met with nearly unanimous nods around the table.

“If you could get everybody to pay it,” added Betty Hodge, another supervisor at the dress plant and the other Republican at the table.

“Just have a flat rate of 15%,” said Robert Womick, Sue’s husband and a retired textile company employee. “If a man makes $100, take his 15%. If a man makes $1 million, take his 15%.”

“And do away with some of these blamed loopholes that some of the rich folks use,” suggested W. A. Mayberry, a husky elementary school principal with a fringe of white hair and the forceful manner of a man who has had to deal with fractious schoolchildren most of his life.

“Yeah,” Parton agreed. “Do away with them.”

Another Important Issue

When conversation turned to the trade deficit, these Rutherford County voters seemed more prepared to take a self-critical look at the problem than some candidates. Democratic hopeful Richard A. Gephardt has put the blame on unfair foreign competitors, for example, but around the table at Quincy’s, the consensus was that the problem’s roots are closer to home:

It began with a question posed by Sue Womick: “Why are Americans still buying so many foreign cars when American cars are cheaper?”

Three men offered quick answers.

“They are better cars,” Parton said.

“They last longer,” agreed Herman Hensley, a foreman at Parton’s plant. “You can’t wear a Honda out. Or a Nissan.”

“They give better service,” said Sue’s husband, Robert. “Take my little old Japanese pickup truck. I drove the hell out of it and it never did give me any trouble.”

Then Mayberry posed another question: “Say they stop importing Japanese cars--what’s the first thing American industry will do?”

He quickly gave his own answer: “They’d go up on the price so much that you’d be paying more for a car than you do a house.”

Character Traits

When the talk switched to the traits the seven sought in the next President, Chris Hensley, a factory supervisor and Herman’s wife, hearkened to the character issue: “Honest. If they’re not honest, they’ve had it.”

Betty Hodge concurred, seeming to refer to the controversies and scandals that have swirled around present and former Washington officials with close ties to Reagan: “Make sure that those around you are honest and not protecting you from something they are doing.”

“He’s got to be able to get along with Congress,” said Robert Womick. “A President really don’t have that much say. If he don’t get along with Congress, he’s had it.”

Touching on an issue so close to home for most ordinary people that it has powerful emotional as well as political significance, most of those at the table agreed that Congress should pass legislation to protect against catastrophic medical expenses.

Parton told of his hospitalization after he suffered a heart attack several years ago: “I was in there 16 days and the bill was something like $40,000, and they didn’t even operate on me.”

“Especially for old people,” Mayberry added, “it’s a shame and a disgrace.”

Working Women

From medical care for the elderly the talk turned to day care for the children of working women, another subject candidates have touched on but not emphasized.

“Good child care is hard to find,” said Betty Hodge.

Sue Womick, who has a 10-year-old daughter, spoke of the quandary of many working mothers: “I’ve grown accustomed to the life style I lead, which is not great, but which I want to keep. In order to afford this life style I have to work. Therefore, I’m not home with my child when maybe I need to be. I can do with less--I’ve done with less--but I’m not willing to make that sacrifice to be there at home when my child gets home.”

Then, as talk turned to the difficulty of controlling children nowadays, she looked at her husband and said with a mischievous laugh: “You could chain their car to a tree.”

“I did that once,” Robert Womick said, smiling. He also has two children from a previous marriage. “I bought a car for one of my older ones and told him, ‘If you don’t do right, I’ll chain it to a tree.’ Well, him and some buddies went out and got in some trouble, so I chained the car to a pine tree with a log chain. . . . After a while, he decided he would straighten up.”

Several around the table voiced wariness about whether they could believe the next President would keep his campaign promises once in office.

“It’s a gamble,” said Herman Hensley.

“It always is,” said Betty Hodge.

Simpson B. Tanner III is a Rutherford County resident who lives and works in the midst of one of the country’s most pressing problems, the challenge of meeting competition from foreign manufacturers. And, like others here, his views are only imperfectly reflected in the presidential debate.

Tanner is chairman of Tanner Cos., one of the county’s largest employers, with 700 workers annually producing about $40-million worth of upscale women’s clothing. With a county unemployment rate of less than 4%, “We have a labor shortage in these parts,” he said. “We’re running full out, and we sometimes have trouble finding good people to work.”

The tall, courtly, 60-year-old Tanner is well known in the region. Everyone calls him by his middle name, Bobo--the name of a Civil War hero that has been passed down in the family.

But there is nothing antebellum about Tanner as a businessman.

About 90% of Tanner’s employees are women. They are paid by “piecework”; few looked up at a recent visitor. Their hands were a blur as they fed cloth beneath a needle. Nearby, a man guided a hand-held electric knife around a pattern atop a stack of cloth 3 inches thick.

Threat to Jobs

Soon, Tanner said, he will install a computerized cutting machine. He winces at the cost--about $250,000--but figures it will eliminate 2 1/2 jobs and thus pay for itself in 10 years. “We have to automate where we can if we’re going to stay competitive,” he said. “This is a very competitive business.”

Tanner is not panicked over foreign competition, though. Although some of his rivals “produce everything offshore” and he himself once contracted with companies in Taiwan to produce dresses, he said overseas production “is fraught with problems.”

“You may save 30% to 40% on labor, but by the time you add on freight and the risk factor, plus the fact that you have such long lead times and you can’t get reorders filled quickly, it’s just not worth it.”

That view puts Tanner at the cutting edge of expert opinion on the problem as U.S. manufacturers stage a surprise comeback against foreign competition these days, in part by adopting the kind of aggressive and flexible tactics that Tanner uses.

Tactics Planned

They also put him ahead of most of today’s presidential candidates in terms of specific, carefully worked out tactics for meeting cutthroat global competition.

On the subject of problems in Washington, Tanner agreed with the group at Quincy’s: “We’ve just got to face up to the deficit and deficit spending. . . . We’ve been taken down the road. It’s dishonest. It’s a boondoggle. Everybody’s been living in a fool’s paradise.”

Besides budget cuts, Tanner said higher taxes probably will be required--a position no presidential candidate of either party has yet dared to embrace. “But it can’t be just soak the rich, soak the businesses,” he warned. “That’s not going to work.”

On a brisk evening in February, the hubbub of the presidential campaign seemed a world away from Warren Hopper’s living room, but as he spoke of his dream house on the hill, it became clear how his hopes were intertwined with the economic policies of the next President.

“It needs some work now, but I can fix it up just like I did this house,” he said, surveying his redecorated living room and, through an open door, the renovated kitchen with its new cabinets and appliances.

The house on the hill, with 1,600 square feet of living space, is on the market for $48,000. Hopper figured he could sell his present house, with its new Colonial blue siding, wide front porch and renovated interior, for between $30,000 and $40,000. And he was confident that he would qualify for a new mortgage at current rates.

“I know when I borrowed some money when Peanut Carter was in, it was 15% or 17%. I knew right then he wasn’t my man, and I had voted for him in ’76. Now, for this house I want, I could get it for 10%,” he said.

For that Hopper gives thanks, in no small part, to what he considers the achievements of Ronald Reagan--”ol’ P-Paw,” he calls the President, using a child’s affectionate diminutive for grandfather. “Yes sir, he’s my man. I’m in better shape than I’ve ever been.”

‘Doing Good’ Now

“Isn’t that right, Hard Head?” he asked his son, Scott, who was squealing with delight as his father hoisted him to arm’s length, then suddenly lowered him to nuzzle the child’s face with his beard. “Your daddy and mommy are doing good, aren’t they?”

“We are doing better than we ever have,” agreed 31-year-old Martha Hopper, sitting on the sofa with coffee cup in hand as she watched protectively over their 4-year-old daughter, Lee, who was sprawled on the floor with tablet and crayons, practicing writing her name.

“We sure are.”

Then, to Lee: “That’s good, Honey, but you’re going the wrong way with your letters. You’ve got them backwards. Try it again.”

The scene was a pointed reminder that, as today’s presidential candidates fence with one another about cosmic issues, all politics has a way of becoming local politics.

And for people like the Hoppers, local politics--perhaps most especially when it comes to choosing the President of the United States--is the politics of private lives, of house and home, of parents and children.

Gaylord Shaw was on assignment recently in North Carolina.