Economic angst tops issues in Mass. town

FITCHBURG, Mass. -- Folks at the City Hall Cafe on Main Street are bracing for trouble.

Waitress Mona Roberts starts a second job as a home health care worker this weekend. Proprietor John Karanasios is debating whether he could unscrew some of the light bulbs in the diner to reduce his $1,800-a-month utilities bill. Roger Nascimento, owner of a small house-painting business who has dropped in to grab a quick breakfast, may close off the second floor of his home and move his family downstairs this winter to save on heating costs.

"People are getting laid off because businesses are closing down, and I've got two friends who are losing their houses," Roberts says between refilling coffee cups and offering hugs to the regulars. The town has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the state. Even tips are down as locals count their pennies. "The banks are nervous, and people are scared."

In this city and across the country, economic angst is shaping the political landscape for the election Nov. 4. More than two in three Americans in the latest USA TODAY/Gallup Poll cited an economic concern — energy prices, health care coverage or the economy in general — as the central issue in determining their vote for president.

"It's like a multiple-car accident on the highway — just a collision of things," says Robert Forrant, a professor at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell who studies the economies of small New England cities. "There's disappearing jobs over a long period of time, then the home foreclosure crisis and obviously high energy costs. All of that has made people feel a great deal of economic anxiety."

The economy has trumped everything else, including the Iraq war, which loomed as a defining issue a year ago. Thirteen percent of those surveyed Sept. 5-7 named the war as their top concern.

Worry about the economic future already has shaken up one election in this leafy mill town of 40,000 on the Nashua River.

In the mayor's race last November, a 28-year-old Chinese American woman who promised a new path routed a longtime member of the City Council by 3-1, shaking the power structure. Lisa Wong, now 29, ran on a platform of reforming city finances and revitalizing the downtown. She wants to attract art galleries and restaurants, see historic buildings converted to urban condos and even build a whitewater kayaking course.

In the presidential election this November, both campaigns see Democrat Barack Obama as all but certain to carry the Bay State and its 12 electoral votes. Among the most reliably Democratic states in the nation, Massachusetts hasn't voted for a Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan. A statewide Rasmussen poll last month of 500 likely voters gave Obama a double-digit lead, 51%-36%, over Republican John McCain.

Even so, the economy has created the sort of political crosscurrents here that are apparent in more competitive battlegrounds. From Pennsylvania to New Hampshire and across the Rust Belt, communities like Fitchburg have searched for financial footing after the loss of manufacturing jobs to Southern states and foreign competitors. The economic slowdown has made those efforts harder.

Nascimento, 46, a father of four, has never voted for a Republican for president but leans toward McCain. Obama's message "is all about hope, nothing about experience," he says. "McCain has a little bit more experience." That's key to getting things done, he says.