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Wars, a York resident, selected one from among the orderly piles of forms, fliers and Barack Obama stickers, and handed it to him.
"Will you support Barack Obama?" she asked him.
"Yeah!" he replied. "I ain't going for McCain!"
The young man's name is Toby Bowman. He's 27, from York and, like Wars, he's black. He voted for Al Gore in 2000 but hadn't paid much attention to politics since then -- other than to occasionally note with dismay the latest results of the Bush presidency.
The Obama campaign, he said, has energized the black community like no political campaign he's seen before. But he doesn't see it as a matter of race, so much as economics. If color is a factor, Bowman said, it's the blue collar of those who see an Obama presidency as being in their best interests.
"He's a movement -- how can I say it? -- toward the urban youth," Bowman said.
Preserving a pen
Ann Carver set down her coffee in the Yorktowne Hotel's restaurant and began thumbing through a book about the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
With the ease of much practice, she found the page that includes a photo of President Lyndon Johnson signing the act into law. She pointed out the white-haired, bespectacled man standing to Johnson's right.
It's William McCulloch, a conservative Congressman from Ohio, ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee and Carver's father.
Carver said her father was the second one to sign the Civil Rights Act, an honor he received for the help he rendered Johnson in getting it passed over the objections of a bloc of southern Democrats.
She still has that pen, set away in a safe deposit box. Carver, a lifelong Republican, is white. She sees a continuation of her father's political philosophy in John
"He believed the Constitution guaranteed rights for all," Carver said.
Race shouldn't matter
As the days remaining until the presidential election dwindle, York County residents are talking about the first presidential race in American history to have a black man as a major party candidate.
If you engage them in conversation, many will tell you race shouldn't be a factor. Most will say it isn't a consideration for them when it comes to choosing a candidate.
Yet the issue of race has a way of making its way into those discussions, manifesting itself in an off-hand remark, or an anecdote about an acquaintance.
Rick Rauch of York recently stopped by York County Democratic Headquarters on West Market Street to pick up a lawn sign. He told of a neighbor, an older woman, who was a lifelong Democrat. She supported Hillary Clinton but said she simply can't bring herself to support Obama.
"She used the 'n' word," Rauch said.
Maryann Bacas was campaigning in downtown York for the Obama campaign recently. She spoke to a young black woman who said she wouldn't vote for Obama.
It's not that she supports John McCain. She simply is convinced that if Obama is elected, somebody will assassinate him, and she doesn't want that to happen.
Volunteering every day
Wars spends hours outside Pak's Market these days.
She campaigns for Obama seven days a week, putting in six to 11 hours each day. Wars single-handedly
Pak's has become a kind of second home for her. The owners let her stay there, she's got shade, and it's in the middle of a busy neighborhood.
Wars, 51, said she's never been interested in politics before. That changed in March
She was at a house that provides assisted living for three adult men, doing her job as a resident service worker for Bell Socialization Services.
She cleans, makes sure the men have their medications and makes breakfast. Somebody must be there at all times, and Wars works a third shift that keeps her up all night.
She'd been contemplating getting a second job. Her adult son has moved to Philadelphia, and she now lives alone. Even so, it's been harder and harder to make ends meet.
The TV was on, tuned to one of the cable-news stations. Obama was speaking, and Wars sat down to watch.
She listened to him talk about keeping jobs from going overseas, about supporting education at home and about bringing the war in Iraq to an end. Suddenly, she realized that tears were running down her face.
"I said, 'You know what? I'm going to support this guy because he makes a lot of sense,'" Wars said.
Respecting a father's legacy
Though Carver lives in downtown York, a Democratic stronghold in York County, she's held fast to her Republican beliefs.
When her family settled in York County 25 years ago, people at their church warned that moving into the city would be dangerous. But the Carvers never regretted it.
Carver considers it valuable that her daughters, both grown, had a chance to see problems facing the city close at hand. She didn't want them to have a sheltered upbringing.
She's active with her local neighborhood association and volunteers at Alexander D. Goode Elementary School.
Lately, she's also been volunteering on an almost daily basis at the Republican campaign headquarters in Springettsbury Township, doing her part to get John McCain elected.
Like her father, she has no problem reconciling her conservative political philosophy and her support of civil rights.
Carver is aware that many people associate civil rights with Democrats. She believes it's because civil rights legislation became linked in the public mind with Democratic presidents John Kennedy and Johnson, despite the contributions of Republican lawmakers such as her father.
In Ohio, people picketed McCulloch's home over his support of the Civil Rights Act, Carver said. But for him, it was a matter of principle and of logic.
Soon after graduating college, McCulloch went to practice law in Jacksonville, Fla., she said. He made constitutional law his specialty. In the racial discrimination he witnessed down south, McCulloch saw a refutation of everything the U.S. Constitution represented to him.
Carver herself became politically active immediately after graduating college in 1959 and has been involved in many Republican presidential campaigns since then. Where race is concerned, all of those campaigns had something in common.
"I've never heard volunteers talking about anything other than we're working to support who we believe to be the best leader," she said. "Who has the best economic plan. Who can be a fiscal conservative and a thoughtful foreign policy president."
Carver believes that approach, leaving race out altogether, is more inherently egalitarian.
For her, the problems facing urban areas such as York are all the more reason to back a conservative administration. She sees it as strictly a matter of practicality.
People need money. People need jobs. The politicians who can bring those to people, regardless of their race, are the ones who can help them the most.
In Carver's opinion, those politicians tend to be Republican.
Sending out resumes
Laurie Muccigrosso of New Freedom was leaving the Wal-Mart in Shrewsbury on a recent evening, having just picked up a few provisions to get her through the week.
It pains her to spend money these days, because she's been out of a job for six months.
Muccigrosso is 42 and white. She had worked in customer service for an airline. But the travel industry isn't doing very well these days, and she got laid off.
At first, she hoped to get another job in the same industry. As the months have gone by and she's sent out more and more resumes, she's begun to reconsider that plan.
She hasn't made up her mind about the election yet. She likes McCain's military background, regarding it as an indication that he's better suited to protect the country.
Still, she feels that Republicans have "dropped the ball" where the economy is concerned. Corporations no longer seem to have any loyalty toward their people, she said.
And Obama? She said she's reluctant to support him because she understands that he's Muslim.
"Do I have a problem with Obama because he's black? No. Religion? Yes," Muccigrosso said. "That's what the last war was about. That's why the towers came down."
Informed that Obama is not Muslim, Muccigrosso said that she would still have reservations about his presidency because she's not sure how other world governments would react to him.
"One problem is how the other religions will take it," she said. "It's a question of how it will pan out when it comes to how he relates to the other . . ."
She paused. In the end, she simply shrugged.
"The other," she repeated.
Thinking of future generations
Wars said her son is the ultimate reason she's spending so much time campaigning for Obama. She's also speculating that she might have grandchildren someday.
She thinks about how parents, herself included, assure their children they can be anything they want to be.
"We don't mean it," Wars said. "We say it to make them feel better, but we don't mean it."
If Obama becomes president, Wars said, she might be able to tell her son and subsequent generations that they can be whatever they want to be and actually mean it.
"Do you know how many doors he can open for all people? This can truly be the United States of America," Wars said.
Father was optimistic
Carver said her father was under no illusion that the Civil Rights Act would bring an immediate end to all racial tension and conflict.
If nothing else, he was pragmatic. He believed lawmakers might be able to create a level playing field, but that no legislation could make people stop hating.
Yet for all his pragmatism, he was ultimately an optimist, Carver said. And he truly believed that, in time, American society could leave its legacy of racism behind.
In the meantime, Carver believes the country's best interests lie in electing a president who can keep the country as safe and prosperous as possible while individual Americans work to get past that legacy.
"Father said turmoil is a sign of birth as well as decay," Carver said.
tjoyce@ydr.com; 771-2089
