Voters give many reasons for picking Bush or Kerry

Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2004 | 9:39 a.m.

Nevada's status as a presidential battleground state wasn't lost on Las Vegas Valley voters on Election Day.

Many of those casting ballots Tuesday cited the battle between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. as prompting their visits to the polls.

Bush collected Nevada's five electoral votes by beating Kerry by more than 26,000 votes, winning with 50.1 percent to 47.5 percent.

The top-of-the-ticket contest was on the minds of voters at Mabel Hoggard Elementary School in West Las Vegas, where about 250 people had voted by noon. Election volunteers would clap every time a first-time voter came to the polls.

"I've worked polls for years, and I've never seen so many first-time voters," Joyce Jones, a volunteer for the Democratic Party, said outside of Hoggard.

Jones said she thought the state of the country, the elusiveness of Osama bin Laden, and President Bush's lies were drawing lots of young people to the polls for the first time.

"They are not satisfied with what's going on in our country and they want some truth," Jones said.

Janice Williams, who was campaigning for Clark County Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson-Gates outside of Hoggard, said she believed blacks would come out to vote in large numbers this election because of how close the 2000 election was.

"There was a lot of close states," Williams said. "And if African-Americans would have voted in those elections we could have made a difference."

Republican Party volunteer Luther Welch said he thought Bush would still prevail.

"Most of the people voting for Kerry aren't voting for Kerry," Welch said. "They are voting against Bush. That's not enough to carry the election."

Many voters interviewed by the Sun said they picked Sen. John Kerry over Bush as the better of two undesirable candidates.

"I'm uncomfortable with both, but the very thought of a fresh start led me to Kerry," Democrat Joyce Wallace said outside of Sedway Middle School in North Las Vegas.

"Sometimes the person who starts the fire isn't the best one to put it out," Wallace said, referring to Iraq. Just like a forest fire, Wallace said it would take a major coalition to get Iraq under control.

"I didn't want either one of them, but I had to choose," North Las Vegas resident Gabriela Valadez said outside of Sedway. She said taxes and raising the minimum wage were the most important issues to her.

First-time voter Minette Graymountain, 40, said she went to the polls at Gwendolyn Woolley elementary in North Las Vegas to get Bush out, primarily because of Iraq. She wants the soldiers to be able to come home.

"I regretted not voting last time," Graymountain said. "The damage has been done by Bush, so we need a change, and I think Kerry is going to be the one to change it."

Change was the No. 1 reason voters gave for voting for Kerry.

"We really need to get a new president in the seat," Eleni Davis, 26, said outside of Long Elementary. "Bush ... ugh. The word Bush just comes out nasty."

Some, however, said they believed Bush was the right man.

William Upchurch, pastor of Desert Harvest Mission Church, said he voted for Bush because he was a "morally upright president" who would protect the "moral fabric" of the United States.

Upchurch said there's no "perfect candidate," but that Bush's stance on marriage and on abortion earned his support. He said he encouraged his parishioners to vote, but didn't tell them how they should vote.

"That's an independent decision for individuals to make."

Another first-time voter, Chaunier Butler, 18, said seeing his favorite rapper telling people to vote on MTV convinced him that it was important to go to the polls.

He said the war in Iraq and the chance to raise the minimum wage led him to cast his vote for Kerry at Sedway Middle School.

"I'm a minimum wage worker and sometimes I need more money than I make," Butler, an employee at Wendy's, said.

Nevada's ballot measure to increase the minimum wage drew several other voters out.

"I think they need to make more money," Valerie McLaurin, a voter at Hoggard Elementary, said.

Alyssa Meza, an 18-year-old senior at Silvarado High School, cast her first ballot Tuesday at Thurman White Middle School in Henderson and said she also decided on Election Day. She also declined to say who she voted for, saying "I don't like either one.

"So far, it seems like neither one of them knows what they're talking about," she said.

Political activists tried to capitalize on the interest in the presidential race with last-minute efforts to get every last voter to the polls.

America Coming Together volunteers were out knocking on doors to get people to vote and even driving people to their polling places.

About 40 students from the University of California, Los Angeles, hopped on a bus Monday night to help get out the vote in Nevada, ACT volunteer and UCLA law student Zach Shepard said outside of Marvin Sedway Middle School in North Las Vegas.

"It was so close last time, and it's going to be so close this time," Shepard said. "We realized that no one is paying attention in Nevada, and that the polls were so close, so we thought we could make a difference."