In South Carolina, Everything Turns on Jobs

ORANGEBURG, S.C. — Officially, the state of South Carolina calls the fancy new building the Orangeburg Workforce Center. Around here, people know it as the unemployment office. And everyone in Orangeburg County, it seems, can tell you how to get there.

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On Wednesday, Lashon Marshall, a home health care assistant with four children, was paying one of her regular visits to the center, scanning the computer for something that would bring more than the an hour, with no benefits, that she makes after seven years on the job.

She is glad to hear the candidates running in Saturday’s Democratic presidential primary here talk about helping working people, but she is skeptical that anything will come of it.

“We need somebody in the chair who is going to really just stand up and do what they say they’re going to do,” she said. “The war, I’m not thinking about too much now. But it seems like more and more people should step up and talk about this health care thing.”

For years, job woes have plagued this blue-collar central South Carolina county, which, like much of the state, has lost its textile and manufacturing economy to cheap overseas labor and is still groping for replacements. But the economic losses have not been equally distributed, and have helped to divide the state along racial lines.

In Orangeburg, unemployment has disproportionately affected blacks, even though, at more than 60 percent of the population, they hold the balance of political power. In 2006, unemployment among blacks here was pushing 20 percent, while among whites it was 3.3 percent. Thirteen percent of white households were below the poverty level, compared to 38 percent of black households.

Such dismal statistics have encouraged some voters to listen closely to the candidates’ proposals to give tax rebates, fix the trade imbalance and increase the minimum wage. But with the two Democratic front-runners, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, in general agreement on many of those issues, some say discontent over the persistent racial divide — along with anger among some black voters over criticism of Mr. Obama by former President Bill Clinton — will contribute to race-motivated voting on Saturday, giving an edge to Mr. Obama in the first state primary with a substantial number of African-American voters. Virtually all black voters here are Democrats, while a large majority of whites vote Republican.

On Thursday, on a dirt road near the small town of Bowman, Townsend Pelzer sat in his truck with his two lap dogs while his beagle chased rabbits in the woods. Mr. Pelzer, 83 and black, a retired maintenance worker for the state highway patrol, said he was going to vote for Mr. Obama. Asked why, he shrugged, smiled and pointed to his face, saying, “Color of my skin, I guess.”

Scott Mattingly, 22, a white economics teacher at a virtually all-white private school in Bowman, said that many of his fellow volunteers at the Obama campaign office were “ignorant of the issues and are far more excited about the concept of a black leader.”

But, he added, in a county where the large businesses are run by white men and “ancient parochial attitudes” persist, voter enthusiasm had a logic that went beyond simple loyalty. Offering a sort of trickle-down theory of eradicating racism, Mr. Mattingly said an Obama victory “would set a precedent that an African-American can lead.”

But race is far from the only factor voters are considering. Bishop Michael C. Butler of Victory Tabernacle, a black Pentecostal church, said he had counseled his parishioners to look beyond that issue in the voting booth. Mr. Butler, a Clinton supporter, said his congregation was made up largely of professionals.

“They’re concerned about the stability of their jobs, whether they will be able to maintain the lifestyle that they currently have,” he said.

George R. Dean, 66, who owns a men’s clothing store in downtown Orangeburg where all merchandise is now 50 percent off, said he had watched the battle for civil rights shift into the economic arena.

“This is not the South I grew up in the ’50s and ’60s,” he said “The struggle has come, and the struggle has gone. And the struggle has returned.”

Mr. Dean, who is black, continued, “This county grew politically very fast, but we did not grow economically. This has always been my pet peeve. This ain’t about democracy, this is about what? Capitalism.”

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