Character Does Count, Say Voters in Central Valley

Frank Krum, a member of the marching band festival committee here, vows never again to cast a ballot for the county supervisor who ran for reelection by taking credit for measures he had voted against. Lacks integrity, sniffs Krum, 52.

Dottie Jett, a real estate agent and retired banker, has turned her back on the local politician who shook hands with all the male voters while campaigning for office--but ignored the women.

“That does not show good character,” explains an indignant Jett, 56. “Character is respect for all sexes, races and ages.”

Character--and the lack thereof--is on the agenda under the flapping flag at Archie’s Place, where the self-proclaimed Sidewalk Committee meets six days a week to sip and puff, cuss and discuss. But here in the raisin capital of the world, they’re not just talking about Peyton Place on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Krum, Jett and their compatriots in caffeine are struggling to define just what character means in public and private life alike and to quantify how it will figure in the decisions they make on election day. For figure it will, one way or another.

In dozens of interviews conducted in small towns and mid-sized cities along California 99--this state’s literal and figurative backbone--voters like those on the Sidewalk Committee said character does count when they cast their ballots, for some now more than ever.

Yes, many voters say it is the issues like education and abortion, the death penalty and gun control that draw citizens into the voting booth and toward certain candidates in the first place, as evidenced in the latest Times poll and other recent electoral temperature taking.

But many also say the character of the candidates will guide their decision-making when they stand, ballot in hand, on Nov. 3. President Clinton’s affair with intern Monica S. Lewinsky--followed by a small parade of other politicians’ recently admitted infidelities--has made certain of that.

Some voters, soured by a process that they say can rub the values right out of any politician, have given up and turned away. But most along this agricultural artery--where the billboards insist on everything from the need to impeach the president and the dangers of abortion to the nutritional value of black-eyed peas--say they are searching for candidates with belief systems that match their own. Some are looking for any beliefs at all out there on the hustings.

Referendums on Morality

In California, Republicans Dan Lungren and Matt Fong are trying to turn their races into referendums on morality. Gubernatorial candidate Lungren last week called for Clinton’s resignation and is airing an ad that declares: “Character is doing what’s right when no one’s looking.” Fong has taken his opponent, Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, to task for not berating Clinton sooner than she did.

“I used to think, well, if their record was good, what do you care what they do in their personal life,” said Susan Paulson, a 36-year-old mother of toddler twins, as she sat in the hot sun waiting to be called for jury duty at the Stanislaus County courthouse. “Now I think maybe it’s more important than I thought it was.”

But how voters will translate the issue of character into electoral action is a complicated calculation. California voters are far from transparent, and the moral distinctions they make are informed by everything from Scripture to their own sometimes hard-knock lives.

Even here in the pivotal Central Valley--a bastion of moderate conservatism--many voters make subtle and sophisticated distinctions about public and private behavior, about what is right, what is wrong and what can be tolerated.

There are the woefully uninformed, of course. “I usually just vote for president,” said Wanda, a Modesto hot dog vendor, but this time around “I’ll probably vote for governor. Who’s the guy with the dark hair?”

But for every Wanda, there is a Theresa Grieshaber, 49, a reference librarian who likens character to climate--”your typical behavior over a long period of time”--and argues that it can be influenced by everything from biology and upbringing to circumstance.

In addition, she insists, “it can change over time. If you doubt that, look at the life of George Wallace,” Alabama’s segregationist governor who eventually sought to refashion himself as a racial healer.

Grieshaber believes that “in terms of professional morality, in a politician it is immoral to have a disregard for the needs of the poor. . . . I look for someone who is reasonably honest and has a social conscience. To me that is character in a politician. I do not expect perfection.”

The basics of good character are deceptively simple to most voters: Honesty. Trustworthiness. Follow-through. Keeping promises. Not promising what you can’t deliver. Some toss in the squishy attribute “family values.”

Others include respect for all. One paraphrases Jesuit theologian John Courtney Murray, a principal author of the second Vatican Council’s “Declaration on Religious Liberty,” who believed that character “is not treating another person as an object.”

Finding Character Amid the Rhetoric

Modesto warehouseman Terry Curtis, 34, is blunt in his demands for a moral public officer: “I would like to know that the guy I’m voting for is trustworthy and not a liar. I don’t want him to say one thing and then, when my back is turned, do another.”

Curtis and Ginger Fridlund, a 30-year-old Tupperware saleswoman, come by their views on character and morality in similar fashion. Jesus Christ, they say, is their model for an exemplary life. A model they personally strive to follow to the best of their ability. A model they feel more officeholders should emulate.

Fridlund paraphrases the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Galatians, when she talks about character. “It is the fruits of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control,” she says, watching backpack-toting children stream into tiny Kingsburg’s Washington Elementary School. “These are the things we teach our children too.

“What a person believes and is affects how they govern,” says this former teacher who finds it difficult to identify a political role model to hold up for her offspring. “Someone who puts these things into practice on a daily basis will govern better. Does that make sense?”

Cathy Wakefield of Livingston cites the people who raised her when looking for inspiration on the subject of character. Wakefield, 30, was adopted. A biological family member once told her that had abortion been legal in the late 1960s, “I wouldn’t be here,” she said. Today she is a social worker helping to guide troubled foster children.

“My views come from my traditional family upbringing,” Wakefield said, as she waited for her son and daughter to finish their karate class. “The work ethic is a big deal. The church, too, was a big influence on right and wrong and values and standards.”

But the political process itself is an impediment, voters said. Many find it difficult to wend their way through political advertising and campaign rhetoric in search of candidate character. Others think politics eventually taints the men and women who enter it.

“I hate to say it, when you have someone in politics a long time, people think you have to be wary,” says Wakefield. “I know wheeling and dealing is a part of it.”

Character and Public Education

Modesto High School teacher Ed Gonzalves, 63, is more cynical.

“If you use character as a guideline, you’re not going to be left with too many people to choose from,” says Gonzalves, a U.S. history teacher who likes Fong for Senate but will vote for Boxer because of her stand on education. “You’ve got to put character aside and look at the issues.”

An advocate for public schools, he admits to single-issue voting. But the issue is education, not character. Anyone who votes for Proposition 8--the measure that calls for permanent class-size reduction and parent councils to oversee schools--”doesn’t give a damn about public schools,” he says.

For Gonzalves’ colleague Loren Nyman, 56, that’s a real struggle. Character and public education are duking it out in the heart of this math and agriculture teacher, who has no idea yet which will win on election day.

Nyman says he knows deep down that Democrat Gray Davis is the better candidate for governor when it comes to California’s schools. Unlike Lungren, Davis opposes school vouchers, which would allow parents to send their children to private schools using public money.

But Nyman is a conservative Republican, and there’s the rub. “I like Lungren better on a character basis,” Nyman says. “He’s shown honesty, stood up for his policies, hasn’t really changed. I think Gray Davis has gone with the winds of whatever looks electable.”

As a public school teacher, “ I might be a lot better off with Gray Davis personally,” he says. “But my beliefs? I’m more aligned with Dan Lungren. . . . It makes it a difficult choice for me.”