SANFORD -- As the midterm election campaign begins, North Carolina voters have deep anxiety about a weak economy, a loss of jobs, and whether life will be better for their children, according to a News & Observer/ABC11 Eyewitness News poll.
The angst about the economy and jobs overpowers every other concern. No issue - not health care, government spending, taxes, national security or terrorism - is remotely close, according to the survey conducted last week by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research.
The statewide poll strongly suggests that any candidate running in North Carolina this year - from the U.S. Senate to the county courthouse - will ignore the economy and jobs at his or her own peril.
A majority of voters (54 percent) think the economy is on the wrong track and only about a quarter of those surveyed think Democratic President Barack Obama has improved the struggling economy he inherited a little over a year ago. If Obama were running for re election this year, the poll shows, he would have an uphill climb in North Carolina.
Tar Heel residents, having seen plant gates shut and thousands of layoffs, are not in a happy mood. A little more than a third expect the economy to improve during the next year, and only a quarter expect their personal financial situation to get better. Seventeen percent think the future will be better for today's young people.
Tom Hahn, 62, an engineer from Sanford, is among the anxious.
Hahn was part owner of a company in Lenoir that made machinery for the furniture industry until Western North Carolina lost much of the industry to China. Hahn moved about five years ago to Sanford, where he was chief engineer for a company making machinery for brick manufacturers. But that firm went under when the construction industry tanked.
Hahn has been unemployed for the past year and a half. His house has lost value, and he can't sell it. There are few jobs for engineers in the area, especially for 62-year-olds.
"The economy is the biggest problem," Hahn said after eating lunch at the Fairview Dairy Bar in Sanford. "It's terminal. I don't see it getting better for a long time. The manufacturing jobs are never going to come back."
During the last election, Hahn, a Republican, voted for Sen. John McCain for president because he saw McCain as the lesser of two evils. Hahn doesn't particularly blame Obama for the current woes, but he holds Congress in low regard.
For the midterm elections, Hahn said he plans to vote against all congressional incumbents, regardless of party, because he thinks Congress has handled the economy about "as bad as they could."
"I'm not voting for anybody in Congress," Hahn said. "It ain't working now. Let's try something different."
Sitting a few tables away at the restaurant is Paul Riddle, 69, an insurance agent who voted for Obama, although he has since been disappointed in the president's performance. On a scale of one to 10 he gives Congress "a minus one."
"I think they have lost sight of their public," Riddle said. "It seems like if you elect somebody and send them to Congress on Monday and they start Tuesday running for re-election. There is no bipartisanship anymore."
The distress about the economy is not hard to find in Sanford, a town 43 miles south of Raleigh. An area with a strong manufacturing tradition, it has been hit hard by the recession. Its unemployment rate, which stood at 14.6percent in December, is one of the highest in the state.
Mark Cotten, 50, of Sanford hasn't held a steady job since he was laid off at the Avondale Mill in 2001, when it moved its operations to Mexico. He has worked at odd jobs, collected unemployment and gotten some help from family members.
Cotten, an independent, says he voted for Obama, but he added: "It seems like the economy is not getting any better. It's getting worse. I thought Obama would be a good candidate, but so far Ihaven't seen anything that has benefited unemployed workers."
Obama is getting little credit for improving the economy. Only 26 percent of those surveyed think the president has improved the nation's economic situation, while 33 percent think he has hurt the economic situation, and 38 percent think he has had little effect.
Among those who think Obama is doing a good job is Beth Hall, who lost her job as a credit counselor for a nonprofit agency and is going back to school to learn to be a dental assistant. Hall, 48, who voted for Obama, noted that the president inherited a crippling ecession.
"It's not an overnight fix," said Hall, after a class at Central Carolina Community College. She also thinks that Congress has done a good job of providing training money to help people like her learn new job skills.
In 2008 Obama was the first Democrat to carry North Carolina in 32 years. But if he were running for re-election today, he would likely be in trouble in the Tar Heel state.
The poll found that 38 percent of those interviewed said they would definitely or probably vote for Obama, while 56 percent said they probably or definitely would not.
Though Obama is not on the ballot in November, Republican U.S. Sen. Richard Burr is. Burr's re-election polling numbers are far better than Obama's.
In match-ups with prospective Democratic opponents, Burr leads Secretary of State Elaine Marshall 54-29, former state Sen. Cal Cunningham 48-25, and Chapel Hill lawyer Ken Lewis 49-23, poll results show.
But for Burr and every other political candidate, the mid-term elections offer a dicey political environment because of the uneasy sense about the country's future.
By more than a 2 to 1 margin, North Carolinians think the economy is on the wrong track. Only 37 percent said they thought the economy would improve during the next year, and 28 percent said it would get worse.
Asked if they thought their personal financial situation would improve, 26 percent thought it would, while 51 percent thought it would remain the same and 19 percent thought it would get worse.
"Before Lee County and the United States of America ever get back to the prominence they enjoyed for so many years, we have to get back to a manufacturing society," said Riddle, the Sanford insurance agent. "We need to be building and selling things, putting people to work."
"I don't see us coming out of this depression for the next two years at least," Riddle said. "That's what you got to call it, a depression."
Some voters were a bit more optimistic. Among them was Clarence Jeter, 51 of Vass, who has been doing odd jobs for the past two years since being laid off by Caterpillar, the manufacturer of construction equipment.
"Just getting by and praying every day," Jeter says.
Jeter thinks Obama and Congress are making the best of a bad situation.
"Things are going to get better," said Jeter, outside the unemployment office in Sanford, where he hopes to find work in construction. "Things are going to pick up a little bit in the next three or four months. It's got to be little bit better because it can't get no worse than what it is."
