[...] Sheila Stringer, 48, lives with her parents in Lake Arbor, one of Prince George's County's premier black middle-class neighborhoods, where the lawns are flawless and the country club a few blocks away. Nine in 10 residents own their homes, one in three is a government worker, and the median household income in the 2000 Census was $83,070.
There are no political signs on her block, and perhaps no need for them: This neighborhood went big for Gore in 2000. Stringer has a tape of "Fahrenheit 9/11" in her handbag.
"Most everybody is sick of Bush," she said. "We call him the idiot. . . . He's scary. His whole family is scary."
Stringer's parents are retired teachers, and she is a school nurse in the District. In this, the family is representative of an African American middle class built on government jobs, Sunday church and Democratic politics. Many were drawn here by the expansion of government during World War II, and fled the District for the suburbs beginning in the 1970s. Now, some black Prince George's residents are leaving for exurban Charles County.
Stringer does not feel especially affluent, and she says that Bush does not seem to care for regular working people like herself.
"I'm working two jobs and still don't have money to pay my bills," said Stringer, who does freelance employment in a doctor's office in her spare time. "He's working one -- half-heartedly -- and making mega-bucks on the side. Where's the justice in it?"
African Americans are usually reliably Democratic, but analysts say the voting patterns among the region's newer minority populations, Hispanics and Asian Americans, are less predictable.
They described the party alliance of the area's Asian Americans as up for grabs. Hispanic voters in the region trend Democratic, partly out of economic issues, partly out of concerns on immigration.
Carlos Guerra, 28, a mover, and his wife, a jewelry store assistant, live in the heavily Hispanic Langley Park area. They are both immigrants from El Salvador.
"I think the Republicans are always for rich people," he said. "I make enough money to live, you know?" [...]
| That's the part of Peter Whoriskey and D'Vera Cohn's registration-required Washington Post article "The Great Divide" that caught our eye
posted in articles on October 17, 2004 12:01 AM | t (0)
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