The Trail Less Traveled

It takes a fair measure of hope to envision a thriving Rocky Mount. The unemployment rate is over 7 percent, and more than one-fifth of the residents lived below the poverty line as of 2000. But Illinois Sen. Barack Obama , who built his early campaign on a “hope” mantra, is finding support here from voters who also prefer the policy prescriptions he has brought to the presidential race to that of rival New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton .

If past trends hold true Obama, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, should carry Rocky Mount handily on the strength of support from African-Americans, who made up 56 percent of the city’s population of 56,000 according to the 2000 census. Obama is expected to win North Carolina on Tuesday — he is leading in nearly all the polls in the state — but he needs heavy turnout in places like Rocky Mount to ensure victory and possibly stretch his margin to double digits. The margin will be particularly important if Obama loses in Indiana, where Clinton has led in nearly all the polls.

Evangeline High, who works the cash register at Cuzo’s, a small ice-cream and pork-free barbecue eatery at the BP gas station, likes Obama’s long-term plan for lowering gas prices and rebuked Clinton for proposing a summer-months “holiday” from the federal gas tax. Obama has depicted Clinton’s plan as a “gimmick” and, clearly, his rejoinder is resonating with the faithful.

“She’s doing it to get a vote, and she’s not going to get mine,” said High, 48, who estimates that she pours $60 per week into her gas tank as she travels between two jobs.

Though she cited the gas tax issue when asked why she was voting for Obama, High said that she made up her mind when Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was turned into a political issue because of his caustic rhetoric blasting the United States, condemning white people and accusing the government of creating AIDS to kill African Americans.

“The church you go to shouldn’t judge who you are,” she said.

Obama’s proposals on energy and the environment struck the perfect chord with Phyllis Silver, a deputy clerk of courts in Edgecombe County, which shares Rocky Mount with neighboring Nash County.

Silver said she is working on a graduate thesis on gas consumption and likes the idea of “building cars that don’t put so much pollution in the air.”

The state of the economy is a common theme for voters here, but they are not uniformly behind Obama on this issue.

The federal budget and the Iraq war top Lambert Sutton’s list of primary-day issues. Sutton, a retiree who works in a Main Street antique shop a couple of days a week, said he will cast his ballot for Clinton.

“I like the way the budget was balanced when her husband was in office, and I think he’d have some influence” if she were elected, Sutton said.

He said Obama lacks the necessary experience to be president. Though race and gender have been strong undercurrents in the race, Sutton said those factors don’t matter “in today’s world.”

They clearly matter to some Democratic voters — often as plusses.

Elizabeth Andrews, the daughter of former North Carolina state Rep. Robert Jernigan, likes Obama but said she will vote for Clinton because of her gender and Jernigan’s efforts on behalf of equality for women.

“I just remember how hard he worked,” Andrews said in a seemingly out-of-place boutique featuring crystal and china. “Now that we have a woman running, I feel like I have to support her.”

Andrews said at least two of her three adult children are likely to vote for Obama with the third a possibility for either candidate.

Rocky Mount, where John Kerry won with almost 60 percent of the vote in 2004, is likely to favor the Democratic nominee in November. But Republicans have dominated the state in presidential elections - the last Democrat to carry North Carolina was Jimmy Carter in 1976 - and there are conservative Republicans here, too.

William Stroud, who owns a low-cost furniture shop on Main Street, said he is voting for Ron Paul in Tuesday’s Republican primary. He doesn’t think Paul would make a good president but likes what the libertarian-leaning Texas congressman has to say, particularly in light of the expansion of the federal government under Republican rule in Washington for most of the decade.

“I will probably vote for him [in November],” Stroud said of presumptive Republican nominee John McCain , R-Ariz.

Stroud, who reopened his business in April, 11 months after it was destroyed by fire at another location, said he is doing well selling his bargain-priced furniture — which he euphemistically calls “promotional” goods — in an economic crunch.

“This is a perfect area for me, for this particular store and this particular market,” he said.

Like many business owners here, he says he hopes the economy will get better.

“We’re probably at the bottom, and we have a bright future,” he said.

— Marie Horrigan and Marc Rehmann contributed to this story.