NC voter weighs the choices in Tuesday's Democratic primary

[Ron Burgundy]

AP - All the swirling currents of a country at war and in the economic doldrums run through David Lutz's neighborhood in Trinity, N.C., just as they run through the presidential campaign.

Two houses down the street are being foreclosed. Poorly clothed kids play outside. An elderly couple he knows was attacked in a robbery and the woman died.

And Lutz's daughter, in the Army reserve, is due to go off to Iraq in October, to fight a war he opposes. "I don't like it but that's her choice," he said. "I'm not going to take her thoughts and ways from her."

Lutz, 53, is looking at his situation and his country's in figuring out whether to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama in the North Carolina Democratic primary Tuesday.

The Associated Press has been asking Lutz what he thinks about the campaign since late last year as part of an AP-Yahoo News series of polls seeing how opinions have evolved with the same group of voters.

Now it's time for those living in North Carolina and Indiana to make their choice. Both states hold primaries Tuesday. AP asked some of the poll respondents from those states to say how they are coming to their decision.

"I was dead set for Hillary Clinton," he says, "but Barack Obama is bringing up stuff that I'm really starting to like."

Resilience — Lutz's and his country's — is one of those swirling currents, too.

Lutz and his wife Amy live on his military pension and the money they make at flea markets — which is sometimes quite good. They buy tractor-trailer loads of socks or soil or whatever comes along at a bargain.

In a bad year, he'll bring in $60,000 with his pension and flea market sales. "We're good on what we got."

But when he was asked in the latest AP-Yahoo News poll to name the most important issue, he said the economy.

"I look out there and see people on the streets who don't have homes no more," he said. "Everywhere, everything's gone all to pieces."

After leaving the Army in 1996 after 20 years, he worked for five years as a machine operator making furniture components before the company went bankrupt.

Now the manufacturing base is gone as plants have scattered overseas or closed. "Oh, good God, there's been dozens of them. Furniture factories, socks, hosiery mills."

Gas prices have crimped his labors and his leisure. "We stay local, it's all local anymore," he said about his flea market business. "It's not worth it."

He bought a gas-guzzling SUV in the fall and sold it in March, in favor of a far more efficient Ford Focus. He and his wife don't go out as much for steak or seafood and his golf buddies have peeled away.

His friends don't go out like they use to. "When you make $400 a week and you spend $100 on gas," he said, "that leaves no money to socialize or do anything. You just go home and sit and watch TV."

Clinton proposes a suspension of the federal gas tax, a clear money saver for Lutz, and talks often of her detailed plans to help homeowners facing foreclosure and to make sure everyone has health insurance. Obama has detailed plans, too.

But Lutz is impressed by Obama's rhetoric about something not so close to home — namely, his vow to change the way Washington works.

"Every time I hear him talk, I like something he says."

Lutz counts himself as being 60 percent for Clinton and 40 percent for Obama at the moment. "That's certainly close in my book."

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080503/ap_on_el_pr/a_voter_s_decision [link]