NEW YORK, Nov 3 (Reuters) – As Americans cast ballots in midterm elections that will decide control of Congress, voters told Reuters they were motivated by issues ranging from the cost of living to President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Here are some of their comments:
• Brittani Hamlin, 34, a Detroit data analyst who cares for her grandmother, said affordability, especially rising costs for healthcare and medication, spurred her to vote for Democrat Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan’s US Senate race.
“I chose El-Sayed because I’m a caregiver…I see that he’s trying to make big changes, trying to help us keep Social Security, trying to help them bring back down the medical costs,” Hamlin said in an interview.
Hamlin said she believed Republican candidate Mike Rogers “lays in bed with Big Pharma” and would not pursue policies that help working-class Americans.
• Natalia Towns, 34, is a Black resident of Detroit who voted for El-Sayed. She dismissed as last-minute political theater Rogers’ appearance at a Black church in Detroit on Sunday alongside Haley Stevens, El-Sayed’s former Democratic primary rival who had just endorsed Rogers.
“Don’t do it now. Do it because that’s who you are. Do that on the regular,” Towns said.
• Paul Stockyj, 63, voted for Rogers at a polling location in the city of Warren.
Democrat Stevens’ decision to support the Republican candidate was “very rare. It never happens. So, I got to believe that there’s something there,” Stockyj said in an interview.
El-Sayed “is a little bit more progressive than I would like…. Who’s going to pay for all the stuff that he wants to do? There just isn’t the money. (The) people that are going to pay for it are you and me.”
• Ryan Brown, a public school teacher in Chicago, focused on the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement. The 29-year-old said it made some of his students fearful to commute to work or school.
“One of my students was deported to Mexico in less than 48 hours,” said Brown, who declined to say whom he voted for.
“I had students who were asking me to literally find ways to help them get home because they were scared to walk home on a daily basis. Scared to get to work on a daily basis.”
• In Alaska, supporters of incumbent Republican Senator Dan Sullivan told Reuters they were not confused by the two Dan Sullivans on the ballot in the state’s US Senate race. Democratic former US Representative Mary Peltola is challenging Sullivan, and the outcome could prove critical in determining which party controls the Senate.
“They make it pretty obvious. It says ‘incumbent’ after his name” on the ballot, said Air Force member Jake Wesley, 27, who grew up in Anchorage and is stationed there. He said he voted to re-elect Sullivan because “things seem to be pretty good as is.”
In the southern Alaska fishing community of Kasilof, Judy Fischer, 45, said she voted for the incumbent without any identity confusion, but she worried that the presence of his namesake could sap votes. “People have to do their research,” she said.
• In Fort Worth, Texas, immigration dominated some voters’ concerns as they entered polling locations. Maria Cerda, 40, said many coworkers had been detained, deported and separated from their families. The cost of groceries and gasoline has also been a strain.
“I see a lot of things that I don’t like with Hispanic people, with all the things that ICE has been doing right now,” she said, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Trump’s strict immigration enforcement agenda drove the vote of cook Victor Garcia, 54.
“It’s the way they do it. That’s the most important,” he said.
(Writing by Helen Coster in New York. Reporting by Nathan Layne in Detroit, Dan Catchpole in Anchorage, Bianca Flowers in Chicago, David Hood-Nuño in Fort Worth and Ashraf Fahim and Arafat Barbakh in Warren, Michigan; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
