Clayton leads Georgia in Obama votes

Belle McCleskey isn’t always proud to say she lives in Clayton County.

But on Wednesday, the 80-year-old white woman said Clayton residents did something right: they voted for Barack Obama.

“Some of our friends are upset with us,” McCleskey said as she shared lunch at the Golden Corral in Jonesboro with a friend. “He needed us to help because this is not going to happen overnight.”

But overnight, Clayton County united and garnered more votes for Obama than any other county in Georgia. About 83 percent of the 99,543 county’s votes were for Obama.

Some say Clayton’s high African-American population — the third-highest in Georgia — helped Obama receive 82,404 votes in the Metro Atlanta county. But McCleskey said it’s something bigger: change.

“The people who are most impacted in the downward spiral of the economy are most likely to vote for change,” said Clayton County Commission Chairman Eldrin Bell, who was unopposed on Tuesday’s ballot. “They don’t differentiate local problems from national problems. Clayton County wanted elected officials who care about them.”

Clayton is not only struggling with record foreclosures but also rising crime and unemployment rates. The school system is unaccredited, and more than 74 percent of the county’s 50,000 students receive federal assistance for meals.

“They want somebody to solve some of the problems in our county,” said Dexter Matthews, president of the Clayton NAACP branch.

Picking the right person

During the past decade, Clayton has struggled to find the right elected officials as it transformed from white, middle-class suburbia to an urban area of blacks and Hispanics.

“We try to pick the best candidate and hopefully we don’t pick candidates on race. We see where that get us,” Matthews said. “But if we pick the wrong person, for sure we make sure they don’t get re-elected.”

Matthews pointed to four school board members removed in August by Gov. Sonny Perdue for violating the law — as well as a sheriff who cost the county millions in lawsuits and a district attorney with no trial litigation experience, who both lost re-election bids.

Janice Thompson, 61, said she wanted change so badly that she was willing to wait in line for hours at the Frank Bailey Senior Center in Riverdale to cast her ballot. Thompson was one of more than 60,000 of the county’s advance voters. Some waited up to seven hours in near-freezing temperatures.

“I considered the blood shed by my forefathers. I thought about the days I picked cotton as a child. That’s what my grandparents did,” said Thompson, a Riverdale piano teacher. “I did it for them.”

On Wednesday, Thompson, dressed in an Obama and Martin Luther King Jr. T-shirt, shared stories with friends at the Riverdale senior center. She talked about how she spent Tuesday night on the phone with her daughter, a senior at the University of Central Florida.

“I thought these votes are so important and my vote counted finally,” said Thompson, an African-American. “I would like to go back to the family graveyard and tell them. My ancestors would be so proud.”

Voters turn out for Obama

Riverdale resident Georgia Reynolds, who went to bed around 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, said she can’t remember the last time she stayed up so late.

“I said I can always sleep all day,” said Reynolds, a 74-year-old African-American. “I was in the Depression and made it to see this. I didn’t think I would live that long to see a black president.”

Although Clayton had the highest percentage of votes for Obama, the turnout was not as high as expected. About 67 percent of Clayton’s 148,562 voters cast ballots.

That’s only 5 percent more than the number of registered voters who voted in the 2004 presidential election. However, Clayton gained an additional 20,000 registered voters since then, said Lucille Pettaway, of the county’s election office.

“I think the turnout was really attributed to Barack,” said Clayton County Commissioner Virginia Burton Gray. “He was able to mobilize them and make them feel they were part of the process.”

A mirror of the nation

Obama’s landslide in Clayton mirrored those who voted Democratic across the nation: poor, young, women and educated Democrats led the vote.

Turmilla Nelson-Williams, 49, is one of those voters.

On Wednesday, the African-American teacher told her kindergarten class about her two-hour wait at the polls and her even longer wait to get into the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Atlanta to see Obama’s victory speech.

“One little boy ran up to me and said, ‘Mr. Obama won.’ One parent told me she woke her little girl up because she wanted her little girl to witness history,” said Nelson-Williams, who teaches at Kemp Primary School in Hampton. “They were just jubilant.”

Donna Medley, a white Forest Park resident, said she hopes that excitement continues. Obama’s win is what is needed in Clayton, she said.

From Jonesboro to Riverdale to Atlanta to Chicago, voters poured into the streets to celebrate the Obama’s victory. Although there were some reports of people firing guns into the air, there were no reports of election-related violence or arrests.

“Bush destroyed the economy of the whole world and it only took him eight years,” said Medley, 61, said as she ate a celebratory piece of pie at the Golden Corral. “I think Barack will get something done because he’s able to talk to people, all people.”