Election 2012 » Republican

Political Switcher: Republican Since Childhood, Voting for Obama

kqednews — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 17:58:01 +0000

Mark Patrosso re-registering. (Photo courtesy Mark Patrosso)

By Lisa Morehouse

We don’t need to tell you the American electorate is polarized these days. You just have to tune in to any call-in show or even make an injudicious casual remark at Thanksgiving dinner to realize how personal our political identities are and how emotional discussing the issues and values surrounding them can be. So we decided it would be interesting to ask one Republican and one Democrat why they did what is unthinkable to so many: switch parties. Two portraits of political discontent…

Republican to voting for Obama below, and Democrat to Republican here.

The first thing you should know about Mark Patrosso is that he was very involved in the Republican Party for a very long time. At just 9-years-old, he watched the entire 1964 Republican Convention when Barry Goldwater was nominated — even though his parents weren’t interested in politics.

If anything, Patrosso should have been a Democratic kid. He spent his childhood in East Detroit, a working-class Democratic suburb of the Motor City. In junior high, he says other kids probably thought he was a little weird when he volunteered to fill a display case with information on presidential candidate Richard Nixon. “I remember going into the local Nixon headquarters, picking up buttons, reading profiles,” Patrosso recalls.

Patrosso was just crazy for politics. “I probably actually read the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence in junior high and high school, or referred back just to understand what they really meant,” he says. “I’m not sure that my peers even cared.”

Rockefeller Republicans in particular spoke to Patrosso. They were socially moderate and open to compromise, but also fiscally conservative, concerned with efficient governance, and strong on national defense. He spoke up for these values even as he entered college at the left-leaning University of Michigan in the 1970s. Looking back, he says, he thinks he knows why protecting minority opinion was so important to him.

“Probably, subconsciously, I knew I was gay. I wasn’t the same as the other guys,” he says. “I guess I had a particular sensitivity in my long-term political views in making sure I was out there, that I was going to protect who I was, being a little different.”

In 1980 Patrosso moved to California to work for Lockheed. He found Santa Clara County Republicans shared his views, and he met members of the Log Cabin Republicans, an organization of gay and lesbian Republicans. He felt like he was finally meeting his people.

“I’m gay and in the Republican Party, and here I am all of a sudden meeting a bunch of people who are openly gay and in the Republican Party!” he remembers. “Okay, there’s more of me here.” Soon, Patrosso founded the Silicon Valley branch of Log Cabin Republicans, and he even became a delegate for the state party.

Party Switchers: Raised a Democrat, Now a Republican

Patrosso’s belief in the Republican Party remained rock solid for decades but, he admits, small fissures began to surface. They started with the rise of the religious right. “There wasn’t any room for compromise,” Patrosso says, “and they made it their business to outvote us and get the most extreme views in the party platform or positions on ballot initiatives.”

During George W. Bush’s presidency, Patrosso felt distanced from a Republican Party he believed was moving away from its fundamental beliefs. “They weren’t managing the budget, and they were being reckless and arrogant on the world stage,” he says. “That’s when I started questioning: ‘Really, is this a Republican Party I want to continue to be a part of?’”

The reason Patrosso gravitated toward politics at all has a lot to do with a simple belief — that the best politicians serve the people. After the 2008 election, when he thought congressional Republicans cared less about running the government than about unseating Obama, Patrosso was horrified.

“They were just interested in saying ‘no,’” he says. “That’s not being a good public servant. That, probably more than anything else, started to rip away the last shreds of my support for the Republican Party and their leadership today.”

For two years, Patrosso wrestled with his feeling about the party. Then two pivotal things occurred. First, Mitt Romney gave a speech that Patrosso felt belittled global warming concerns. Second, Senate candidate Todd Akin delivered his now-infamous line about ‘legitimate rape.’ Petrosso decided he could no longer countenance being a registered Republican.

“My whole existence as a gay Republican with my Democratic gay friends has been to justify why I’m still a Republican, and I ran out of arguments,” he says. “If I can’t argue for the party that I belong to, then I have no right to be in that party. I have to be true to myself.” On his 57^th birthday, the last day of the Republican National Convention, Patrosso changed his registration from Republican to ‘decline-to-state.’ He brought a friend along to take pictures of this major life event.

On Election Day, when Mark Patrosso walks into the voting booth, he’ll be choosing a Democrat for president for the first time. He says he has no regrets, because even though he built so much of his identity and community around being a Republican, Patrosso says he can’t sacrifice his values for a political party.

Now, the other side of the coin… Click here for our portrait of a Democrat who has gone Republican.

Election Road Trip: Silicon Valley Republicans — Wandering in a Political Wilderness

Rachael Myrow — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 13:00:20 +0000

Boris Feldman tries to woo a potential voter. (Image Courtesy Boris Feldman)

For Election 2012 The California Report has been hitting the road to talk to voters in various parts of the state – previously we’ve visited Riverside and Fresno. Today we turn to Silicon Valley. You might think the famously entrepreneurial business culture of Silicon Valley naturally fosters Republican sentiments, but the Republicans we talked to say they’re wandering in the political wilderness.

The Santa Clara County Republican Party recently held a fundraiser for Johnny Khamis, the GOP-endorsed candidate for San Jose City Council District 10. About 25 people showed up to rub shoulders over platters of hors d’oeuvres from Costco. If Khamis were to win, there would be two Republicans on the 10-member council.

“I go knocking on doors in my precincts every day,” Khamis tells me, “and some of them will ask me straight up: ‘Are you a Republican or Democrat?’ And I tell ‘em, ‘It’s a nonpartisan race.’ And then they say, ‘So what are you? A Democrat or a Republican?’ And I say, you know, ‘I’m a Republican,’ and if it’s a Democrat, a lot of them will, um, slam the door in my face. Occasionally. OK, not a lot of them. But occassionally. It happens.”

“The Republicans in California have to completely recast the party or they’ll be in a permanent minority.”

Here in Santa Clara County, Republicans account for just 23 percent of registered voters. Compare that with 30 percent statewide. It’s fair to say Republicans are feeling outnumbered in many parts of California, but Helen Wang of San Jose says she feels like she has a target on her forehead.

“That’s how I feel,” she says, laughing. “Because usually nobody supports me at all.”

And that’s even despite Wang being a social liberal, like many Republicans in California.

“I believe gay marriage should be legal,” she points out. “I’m pro-choice.”

Wang may feel the anti-GOP sentiment more acutely because she’s active in the local party, but even rank-and-file Republicans can feel tempted to lay low.

Attorney Boris Feldman of Palo Alto says he’s used to being the token Republican in the room, which is ironic, given that his exposure to Silicon Valley has a lot to do with why he became one in the first place. He grew up a liberal Democrat in South Bend, Indiana, and has spent the last 26 years representing technology companies in shareholder lawsuits.

“Business is very different out here — probably the best hope of our country economically,” he says. “And it just started to change how I looked at things like government regulation and government involvement in the marketplace.”

The 57-year-old loves so much about the Bay Area: the appetite for risk, the willingness to fail early and often, the easy embrace of diversity, the sheer ambition to change the world for the better.

“There’s so much to be grateful for in living here,” he tells me. “On the other hand, we’re living in a bankrupt state that’s completely controlled by groups that get their money from the state. The teachers’ unions, the prison guard unions, other unions. They own this state.”

But after watching Republicans Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina faceplant — politically speaking — in the election two years ago, Feldman stopped giving to the California Republican Party.

“It would be almost devastating for me to go home at Thanksgiving. Like, ‘Hey, Grandad. Yeah, I voted Romney.’ And…being 92 years old, I think he might just drop dead.”

“I’m going to need to see a way out of the wilderness before I start donating to them again,” he says. “The Republicans in California have to completely recast the party or they’ll be in a permanent minority.”

Like Wang, Feldman is also a social liberal. He blames the party’s conservative social platform for turning off his voting friends who might otherwise choose the GOP. Feldman has given $2,500 dollars to Mitt Romney’s bid for the presidency, but these days, he mostly gives to his Orthodox synagogue in Palo Alto. ”You get much more satisfaction giving to a local organization where you can tell it’s going to make a difference than you do in giving to another politician who’s robo-dialing.”

KQED Election 2012: Lots of Calif. voters still saying ‘No’ to party of Yes

Mitt Romney may not collect a lot of votes in the San Francisco Bay Area, but he is collecting a lot of money here. Romney has made repeated trips to Northern California, making sure to stop in wealthy enclaves like Hillsborough. For die-hard Republicans, Romney is the candidate to stand behind — whether or not this ticket is doing anything to grow the GOP party locally, the way Feldman would like.

Jeff Whitlow might be one of those persuadable voters Feldman talks about. Whitlow grew up in what he describes as an upper-class household in Michigan. He went to private schools. He went to Stanford. “I never went to public school a day in my life,” he confesses.

Today, Whitlow, 24, lives in San Francisco and works in Foster City at Bailard, an investment management firm that caters to people Silicon Valley made wealthy. Many of his clients, he says, are Republicans. Many of his friends are Republicans. His heart is with the GOP — even though his family is True Blue.

“You gotta support the black president because you’re black,” says Whitlow, who is African American. “It doesn’t really make sense when you verbalize it. They’re very proud to have a black president. But … the party doesn’t necessarily represent their best interests.”

Whitlow voted for Barack Obama in 2008, and the pressure is on for him to do it again. He wants to vote for a Republican president. But he feels he can’t do it this year — not given that social conservative Paul Ryanis on the ticket and not given his family back in Michigan. So Whitlow’s thinking of voting Republican “down ballot.”

“It will likely be a split ticket, because it would be almost devastating for me to go home at Thanksgiving. Like, ‘Hey, Grandad. Yeah, I voted Romney.’ And he would probably, being 92 years old, I think he might just drop dead.”

And you’d be remembered for killing your grandfather, I point out.

“Exactly. I don’t want that weight on me for the rest of my life!”

Whitlow expects to be taking a lot of phone calls from his Grandad between now and November 6. But come 2016, Whitlow’s vote for president may well belong to the GOP.

Election Road Trip: Inland Empire Voters Seek a Voice in Wake of Recession

Tyche Hendricks — Tue, 15 May 2012 02:36:01 +0000

Riverside Foreclosure Auction/Scott Shafer

Outside the courthouse in the city of Riverside housing speculators sit in lawn chairs — protected from the mid-day sun by little blue awnings – and place their bids in the daily home foreclosure auction.

The same scene plays out every week day in San Bernardino, Chino, Fontana and other Inland Empire cities. Behind each auction is someone who reached out for the American Dream but couldn’t hold on.

On a road trip to take the political pulse of this growing region, The California Report’s Scott Shafer talked with homeowners losing their grasp and investors scooping up properties at a discount — who say they are re-energizing the area’s economy and helping it recover from the crushing effects of the recession.

But it will take a long time for the Inland Empire to bounce back from the mortgage meltdown. The region boomed in the last decade, then suffered the second highest home foreclosure rate in the country. It still struggles with 13 percent unemployment, higher than the state average.

The recession has left many in the Inland Empire feeling politically irrelevant and overlooked, in spite of the fact that the region is home to 4 million people, larger than many states.

In his reporting, Shafer found people working to create a stronger political voice for the region. And this election year could be key.

Though the Inland Empire has long been a Republican stronghold, many of the new arrivals from coastal cities are more likely to be Democrats. That means that several congressional elections here are now hotly contested. And with both parties campaigning hard, the Inland Empire could get what it’s been craving: attention from politicians.

Listen to Shafer’s story: