With Issues To Solve, Brandon Voters Take to the Polls

From the time he cast his first vote in a presidential election — for Harry Truman, in 1944 — Charles Jagars has remained steadfast in his belief that voting is a civic duty.

“Why should a few people be able to tell everybody else what they’re going to do?” Jagars asked, outside the  on Jan. 31, where he served as deputy clerk for Precinct 833, for the GOP Presidential Preference Primary. “If you don’t vote, I don’t think you should be able to complain.”

A nation in unrest, with serious issues to solve, is what motivates today’s voters to cast their ballots for the Republican nominee, according to voters interviewed 100 feet from the entrances to their designated polling places.

Florida is a closed-primary state, which means only registered Republicans can vote in the GOP primary. Featured on the ballot this year are Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.

“We want the right person to be elected, that’s what we all want to see,” said voter Leticia Co, after she and her husband, Anthony, voted for Romney, at Precinct 830, at in Brandon.

“Right now the problem is the economy, and we saw that he had a successful business, so maybe he can help us get back to a good economy,” Leticia Co said.

“He’s more business-like,” added her husband, who said voting is a civic responsibility that should not be taken lightly.

“Right now we have so many problems in our country,” he said. “Voting for the right person, the right candidate, will help our country go back to normal.”

As for what is “normal,” his wife said, that’s when “we have freedom, we have a good economy, we have jobs.” Added her husband: “Nothing’s stable right now.”’

Longtime Voters Put Election in Perspective

Unrest in the country is not unprecedented, not when you’ve lived through the sixties, said Michael Griffin, after he cast his vote for Rick Santorum, at Precinct 818 in the Greater Brandon community of Valrico, at Farm Bureau Insurance.

“I’ve voted since I was 18 years old,” Griffin said. “It was during the Democratic primaries, I actually voted for Bobby Kennedy, before he was assassinated.”

Kennedy’s assassination in 1968, just after midnight at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, after delivering a victory speech for the June 5 California primary, followed those of his brother, President John F. Kennedy, in 1963, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn.

“The 60s were just turbulent times,” Griffin said. “There was Vietnam, [the student protest killings] at Kent State [University], Bobby’s, J.F.K.’s and Martin Luther King’s assassinations. It was a horrible time growing up.”

Are today’s times as rough as they appear?

Griffin puts the question in perspective:

“I can remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, I can remember people building bomb shelters. Since I can remember we’ve always been at war someplace in the world and that, I think, is the most discouraging thing,” he said.

Griffin finds today great fault in the current president, and so he is voting Republican, and casting his vote for Santorum, even though he believes the race will be between the two front-runners, Romney and Gingrich, “and I don’t think either of them will beat Obama.”

Griffin said he voted for Santorum because “he’s the only Republican candidate who’s addressing the issues and he’s concerned about the issues.”

“I don’t think he’s going to be nominated, though,” Griffin added. “If I had to guess today, I think [the candidate] will be Mitt Romney.”

Robert and Rosemary Cygan, married for 41 years, favor, instead, Gingrich.

Why?

“Because the Republican establishment doesn’t like him,” Robert Cygan said. “So, if they don’t want him, he has to be doing something right.”

Cygan belives that “right” has to do with Gingrich’s role during Democratic President Bill Clinton’s administration, in which Cygan gives Gingrich credit for “balancing the budget and turning the House over to Republicans for the first time in 40 years.”

Still, Cygan said he believes Romney “probably will take [the nomination], but not by double digits, like they’re talking about, maybe more like six points.”

As for exercising the right to vote, the Cygans said they, too, believe it is a citizen’s duty, not to be overlooked, and this year they don’t think that will be the case for most people.

As Cygan put it: “If people suffer enough, people get involved."