Cache reacts to ’08 election: Cache Democrats
With most of the country seeing blue in the presidential race, many Cache County Democrats said it wasn’t so bad to see the local elections remain almost solely in the red.
With just shy of 40,000 Cache Valley residents casting their vote in this year’s race, according to the unofficial numbers on Cache County’s Web site, President-elect Barack Obama took home 24.5 percent of the votes in Cache County, compared to approximately 52 percent of the votes nationwide.
Kathy Snyder, secretary of Cache Democrats, said she was so proud, it was hard to contain her happiness at the outcome of the race.
“You can see the smile on my face,” Snyder said. “The sun is going to come up a little brighter tomorrow.”
Snyder said she thinks Utah will always sway to the conservative side of things but all the work she and all of the volunteers in Utah did on the Democratic campaigns this year shows Utah is ready to become more politically balanced.
“It is good to be a part of the conscience,” Snyder said. “This could be the beginning of balance, the pushing to end the super majority.”
Snyder said although she and Democrats everywhere are thrilled at the outcome of this year’s presidential race, they are naive in their thinking. She said she knows the problems in the country are far from over, but she said she feels the country has been given a “fresh start.”
“This doesn’t mean any of our problems are over with,” Snyder said. “We now have a new vision and the fight is just beginning.”
Josh Der, co-chair for USU for Obama and chair of Cache Valley for Obama, said he feels relieved at the results, even though he felt fairly confident going into the election that Obama would win in the end.
“He’s got a hard job to do, that’s granted,” Der said. “He will step up to the challenge. He will bring the country respect and a positive outlook.”
Although these elections brought unprecedented numbers of student voters to the polls, Jackson Olsen, ASUSU executive vice president, said the presidential election, as usual, overshadowed the local elections, leaving many students unsure of who to vote for locally.
“Several students said they didn’t vote in the local elections simply because they knew nothing about the candidates who were running,” Olsen said. “It is always hard to run during a presidential election year because the local elections get overshadowed by the hype and the excitement of the presidential election.”
Even though some students felt they knew too little about the local elections to vote, Olsen said he was impressed with the attention the students gave to the election by volunteering to help and registering to vote. As a part of those efforts, Olsen said 4,786 new voters were registered on USU’s campus before this election.
“People saw this as a special evening for America,” Olsen said. “Even die-hard McCain fans were gracious and civil. There was no hostility among the students as a result of this election.”
As for the local elections, some issues supported by local Democrats were voted down, including Cache Valley’s Proposition 1. A proposition to allow bond for land grants, was according to the Cache County unofficial results, voted down 58.7 percent to 41.2 percent.
Democrat congressional candidate Morgan Bowen was outperformed by Republican incumbent Rob Bishop, who earned more than 68 percent of the vote.
Even though many local races favored the Republican candidates, Democrats, such as Snyder, said they are looking forward to the future and the change they are hoping Obama will bring.
–debrajoy.h@aggiemail.usu.edu