YSU Elex project | Strong sentiments in Lorain

Editor’s note: Youngstown State University journalism students in an advanced news reporting class traveled across the state in October to talk with people about the election. Their mission was to find out what issues matter and why. The work is published on vindy.com as part of partnership between the school and the newspaper.

By Jumal Brown

Youngstown State University

ELYRIA – The Rev. Addie L. Nolen knows what pollsters, pundits and politicians do not: A higher power has already decided who will lead the free world.

“God already knows who is going to be the next president,” said Nolen, pastor and founder of Church of the Rock Ministries, while spending a September afternoon just outside of Ely Park.

While Nolen said the election is predetermined, others in this Lorain County city have already staked out their support for the presidential candidates, Sens. Barack Obama or John McCain.

Even Nolen’s husband, Paul, who works with heating and cooling technology, is ready to take sides.

“Simply, Obama is for the family,” he said.

“Our economy needs to improve and we’ve lost steel mills and General Motors around here,” said Paul Nolen. “But the president can’t do no more than what the senate lets him, they veto or pass or whatever.”

The Nolens, like many others in this industrial Cleveland suburb, are Democrats.

In the last two presidential elections, the Democrats took the county. This sets Lorain apart from Ohio’s recent Republican voting history.

Ohio is widely considered a must-win state for a Republican head of state, and McCain will have to fight hard for this blue county.

Paul Nolen didn’t think McCain would have a chance because of the fact that vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin has an underage pregnant daughter. He said she did not set a good example.

McCain, he said, “tried to be slick, because he went and got a woman for vice president, he thought he could sneak in and do it because Obama didn’t put in Hillary.“

Addie Nolen attempted to hush her animated husband.

“We all have families with people that have babies.” Addie Nolen said. “Her personal life should be off-limits.”

Both looked at each other in agreement, smiled and said, ”All we can do is leave it in God’s hands at the end of the day.”

Just inside Elyria’s Ely Park, homemaker Jenny Juillerat, a mother of five children, didn’t think that it would matter who became president.

”I don’t vote, I don’t feel it does matter, it’s just the way that I feel.”

Only a few feet away, Issac Long, who was sitting on a bench, job hunting in the classified section of a newspaper, explained that he was incarcerated for a misdemeanor during the primaries, but felt strongly about Obama.

“I’m going to vote for him because he’s a good example for black men,” Long said, “but either way you’ll get a minority in the White House.”

“I don’t have any bad feelings toward either man,” said Addie Nolen.

In 2000, Lorain supported Al Gore with 59,809 votes compared to 47,957 for Bush. In the 2004 election, Bush received 59,751 votes and John Kerry received 76,512.