Getting Up To Speed Tour - First Stops
I'm scheduling visits to coffee shops around the state to listen to what people's concerns are, and introduce myself to voters.Here are some of the notes from the first two sessions.
Coffee Shop Tour
The Village Bean - In North Scituate — not my district, but still Rhode Island is small enough that I found some voters — the concerns were mainly local. The folks I talked to thought that the war in Iraq was a waste of both money and human lives. They were also concerned about their jobs. As workers for the Rhode Island Department of Transportation, they said that the DOT was manager heavy. The guys who do the work have less seniority and are fired first. The workers don’t get raises, but the foremen get new pickup trucks...
Custom House Coffee- In Middletown — The people I spoke with were unhappy with both Presidential choices. One man, a lifelong Republican, is disgusted with Bush, but can’t see voting for Kerry. Another man, a chiropractor expressed his discontent with Patrick Kennedy. Kennedy, he said, shows up for events. He said that he would much rather trust someone who worked for a living. I also spoke with a woman who was a teacher in the public schools, but who felt she had to put her oldest children into private schools because they weren’t being challenged. There are programs for the developmentally challenged, she said, but not for the developmentally advanced. She also expressed concern about health insurance and malpractice costs.
posted by Mark Binder @ 10:30 AM
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