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To understand the anxiety and excitement California Democrats faced on Super Tuesday, just talk to Diane Levinson of San Jose.
“I’m afraid, nervous — nervous that we can blow it as Democrats and re-elect (President) Trump, that we will hand it to him in our confusion,” said the 63-year-old ceramic artist.
Whether they were Democrats like Levinson, fitfully weighing who best could defeat Trump in November, Republicans like Dawn Burt eager to support the president’s economic and immigration policies, or people drawn by state and local measures for schools and housing, voters came out in force Tuesday.
Levinson’s ballot had sat on her dining room table untouched for three weeks. But on Tuesday morning, a day after moderates Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg dropped out, she picked it up and wavered. Should she pick former Vice President Joe Biden who “had new life,” or Sen. Elizabeth Warren who is “my favorite”? What about Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has energized young voters with his promised “revolution” but could have the most trouble facing Trump?
“I chose Bernie, but I could have flipped,” Levinson said. “I don’t know what’s right. I bubbled it in at the last minute.”
On the day the California primary, with its rich trove of delegates, finally mattered in helping decide who would take on President Trump in November, many Democrats had to choose between voting with their heads or their hearts. And in the Bay Area, the epicenter of Trump resistance, that left many confused, tense and fed up like never before.
“I just feel like the country is in dire straits,” said Dianne Lomonaco, voting at Willow Creek Center in Concord. “I don’t think we’re a leader in the world anymore. I worry about where it’s all headed.”
Patti Massey, a legal services lawyer in San Jose, said she, too, is “stressed out.”
“I’ve been waiting to see how things have been unfolding so my vote could make a difference,” she said. She finally decided on Warren.
For many Sanders supporters, including those who were heartbroken after his loss to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primary, Tuesday was a day of eagerness, enthusiasm and perhaps redemption. Many showed up for his rally in San Jose Sunday.
“I don’t think I would have voted for him if I didn’t think he had a chance at all.” said Sam Tapley, a 27-year-old Oakland resident who works in sales. “He’s one of the only guys up there where I can tell he’s talking to me.”
Across the Bay Area, voters lined up for an hour or more, some requesting new ballots to replace the ones they had marked for other candidates in the days before they went to the polls. Some wore masks, in a sign of the growing worry about coronavirus, and some voting centers had placed hand sanitizer on the counter.
In the East Bay, George Craig, 70, a retired UC administrator from El Cerrito said he voted for Biden because “we need normal.” At the Rengstorff Community Center in Mountain View, Brad Clements, a registered nonpartisan, also supported Biden, saying he was concerned Sanders would “ruin the country.” On Tuesday, Biden greeted voters at the Buttercup diner in Oakland.
“Sanders is just too pie in the sky, not friendly to anybody, angry at everybody and another extreme to Trump,” said Clements, 38, who used to be a Democrat but is now nonpartisan because the party was becoming “too extreme.”
For Adriana Quiroz, who with her husband, Guillermo, owns an arcade and piñata store in San Jose, extreme might be just what’s needed now.
“We need Trump out. That’s it for me,” said Quiroz, 36, voting for Sanders at the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum. “We need to go extreme with Bernie, too.”
Christopher Telomen, 28, a landscape designer in San Jose, also voted for Sanders, saying that a vote for a “moderate centrist” like Biden wouldn’t address the level of dissatisfaction Americans feel.
Republicans, meanwhile, were intrigued by the fractious Democrats and the choice they will make.
One San Jose Republican, who considers Trump “disgusting,” said he would join Democrats in November if they chose a moderate like Biden. But “there’s no way I would vote for Bernie,” he said, declining to be identified for fear he would be ostracized by his Democratic friends and acquaintances.
Burt of San Jose, who is self-employed, said she voted for Donald Trump and thinks the Democratic primary so far has been “child’s play.” She said not one of the presidential candidates running for the Democratic nomination has the “vision or plan to implement their programs.”
“I want jobs, I want a good economy, I want a strong market for a good economy and I want my continued tax breaks,” Burt, 53, said from the voting center at the Italian American Heritage Foundation Cultural Center in San Jose. “I don’t want more federal or state spending and I want immigration control.”
Voters were also drawn to the polls by Proposition 13, a school funding measure backed by Gov. Gavin Newsom. But some weren’t ready to support it.
“I feel like the government just doesn’t understand how to utilize the money we already give them,” Richard Johnson, 67, of Concord who voted against the proposition. “Their answer to everything is, ‘Let’s raise taxes.’”
Telomen, the San Jose landscape designer, said he’s “fully invested” in San Jose’s Measure E, which would tax sales of properties worth more than $2 million to fund affordable housing. “People who own property over $2 million can give a little,” he said.
Still, despite all the attention on California and the significance of its first Super Tuesday primary, some voters were fatalistic.
“I feel kind of defeated, like it’s not going to really matter because Trump is going to win again anyway,” said Suzie Lew, 50, of West Oakland who voted for Sanders.
Valerie Zeller, 72, of San Jose, who was a “Eisenhower Republican” before shaking John F. Kennedy’s hand at the San Jose Civic Center in 1960, is trying to look on the bright side.
“If Trump gets re-elected,” she said, “it will only strengthen my resolve to live another four years to see someone else in office other than him.”
Mercury News Staff Writers Linda Zavoral, Marisa Kendall, Aldo Toledo, Judith Prieve, Rick Hurd, Maggie Angst and Thy Vo contributed to this report.
