DENVER (AP)—In Their Words: Colorado voices at the polls Tuesday:
Paul Lusby, 48, is a self-described staunch Republican and Catholic who voted for John McCain because he believes McCain can fix the economy and will prosecute the Iraq war. Lusby recently was laid off from his job as a federal security officer at Denver International Airport.
“I think it’s a changing point in our history,” Lusby said at a central Denver polling station. “I’m not for extracting (from the war) to where we’re going to lose face.”
Like many other Coloradans, Lusby said he’ll back whoever won the election. “Whether Obama gets it or McCain gets it, they’re going to be dealing with some of these things 10 years from now.”
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Sonja Ferro, 50, of Erie, works in a drugstore in Thornton. She voted for Obama. “Everything he says, I agree with and say, ‘Yeah.'”
Creating jobs and health care are the new president’s top issues, she said. “I usually vote anyway. I’m still more motivated because there is so much at stake,” she said. Ferro said she heard a lot of voter anger this year: “It seems to be Wall Street, people struggling to pay their mortgages.”
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Debra Shane, 43, a Democrat from Thornton, works at a sandwich shop and planned to vote after work with her husband and two children, ages 19 and 21. Regardless of who wins, she said, it’ll take longer than four years for either candidate to dig America out of “this mess.”
“If they did, I’d be shocked,” Shane said.
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Shirley Sudbeck, 76, voted for John McCain at the Heritage Christian Center in Arapahoe County but said it wasn’t an easy choice.
“It was kind of hard to vote this year. I didn’t like either one of them, but I kind of changed my mind at the end,” said Sudbeck, who said her top issue was the economy and that she thought she would be taxed less with a McCain administration.
“You get so annoyed. You don’t have to a lot of money and then you give it back to the government,” she said.
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Denver Broncos wide receiver Brandon Marshall, 24, an outspoken supporter of Obama, said he voted for the first time in his life Tuesday. He grabbed the red, white and blue “I voted” sticker off a sweatshirt hanging in his locker and plucked it on his forehead for television cameras.
“I got up, I started my routine early. I got up at 5 o’clock, caught a few balls and ran a little bit. And then I headed to the polls pretty early,” said Marshall, who got in line at 6:20 and said he was finished 10 minutes after the polls opened at 7 a.m.
“It was great,” he said. “I enjoyed it. It was exciting. And I recommend everybody who hasn’t done it to go out and do it, have a voice.”
