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Local
party leaders analyze election results
November
10, 2004
By WALLACE
McBRIDE
Index-Journal
senior staff writer
The
leaders of the county’s two major political parties admit they
don’t know much about each other.
In the broadest of terms,
Norval Davis and John Gillespie speak to each other often
— they just channel their dialogue through the press.
Both are frequent contributors to political stories in The
Index-Journal, but have met face-to-face only a few
times.
Tuesday morning they agreed to sit down together at
the newspaper and offer some perspective on the cause and
effect of last week’s general election.
Davis, chairman of
the Greenwood County Democratic Party, said John Kerry’s
campaign had the greatest impact on young voters. It was a
success that failed to materialize in other age groups,
though.
“The only age group where Kerry had a majority was
in people age 18 to 29,” he said. “I think a lot of them were
concerned about Iraq and the possibility of a draft somewhere
down the road.”
“A lot of money and dollars was spent on
that age group by the Democratic Party and by the 527 groups
— Vote or Die and MTV,” said John Gillespie, chairman of
the Greenwood County Republican Party. “They put a lot of time
and effort into that age group. I don’t have any clue about
the number of dollars, but it was significant.”
Chances are
slim that America would ever again resort to a military draft,
he said.
“No one wants a draft. An all-volunteer army is
more motivated, better trained and a better army,” he said.
“The military doesn’t want to go back to a draft, the populace
doesn’t want to, the politicians don’t want to. Does it mean
we couldn’t get one? It would sure make the next election
cycle more interesting if someone were to introduce it. But I
think it’s politically dead.”
Davis said the concept of a
draft is sound, as long as it was not restricted only to
military service.
“As liberal as I am, I did not like it
when the draft was abolished,” he said. “I’m not necessarily
talking about a draft for military service, but a six-year
commitment to live in the greatest nation in the world is not
unreasonable at all. It wouldn’t necessarily have to be
military service, it could be some kind of public
service.”
Both agreed that the results of the presidential
election were final, though Davis said the popular vote should
be given greater consideration.
“The popular vote should be
what counts,” he said. “Gore won by a half-million votes, but
Bush was president. That’s one time it didn’t work. Of course,
this time it did work. Bush got the majority of the popular
vote and electoral votes.”
“It’s only been a few times that
the popular vote did not jibe with the electoral vote,”
Gillespie said. “Was there that big of a problem in 2000? I
don’t know — there are a lot of things to look at in the
final count. But if Gore’s home state had voted for him, he’d
have been president.”
“Bill Clinton, in neither election,
was elected by more than 50 percent of the vote,” he said. “He
had the highest number of votes but he never broke the 50
percent mark because there were third-party
candidates.”
Davis said the war in Iraq probably played a
smaller role in the election than people once thought.
“I
think there was one issue that really swayed people to
re-elect Bush as president — the amendment to the
constitution defining marriage as between a man and a woman,”
he said. “I think it stirred up a lot of people, got them
focused on that rather than education, health care, the
environment, prescription drugs for seniors and other
issues.”
“I can argue with him on every point, but I can
also agree with him,” Gillespie said. “You can’t deny a lot of
what he said.”
He said some of the issues Davis mentioned
have received some relief in recent years. They just weren’t
in formats that Democrats liked.
“We had 40 years of
Democratic House and Democratic Senate — and many of
those years had a Democratic president — and they could
never get a prescription drug bill through,” he said. “Bush
did. It may not be a perfect bill, but it might be all we can
afford.”
Wallace McBride covers Greenwood and general
assignments in the Lakelands. He can be reached at 223-1812,
or: wmcbride@indexjournal.com
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