Obama's Independent-Minded Oregon Supporters

By Alec MacGillis Washington Post
BEND, Ore. -- After all the bowling and the shot-and-a-beer quaffing of the recent Rust Belt primaries, the upcoming Oregon contest is serving as a useful reminder of a fact that's been somewhat overlooked: not every swing voter in America wears a blue collar.

Hillary Clinton's campaign has been arguing for several months that her strength with white working class Democrats would make her better positioned to win key states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan in November. And there is no doubt that Barack Obama has work to do in winning over this group of voters, though his campaign argues that many of them voters will remain in the Democratic fold come November.

But the fixation on Rust Belt Reagan Democrats has given short shrift to another, and by some measures more numerous and pivotal, group of swing voters: middle and upper-middle income independents who jump from one party to another with every cycle. This sprawling, amorphous group of voters has been growing with every election and is seen by the Obama campaign as crucial to his hopes of winning swing states such as Minnesota, New Hampshire, Missouri and Wisconsin, not to mention states that Obama argues he can take from the Republican column, such as Colorado and Virginia.

These independents also exist in large numbers in Oregon, where interviews with voters suggest that Obama's support among them is far stronger than it is with the boilermaker set. In Beaverton, outside Portland, where Obama visited a small software firm, employee Jack Randall, a chemist, said he was an independent who had voted for Republicans in the past -- including George Bush in 2000 -- but that he would vote for Obama this fall.

"He's very personable, intelligent and thoughtful. There was a lot of intensity of data about what he's going to do, it wasn't just the fluff that we've been hearing about," said Randall, 56, whose Republican wife is also backing Obama. For him and his colleagues at the firm, he said, a key issue setting Obama apart from Clinton and presumptive GOP nominee John McCain was their support for a holiday in the federal gasoline tax. "That made many of us laugh," he said. "Anyone who knows arithmetic knows it's not going work. It's clearly pandering."

At a Mexican restaurant in Woodburn, Ore., Obama got into a brief conversation with Marcie Crawford, a 41-year-old social service worker. She later said that she's generally voted Republican but was planning to pick Obama over McCain this fall. "He's believable," she said. "He seems to believe in what I believe in, the need for changing the way things are. He's more forward looking, not backward looking." She felt this way even though, she said, "I understand that some of the things he stands for I'm against."

And among several thousand turning out to see Obama in Albany, Ore., was Tom Ottenheimer, a 44-year-old independent and engineer who he had voted for Republican presidential candidates in the past but was considering Obama over McCain because of the Iraq war. "I don't know why we got into the war," he said. "It's like a fistfight. I wouldn't want to hit you until you had wound up to punch me, right