Occupation: government clerk, unemployed
Personal: divorced father of four
2008 vote: Obama
Kenneth Jackson wanted Romney to “dazzle” him in the last weeks of the campaign. If he did, the once-passionate Obama voter might have done the unthinkable: pull the lever for the Republican Party’s candidate on Nov. 6.
The dazzle, however, fizzled.
Romney’s chance with Mr. Jackson had everything to do with both the national and his personal economy: Unemployed for two years, the divorced dad of four kids needed a vision of hope for himself and his family that’s different from the one Obama sold four years ago.
In an interview with the Monitor in September, Jackson said Romney would have to “convince me that he is just as interested in seeing mom and pop business flourish as those who have already gotten to a certain level in society.”
Instead, a small article he spotted about an auto parts manufacturer in Freeport, Ill., confirmed Jackson’s suspicions of Romney as an uncaring Wall Street apologist. In Freeport, employees of Sensata Technologies, partly owned by Romney’s former finance firm, Bain Capital, have protested the company’s decision to send work to China as employees sought to unionize.
While Romney hasn’t handled Bain Capital business for more than a decade, he still stands to profit from corporate moves at Sensata – the main reason that workers have pleaded with him, so far unsuccessfully, to use his influence to push Bain to reconsider its strategy.
While Jackson acknowledges that Romney can’t be held directly responsible, the situation, to him at least, “is an indication of not only the tenor of leadership that [Romney] put in place at [Bain], but I would also wager that a lot of corporate entities probably feel that it’s OK to conduct business in this manner under a Romney administration.”
The Sensata story, he says, “put the nail in the coffin” of a Romney vote, at least for him.
While Romney’s robust performance in the first debate changed the trajectory of the presidential race, it also didn’t do enough to jar Jackson’s vote.
“I watched the first debate in terms of just the kind of horse-race thing, and I would concede that [Romney] performed very well,” he says. “But in terms of communicating a vision or a type of direction that is doable or worth my investing my vote in, I still found that wanting.”
He adds, “After the second and third debate, I was, like, ‘Uh-oh, not working out.’ ”
But a vote lost for Romney makes for only a reluctant one gained for Obama. Jackson’s hope now is that Obama is right when he says on the stump that the economy is on its way back and that jobs will soon return, along with a rise in median incomes.
In Jackson’s state of Florida, Romney is leading by 2.1 points in the Oct. 26 RealClearPolitics average.
Unable so far to find steady work, Jackson is now taking tax preparation classes in hopes of getting hired as a seasonal tax preparer in January. “It’s the only thing I can look forward to right now,” he says.
– Patrik Jonsson, staff writer
