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The woman behind the deli counter at Publix was busy explaining to co-workers why she hadn't seen that week's airing of a television show the group had been following.
"I had to watch the debate," she said. "Had to see how those two guys did."
Finally, she turned to me. "What was it you wanted, honey?"
She set about slicing my order, but with running commentary on the presidential debate and the merits and weaknesses of each candidate's performance. Her co-workers, cleaning up nearby, interrupted with their own opinions.
In the checkout lane, the bagger, a gregarious fellow who looked about 17, was asking customers how they planned to vote in the presidential election. If they demurred or said, "Bush," he told them, "Oh, you have to vote for Kerry! He's my man!" If not for his big smile and overflowing enthusiasm, customers might have been offended. Instead, they smiled, too, and good-naturedly offered their own opinions. Soon, everyone in the line was involved in the conversation.
My 20-something son, a student at the University of Florida, called me after watching the Gators thrash the Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders Saturday at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in Gainesville. He wanted to tell me that volunteers were handing out Bush and Kerry stickers at the gates and people all over the stadium were wearing them. I asked him who seemed to have the lead. "Bush, I think," he said. "We have a lot of Republicans up here." I found it interesting that he took notice of such a thing during a football game that finally provided some fun for Gator fans.
It seems it is that way everywhere. This year's presidential campaign has so saturated our society that it pops up where politics normally would not be thought about, much less discussed. At parties, the drugstore, the neighbors' barbecue, the PTA meeting, Bush and Kerry are there. If people aren't talking about the candidates, they are studiously avoiding talking about them. The presidential campaign is the elephant in the room in some households, offices and events where opinions are so strong that feelings could be hurt.
The political commentators throw out statistics and talk about the way the campaign has divided the nation almost right down the middle. Yes, but it also has energized us in ways not seen in decades, if ever.
For 30 years as a journalist, I have written about elections and the importance of voting. I often felt that those words blew away on the wind. With each decade, the apathy of the electorate seemed to deepen. People paid little attention to campaigns, especially at the local and state level where voter turnout was abysmal. Even in presidential election years, a majority of Americans just stayed home. As an avid voter, I could not imagine missing Election Day and letting others make that decision.
So even though service in the supermarket might be suffering, this newly engaged electorate is exciting. We have gone from being unable to get people to the polls to being unable to keep them away.
Witness what happened on Monday, the first day that people in Pinellas County could cast a ballot under the new provisions for early voting. I watched in amazement at the Supervisor of Elections Office in downtown Clearwater as people waited patiently in line to vote, two full weeks before Election Day. Some of them sported Kerry or Bush T-shirts or buttons. The people in line, clutching their voter registration cards, represented all ages, from young to old.
I talked recently to a senior citizen who lives in Tarpon Springs. Her health is not good and walking is painful for her, but she was determined to cast her absentee ballot and didn't want to trust it to the mail. So one day last week she woke early, and long before the sun was up, she was on a Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority bus headed for Clearwater. The ride took well over an hour, and she had to walk two blocks from the bus station to the elections office in the county courthouse. It must have been very difficult for her.
But by the time the office opened, she was there with her absentee ballot in hand. She signed the ballot in the presence of the elections staff and made sure they saw her signature on her ID, just so there would be no question.
And before she left, she demanded a receipt.
Now that's a dedicated voter.
-- Diane Steinle can be reached by e-mail at steinle@sptimes.com