News

AREA RESIDENTS REFLECT ON TWO-THIRDS OF DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL RACE

By AmyJo Brown/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF
Tuesday, January 22, 2008 10:10 AM CST

“Two Clintons are going to be running the town again.”

So declared 70-year-old Pine Bluff resident Robert Thompson as he spent Monday afternoon at the Coretta Scott King Center in the park named after Martin Luther King Jr.

“They won’t let her be no president,” said his 78-year-old friend sitting across the table, Ms. Rice. “They’re not ready for a woman president.”

Thompson countered: “They’re not going to elect any black man president of the United States of America. They’re just not going to do it.”

On a day honoring a historic man, one who fought to break barriers, Democrats at the senior center and at a Democratic debate party downtown discussed the presidential choices they have in front of them: Focusing on the two vying to become the first to do what none of their gender or race has done before.

“I think Hillary, she’s able to hold her own. She has a sense of direction. I’m so proud of her,” said retired nurse Classie Green, one of about a dozen people who attended the party at a downtown bar for the South Carolina Democratic Debate.

She said she preferred Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton over Sen. Barack Obama because she valued Clinton’s experience. She said Obama’s credentials and the issue of race couldn’t compare to what she knows and loves about Clinton.

“A lot of the black men are more about that,” Green said. “To me, I look at her as a woman, and I say there has never been a woman president all these years.”

Meta Glass, a Pine Bluff resident who also attended the debate, expressed a similar sentiment.

“I’m voting for Hillary all the way,” Glass said. “It’s not about race with me.”

At the senior center, Thompson said he thought that Obama’s campaign was opening more doors for blacks. But he said he didn’t think the country was ready. “It’s deeper than racism,” he said. “I think it’s embedded in the political arena. ... I truly in my heart think that Hillary has a greater chance than Barack Obama, she has a greater chance to become president.”

At another table, Odessia Luster said it helps that she has known Clinton “quite a long time.”

“Mrs. Clinton, she’s the apple of our eye,” Luster said. “She’s going to be just the thing we need.”

And Obama?

“I love him, too,” she said.

Print this story   |   Email this story