Ohio voters express fear, hope
They talk about what the future holds for state
Jennifer Mancuso, a single mother of four in Fairlawn, was so sick in July she couldn’t get out of bed.
She called her cousin — Tony Mancuso, who lives on the other side of Akron in the Ellet neighborhood — for help.
Tony drove her to a hospital and stayed through a CAT scan and various tests that day that ultimately revealed Jennifer was seriously ill with COVID-19.
Jennifer, 40, ended up hospitalized for a week. Tony, 51, exposed to the disease, went home and self-isolated for 10 days.
Last week, Jennifer voted for Joe Biden and Tony voted for Donald Trump.
The cousins don’t agree on much politically, just like many Biden and Trump voters across Ohio.
But they stay close.
“At the end of the day, we’re still family, we’re still blood and we’ll do anything for each other,” Tony said. “We can only do what we can do and put our vote in. It’s up to our government to find out who won. That doesn’t have anything to do with her and I.”
The Mancuso cousins and more than a dozen other voters across Northern and Central Ohio talked to USA TODAY Ohio Network reporters last week about their hopes and worries for the future.
Reporters aimed to interview an equal number of Biden and Trump voters and asked them all the same questions about both Biden and Trump, no matter who got their vote.
Here’s what some voters who live in cities and towns between Sandusky and Columbus had to say.
Biden voter’s to-do list long
Al Edmondson, 52, owns a barber shop in the Mt. Vernon neighborhood in Columbus and voted for Biden.
Edmondson has a long list of priorities for Biden, if he does win.
He wants Biden to focus on job growth and getting a coronavirus vaccine.
“Police reform is something we would like to see across the country. That does not mean defund the police. We need the police. We need to have some changes in the system to where Black and brown people are not getting shot, whatever that looks like,” he said.
That wouldn’t happen if Trump were to serve a second term, he said.
He feared there would be higher incarceration of Black men and said health care could suffer.
“I also think that people are going to lose their jobs, their houses, and I just think that we may go bankrupt as a country,” he said.
A Biden win won’t change things overnight.
“I just hope that people will come back together,” Edmondson said. “Don’t let bitterness continue to keep you from working with your fellow Americans.”
— Beth Burger, The Columbus Dispatch
Fears Harris would become president
Rhonda Blue, a 56-year-old interior designer from Upper Arlington, has a Trump sign in her front yard near Fishinger Road.
She was worried about a Biden win “I hope that he’s mentally capable of being the president,” Blue said, noting that she would not want to see Kamala Harris step into the role as president if Biden is unable to complete a term.
Blue also fears Biden would institute a pandemic shut down, like Ohio Gov. Mike Dewine did this spring to stop the spread of COVID-19.
“I worry about Biden locking me down and not being able to go to work,” Blue said.
When asked about a political divide throughout the country, she said, “It seems that our country is 50-50. Period. We see things differently.”
— Beth Burger, The Columbus Dispatch
Washington D.C. vs. Main Street
Brian Boyer, 33, of Wooster is less concerned about the divide between liberals and conservatives and more concerned about the divide between Washington D.C. and Main Street.
Donald Trump revealed that.
“Whether you like Trump or not, he is not your typical politician and I think that has really highlighted issues of how Washington works versus how the rest of the country works,” said Boyer, the director of platform and reader experience at Kitces.com, a company that provides continuing education to financial advisors.
Boyer has appreciated Trump’s work to reduce the number of regulations “to simplify things,” although the regulations that Boyer would most like to see simplified is the tax policy, “which are so complicated that you need an advanced degree to even practice it.”
A father of two young daughters, his biggest worry for the future is making sure his girls have access to the same or better opportunities than he did. He doesn’t want the increasing cost of college to impact their future and his if he’s forced to choose between saving for his retirement or funding their education.
— Emily Morgan, The Daily Record
Worse before getting better?
Siavash Samei, 33, of Wooster didn’t expect a blowout win for Joe Biden, but he didn’t expect the race to be so close either.
He’s troubled that after four years of “death, despair, and destruction” that people would say, “I want four more years of that.”
Samei, a professor of archaeology and anthropology at the College of Wooster, believes there is a “completely broken social contract” in the U.S. Issues that seemed settled, such as gay marriage and racism, are now back up for debate.
“Never mind trying to acknowledge that racism is real and try to fix it. We now have to debate if we’re still racist or not,” he said. “Some of the most fundamental things that we had moved on from are still be dragged back in and apparently, they’re unresolved.”
Samei believes things will get better in America, but whether that happens peacefully or with violence is unknown. As an anthropologist, he has an appreciation of “deep time,” and history indicates “it will unfortunately probably be more violent.”
“Of course it will get better,” Samei said, “But I think it will get worse before it gets better.”
— Emily Morgan, The Daily Record Trump voter says fix health care Tim Dunbar, 62, of Nelson Township, wanted Trump to be reelected because he’s happy with the status quo.
In a second term, Dunbar hoped Trump fixes the nation’s health care system, which he said won’t be simple.
“We need to vote with our wallets there,” he said. “But I don’t want government coming in and saying what you can’t do. I don’t want them coming and telling me how to run by business, either. I don’t know how to fix this; I don’t want government involved, but something’s got to happen.”
His gripe with healthcare goes deeper than the Affordable Care Act. When he needed shoulder surgery, he said he faced hospital bills that seemed unreasonable.
At one point, he said there was a $12,000 charge for “half an hour in a hallway.”
“I didn’t even get a room,” he said. Although his shoulder’s been fixed and insurance ultimately picked up a lot of the cost, he said the system doesn’t seem to work.
Dunbar worried that a Biden win could mark the beginning of the country moving hard to the left.
“It feels like they’re working toward pretty much how China does things,” he said. “You’re not allowed to own anything. The Community Party is still alive and well in the United States.”
It just may not go by that name, he added.
— Bob Gaetjens, Record-courier
Retired steelworker votes for Biden
Billy Newell, a retired steelworker from Fremont near Lake Erie, was hopeful last week that Biden, whom he voted for, was on his way to the presidency and that he could unite the country again.
Newell, 68, said he was encouraged by the large voter turnout in Sandusky County that topped 73.63%, up nearly 3% from the 2016 president election.
“It shows that we’re thinking about what’s ahead,” Newell said.
Heading into the election, Newell said he was concerned about Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, calling it “stressful” to people. If Biden is president, he believes people can relax.
Because he has children and great grandchildren, Newell said he hopes to see the country come together and stop being so divided.
“I can’t see why anyone would want to keep another person down,” Newell said. “A man works, he can have some of the things he wants in life. I’ve never seen so many people willing to hurt themselves to keep another one down.”
— By Craig Shoup, Fremont NewsMessenger
Bucyrus woman: Trump helped opioid crisis
Santana Stamper worries Americans have lost sight of what’s important.
The 31-year-old Bucyrus woman is program manager for Operation HOPE, a police-assisted addiction recovery initiative that helps people struggling with addiction and drug abuse connect with resources in the community.
She said last week she’s been “stressed” while waiting to learn who won the presidential election.
“Of course we want a good leader in office, and we need that,” she said. “But at the same time, there’s been a lot of lost sight of reality, and the more important things in life. It’s stressful just
because there’s so much going on around the country, and people turning on each other, and all over an election.”
Like the majority of Crawford County residents, Stamper’s a Republican who voted for Trump.
She said she likes the way Trump does things, and his support for the battle against the opiates.
She credits him for additional federal funding that has “allowed my employees to have jobs, paid jobs, through our program.”
“He really backs people getting help, so that’s another big factor as far as my decision,” she said.
— Gere Goble, Bucyrus TelegraphForum
Veteran wants change
In Tuscarawas County, Jenna Grimes said she’s not going to feel certain about who is the next president until the Electoral College votes Dec. 14.
Grimes, 29, is an electrician and U.S. Army veteran who was deployed to combat in both Afghanistan and Kuwait.
“I would say that I’m left-leaning, but I own firearms. I think states’ rights are important,” she said.
Grimes, of Strasburg, voted for Biden.
She has been an active in Citizens for Racial Justice and Reform, a group who came together in June to create positive change surrounding racial injustice and police reform in the community.
But she was not expecting change whether Biden or Trump won.
“I feel like a lot of people voted in this election to maybe ‘ get things back to normal,’ rather than voting to bring about any needed change. I think either way, with either candidate, this will just be a pause button maybe for the next four years,” she said.
Grimes said she would like more compassion and less money in politics.
“We need more empathy and less polarizing politics,” she said. “I think that our partisan political polarization is our greatest obstacle, as a country, to overcome, when people are so fixed towards one party or another that it doesn’t allow them to see other people’s pain, other people’s hurt, or if their polarization
even pushes them to only consume media that allows them to exist in an echo chamber.”
— Nancy Molnar, The Times-reporter
Reagan Democrat pulls for Biden
Marlene Bolea of Jackson Township describes herself as a “discerning Democrat.”
Bolea, 67, a retired Jackson Local Schools teacher, is a lifelong registered Democrat who doesn’t always vote the party line. She had voted for Ronald Reagan in 1984 and George H.W. Bush in 1988. But on Tuesday, she energetically backed Biden.
“I would have rather voted for a ham sandwich than (Donald Trump),” said Bolea, describing Trump as inconsiderate, unintelligent and unpleasant.
Trump’s presidency, she said, has left the country divided and on the wrong track.
“Environmental issues are being destroyed, and climate change ignored,” she said.
Whether Biden or Trump were to win, Bolea said she was worried about health care and other issues that impact the health and well-being of Americans.
“It’s terrible we have a country that’s such a power in the world, but we can’t take care of all our people,” she said.
— Steven M. Grazier, The Independent
First-time voter backs Trump
University of Akron junior Brock Hawkins last week proudly cast his first-ever presidential ballot for Trump.
“If you don’t vote, who you want to win might not,” he said just moments after casting his first-time ballot at the Lake Cable voting center.
Hawkins, 21, is a 2018 graduate of Jackson High School and a registered Republican, like his family.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Hawkins said the U.S. seemed to be on the right track with a robust economy.
“The whole virus-thing kind of put a stop to it,” he said.
Hawkins is a marketing management major at UA, and he works part time as a car care specialist at Dad’s Car Care Center in Jackson.
Looking forward, Hawkins said he’s not extremely focused on the job market or worrying about the economy because he’s still more than a year from graduation.
— Steven M. Grazier, The Independent
Republican backs Biden
Cara Fitzgerald, a 46-year-old regis
tered Republican in Richland County’s Monroe Township, never much liked Trump.
Yet she couldn’t bring herself to vote in 2016 for his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, and instead voted for Libertarian Gary Johnson.
This year, Fitzgerald voted for Biden, saying that Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic has been “atrocious,” and that his personality elicits extreme reactions, which in turn furthers the country’s political divide.
“As a woman, I don’t know many women who are attracted to that personality,” said Fitzgerald, a mother of 8 and former political journalist and editor. “Domineering, things like that. But, I do know women who voted for him because they consider him the lesser of two evils.”
Fitzgerald said Trump’s supporters didn’t think he had a chance of losing.
“They thought it would be a landslide (for Trump),” she said.
If Biden, who was on the verge of winning, is the next president, it will be an adjustment for many, she said.
“It’s like when the Buckeyes lose. Or when Michigan lost to Appalachian State,” she said. “It took a long time to get past the fact that their heroes let them down.”
— Monroe Trombly, Mansfield News Journal