Candidates' Final Round Sways Undecided Voters

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The final presidential debate Wednesday helped swing Phil Pitts back toward his own party while it pushed Doug Brunswick to pick a candidate from a lineup he finds unimpressive.

The two were among the many undecided voters over 50 who may be key to this year’s presidential contest between GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois.

Brunswick, a former Democrat, is an independent voter who lives in the Cleveland exurbs. He was leaning to Obama after the debate.

“I have no place else to go. He’s more for the middle income,” says Brunswick, a retiree who has held various jobs in the construction industry, from union carpenter to business owner. “What choice do I have: none of the above, Ralph Nader or these two yahoos?”

He thought Obama won the debate, with stronger answers on health care, economics, energy and education.

Pitts, a retired teacher from the Pittsburgh suburbs, thought McCain won. The 64-year-old usually votes Republican in presidential races, but this year he’s undecided.

McCain “looked very presidential,” Pitts says. “He was much stronger. He had a great deal of life. Sen. Obama seemed to be on the defensive from the start.”

The debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., kicked off with an issue near to voters like Pitts and Brunswick—the economy.

McCain, Brunswick says, “sounded like [President] Bush, sounded like deregulation and let the economy do its own thing. It doesn’t work.”

But Pitts felt that Obama’s attempts to tie McCain to a vastly unpopular president failed. He loved McCain’s line that if Obama wanted to run against Bush, he should have campaigned four years ago.

“I think the Democrats are going to tax us and spend. The Republicans are going to tax less and spend,” says Pitts, who voted against Bush.

Like Pitts, Brunswick was more impressed with McCain than Obama on discussion of the federal budget deficit: “I really don’t think you can spend your way out of the deficit.”

Pitts didn’t much like either candidate’s plan for health care. But the risk that Obama’s plan might lead to socialized medicine was preferable to McCain’s plan to tax health benefits. “I don’t think McCain’s plan is well thought out,” he says.

Brunswick also liked Obama’s answers better because he believes health coverage is a basic American right. “Why do they say it’s socialized medicine when we give it to the American people?” he asks, contrasting government help for health care with the rescue of the financial industry.

Both candidates talked repeatedly about “Joe the plumber,” an Ohioan who discussed taxes with Obama on the campaign trail. Brunswick said he doesn’t believe McCain’s claims that a small-business owner like Joe the plumber would be hurt by Obama taxes. After a lifetime in the construction industry, Brunswick said, he knows plenty of Joe the plumbers and they don’t earn enough to come under the Obama taxes.

On energy, Pitts liked McCain’s push for building nuclear plants and his defense of their safety, because nuclear submarines already operate safely. The drawback, he said, is that plan is more expensive that Obama’s approach.

Brunswick said nuclear plants take 10 years to build and more domestic oil drilling won’t necessarily help U.S. consumers, so McCain’s plans don’t help in the short-term.

Education is an issue that hits close to home for both voters. Pitts and his wife, JoAnne, are retired public school teachers. Brunswick’s wife, Karen, also was a teacher.

Brunswick said he didn’t like McCain’s push for private-school vouchers because that takes money away from public schools.

But Pitts said vouchers are needed in some areas: “If there’s a school district that’s failing, why would you want to send your child there?”

Both men gave Obama better marks for promoting his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, than they gave McCain for GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska.

“It doesn’t even deserve an answer. She’s absolutely not ready,” Brunswick says.

Pitts agreed. “She really doesn’t have a track record,” he says, adding that she has been “throwing dirt” at Obama.

Brunswick was impressed with Obama’s defense of his relationship with Bill Ayers, a former domestic terrorist. Obama noted that he was 8 when Ayers was involved with Weather Underground, a radical group responsible for bombing federal buildings. The issue came up when moderator Bob Schieffer asked about the negative tone of the campaign.

“McCain was more like a high-schooler, a kindergartner: ‘He hit me first,’ ” Brunswick says. “More negativity. I want to talk about issues.”

Pitts said he will stick with McCain now unless some bombshell drops because the debate showed “he can run the country.”

Brunswick said he’s leaning to Obama but won’t decide until he’s in the voting booth with people waiting impatiently behind him. The highlight of the debate, he says, was when “it was over.”

Tamara Lytle was Washington bureau chief and correspondent for the Orlando Sentinel from 1997 to 2008.