When Raymond Wejroch took to the ice for the first time, ankles buckling in his skates and head bobbing in his too-big helmet, it felt a bit like destiny, at least for his mother watching misty eyed in the stands.
His father played ice hockey. His cousins play ice hockey. Now, aged just five and a half, Raymond is being initiated into the sport too — which gives his mother, Susan, instant membership of the group that could well decide this election: ”hockey moms”.
Sarah Palin’s arrival as Republican vice-presidential candidate — and self-described pitbull-in-lipstick hockey mom — has redefined the politics of identity in an election dominated by race, gender and age.
Hillary Clinton’s run for the Democratic presidential nomination produced widespread excitement about women candidates. Now Palin — white, middle class, and non-metropolitan — could be the deciding factor in determining whether white working- and middle-class suburban mothers vote for Barack Obama or John McCain.
In its narrowest sense Palin, as hockey mom, can claim a personal connection to the mothers of America’s 350 000 hockey-playing children and youth, concentrated in northern battleground states such as Michigan.
The McCain camp claims though that any mother shuttling her children between school and sport or music classes can identify with Palin.
”It means she is down to earth and involved on that deep level with her family,” says Wejroch, who gave up her job as a market researcher to stay home with her three sons.
Wejroch, who says she will vote for the Republican ticket in November, does not think that Palin’s career as Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate makes McCain’s running mate any less focused on her traditional role. ”Even though she is involved in such a high position in her state, she makes sure she has got time for her family,” says Wejroch.
Others at the rink in Livonia, a Detroit commuter town, agree that Palin seems more approachable than an earlier generation of female politician including Clinton or even Nancy Pelosi, the first woman speaker of the house and, like Palin, a mother of five.
Clinton, with her suits and her pride in her profession as a lawyer and senator, was off-putting to those women who still place importance in traditional roles.
”[Palin] just seems like someone you can relate to. Hillary Clinton doesn’t seem like you could sit down and have a cup of coffee with her,” says Vicky Rokas, a solid Republican voter who counts herself a Palin fan.
For Rokas, who has spent years shuttling three hockey-playing children to practice and out-of-state tournaments, Palin’s hockey mom experience is just as valid as her professional credentials.
Rokas argues that hockey moms, who must supervise homework and dinner ice-side, are by necessity focused and disciplined. They must be: it costs about $1 500 a season for a child to play the sport. They are also tough when the situation warrants. Rokas admits to her share of confrontations with parents of children on opposing teams.
And while Palin’s son, Track, is now in the US military and has not played hockey for more than a year, Rokas says the Republican politician is still entitled to call herself a hockey mom.
But the positive image is far from universal. Many women admit a visceral dislike of McCain’s running mate.
”She scares the hell out of me. Every time I see her I go home and open my wallet, and write another cheque for Obama,” says Pilar Herrera-Fierro, looking up from her copy of the New York Times to watch her daughter’s practice.
The immediate burst of enthusiasm about Palin’s candidacy has faded. The comedian Tina Fey has turned Palin’s gaffes on foreign policy — such as the line about seeing Russia from Alaska — into a spoof on the TV show Saturday Night Live.
Women voters have also become more conscious of Palin’s retrograde views on global warming and others issues.
”It is this narrative of working mom that has really captured the imagination of women right now, and it has not yet really touched on policy issues,” said Debbie Walsh, the director of the Centre of Women and American Politics at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
Even so, Palin has eroded Obama’s early advantage among women voters. A Lifetime poll last week showed he and McCain almost tied in support among women, 47% and 45% respectively. The poll also showed married white women favoured McCain as the candidate who could bring ”real” change and who understood their concerns.
That could cost Obama. Women voters have determined the outcome of every US election for the last 40 years.
Since the early 1980s more women have turned out to vote than men and they have tilted towards the Democrats. The 1996 contest saw Bill Clinton re-elected with strong support from so-called ”soccer moms”. Although in 2004 women swing voters — dubbed ”security moms” that year — generally favoured John Kerry, enough voted for George Bush for the incumbent to win.
They are also crucial in Livonia and the other predominantly white suburbs around Detroit. Obama cannot win Michigan without a strong showing in the suburbs, and he cannot win the White House without Michigan.
While he has moved ahead of McCain in the polls in the state in the last few days, the Democrat needs to hang on to women voters. Unfortunately for Obama, there are signs they have been undergoing a shift to the right.
Michigan, the home of America’s dying car industry, has the country’s highest unemployment rate at 8.9%. Ed Sarpolus, a prominent Michigan pollster, argues that economic uncertainty — heightened by the collapse on Wall Street, the housing crisis and higher petrol prices — has made women voters in Michigan especially nervous about the prospect of further upheaval.
Even the most fanatical hockey families are economising. Livonia, which runs the most popular youth hockey programme in the greater Detroit area, has seen enrolment drop this year.
The cutbacks and uncertainty make women less receptive to Obama’s message of change.
”What has been happening in Michigan is that younger women, especially those under 40, are becoming more conservative — although not so much more church-going,” Sarpolus says. ”They are fearful, because of the economy, for their kids and worried about their husband’s jobs.”
The McCain campaign is also mining that economic discontent, and hoping to deflect resentment against the Bush administration — which could help Obama — on to Michigan’s Democratic governor, Jennifer Granholm.
However, the Obama camp believes that their man stands to do better in a poor economic climate, and that ”bread and butter” issues will eventually outweigh Palin’s emotional appeal to more conservative women voters.
”What we found here on the ground is that economic issues trump everything else,” said Amy Chapman, Obama’s Michigan campaign director. ”The economy is the number one issue.” – guardian.co.uk