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Home > Blogs > Butler County News and Issues > Archives > 2008 > November > 06
Thursday, November 6, 2008
How Butler County voted - Precinct map
Below is a map of every precinct in Butler County. As usual, the ones colored red voted for Sen. John McCain and the ones colored blue had the majority vote for Sen. Barack Obama.
Does anything surprise you about this pattern?
(Note: Click on the top right corner to enlarge the image)
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Acceptance and racism answer Obama win in Hamilton diner
Just stumbled across this story from the Cleveland Plain Dealer:
HAMILTON, Ohio - Some in this town in McCain-red Butler County are trying to make the best of the unavoidable: Barack Obama’s sweeping victory in Tuesday’s presidential election.
“I knew he was going to win. What could you do about it?” said Angela Senters, a waitress at Ohio Lunch, a diner on the main drag in this 60,000-resident southwest Ohio town.
But other reaction in Hamilton to Obama’s win included unabashed racism, grudging admiration and relief at no longer being subjected to political ads.
Ohio Lunch has been open since 1927. It says so on the front window, along with local announcements about a house for sale for $12,500 and an upcoming spiritual concert at First St. John’s Church. Inside, there’s a long counter, tables with thick vinyl maroon tablecloths and booths along the back wall. The specialty at Ohio Lunch is the homemade chicken and dumplings, which costs a fiver and change. No one ever goes away hungry, and it draws a wide collection of downtown workers.
While Senters was philosophical about Obama’s win, she said her boyfriend had a different reaction to the election of the nation’s first black president.
“My boyfriend is so upset, he said he’s going to go over to Kentucky and join the Ku Klux Klan,” Senters said. “My boyfriend said now the world is going to end in 2012 and that Obama is the antichrist.”
Retired steel worker Carl Brinegar was at the counter sipping his refill on a soda.
“Last night on Fox News they said now the blacks have no excuses,” he said. “Obama has proved that if you go to school and work hard you can be anything you want to be.”
Marcia Frazier has worked at Ohio Lunch for seven years as a short-order cook. She voted for McCain.
As Kansas’ song “Dust in the Wind” played on the diner’s radio, Frazier said she wasn’t disappointed in the election’s results.
“I’m just happy now that I can turn on the TV and not see all those commercials,” she said. “I’m ready for some good Bud Lite commercials.”
Across the street, Mayor Don Ryan, a Republican now in the third year of his second four-year term, welcomed a visitor to his new downtown Irish pub, Ryan’s Tavern.
The city, about 35 miles from Cincinnati, is the seat of Butler County, in which nearly 60 percent of residents voted Republican in the presidential race. The county is close to 90 percent white, with a median household income of about $49,000, according to the U.S. Census’ latest numbers.
Ryan said he was not surprised or particularly sad about Obama’s victory.
“When you’ve run for office, you can’t help but be impressed with the kind of campaign he ran,” Ryan said. “I have to admit I enjoyed hearing him speak.”
Ryan said the key to Obama’s success was running on the platform of change.
“He was just a guy who had a lot of initiative and had a lot of fresh, new ideas. Now I can’t say I agree with all his positions. I don’t like the idea of government-run health care. And this ‘spread the wealth’ thing — people need to work. “
Ryan was magnanimous about the Democratic victory.
“Obama is our president now, and we all have to get behind him,” Ryan said. “He needs to do something definitive very soon, something with real impact to impress the country. He made a lot of big promises.”
Of course, the mayor, who intends to run for a third term, can afford to be big about the Democrats’ presidential win.
“All of our local Republican candidates won last night,” he said with a smile.
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