Local report

LaBelle sends a link to the local Tribune early exit poll article.

In an unscientific, random survey of 150 voters, the Tribune found 81 who supported Kerry, 68 who favored Bush and one voter who abstained from voting in that race.

..."This is the first time I’ve voted for a Democrat," Bill Smith said after voting for Kerry at Rock Bridge Elementary School. "I don’t like his war in Iraq, either. All that is is a Jew war."

Leroy Rothe, voting at St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church, said he voted for Bush. "I’m a veteran, and I think Mr. Kerry is out of touch with veterans," he said.

article

Out of touch with veterans. He is one, Leroy.

A Jew war. I can't believe they chose that quote, but they must have been hard up for quotes, because they even used my uninformative, unhelpful one (although I'm not sure they got the exact wording):

"I think we need to remove that Republican administration from office,’’ said M...Quinn, who voted at Memorial Baptist Church in Columbia.

All three initiative petition proposals in Columbia were favored by large margins in the Tribune’s survey of voters at city precincts, including a proposal that would allow the medicinal use of marijuana, favored by 66 and opposed by 18 people interviewed. A proposal to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana was favored by 58 voters, compared to 16 who opposed it.

Bob Roach, voting at Rock Bridge Elementary School, said he knows people who use marijuana for medicinal reasons. "I think it’s pretty much a nonissue anymore," he said.

Bob Roach is okay with marijuana use. (For you folks under 40, I don't know what the street jargon is these days, but in my day, a roach was the last bit of a joint too small to hold in your fingers.) Is this article for real?

Anyway, Bob is wrong about it being a non-issue, but he can be excused for thinking so if he never leaves Columbia, because we are a university town, and things are a little more liberal here than elsewhere in Missouri - which doesn't make us liberal, by any stretch of the imagination.

Another Columbia proposal would mandate phasing in of the city’s use of alternative-powered electricity, which was favored by 67 people and opposed by 16.

...Meanwhile, in the 19th District race for the Missouri Senate, 68 voters interviewed by the Tribune favored Chuck Graham, a Democrat, compared to 53 for Republican Mike Ditmore.

...In the race for governor, 78 voters favored State Auditor Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, while 68 voters favored Secretary of State Matt Blunt, the Republican candidate.

More voters interviewed in the sample of traditionally Democratic Boone County also favored Republican incumbents U.S. Sen. Kit Bond and U.S. Rep. Kenny Hulshof of the Ninth District.

And boo on that. Bond and Hulshof were both running against women, and I would have laid the blame for their selection on that (being a macho kind of misogynistic state), but Claire being favored for governor shoots that argument.

More Columbia, Missouri, early random picks here.