What’s behind switch?

By Matt Snyder
Herald Staff Writer

MERCER COUNTY March 24, 2008 11:28 pm

— Evelyn Kaufman will be 93 this July. She’s been a registered Republican since 1937, but that changed earlier this month when she re-registered as a Democrat.
Why did she change her party? “I want to vote in April for Hillary,” said Ms. Kaufman, referring to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is fighting Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Pennsylvania’s closed April 22 primary requires voters to be registered to the party of the candidate they will vote for. Monday was the last day to register or change party.
“I was seven years old when women first got to vote,” Ms. Kaufman said. “And my mother, that was the first time she voted in her life. I want to see a woman as one of our presidents.”
As of March 5, there were 381 Mercer Countians who changed their political party, 219 of them to the Democratic side and 91 to Republican, said Jeff Greenburg, elections director.
But since then, the drumbeat of people in to register or change party has been non-stop, Greenburg said. “Over the last two or three weeks it has been constant.”
The dam really broke after the Ohio and Texas primaries, Greenburg said, when it became clear Pennsylvania was very much in the game for the Democrats.
And Monday, the last day to change party or register, was the busiest Greenburg has seen the office since he took over a year ago.
“I have never seen a day anywhere near what we had today, as far as the numbers we had coming in and the phone calls we’ve fielded,” he said.
Hard numbers on how many people changed party and to which party won’t be available for about two weeks, but Greenburg said he wouldn’t be surprised to see a 3 to 1 ratio of people who switched to Democrat versus those who switched to Republican, based on ratios known from other counties in Pennsylvania.
Among those in the elections office Monday, Greenburg said there was a pair of 70- or 80-year-old lifelong Republicans who registered Democrat.
“Those are typical, those are the kind of people that are switching, and it’s remarkable,” Greenburg said.
Mercer County Democratic Party Chairman Bob Lark attributed part of the phenomenon to women who want to vote for Mrs. Clinton.
He said others are tired of President Bush’s policies and may identify the all-but-certain Republican nominee, John McCain, as offering more of the same.
County Republican Chairman Bill Kirk said people have told him they’re switching to the Democratic ticket because of the primary.
“I don’t believe I ever encountered this situation, where people are switching just to vote on the primary on the other side,” he said.
A few have told him they plan on voting for Obama in the spring and then McCain in November, Kirk said. He said it might be because many Republicans dislike Mrs. Clinton.
Asked if he knew about “Operation Chaos,” a movement by conservative radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham to get Republicans to switch parties in order to prolong and muddy the Democratic primary, Kirk said he wasn’t familiar with it.
While the goal of “Operation Chaos” is to pile more votes onto Mrs. Clinton’s ticket, since she’s behind in the popular vote, Kirk said the Republicans he talked to are voting Obama.
“I think those people believe Obama would be more easily defeated than Sen. Clinton,” he said. Also, he doesn’t know how widespread the phenomenon is.
Lark said the real proof of how many party-changers are switching for ideological reasons and how many to try to pick a weak opponent will be proven in who switches back before November.