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Service members cast votes, discuss the issues

Military members did their part to get out the vote Tuesday, hitting the polling stations to pick the candidate who will be their next commander in chief, Sen. John McCain or Sen. Barack Obama.

Defense Department policy places some restrictions on service members in discussing election outcomes, but several sailors and Marines not in uniform and contacted outside polling stations weighed in as private citizens on the military issues they want the next president to tackle.

Austin Tice took a leave of absence from law school in 2005 to get a commission in the Marine Corps. He describes himself as a “typical liberal democrat.” In August he returned from a combat tour in Anbar as an infantry officer with 1st platoon, Echo Co., 2/24 Marines, a reserve unit based in Des Moines.

Now a captain select in the Individual Ready Reserve, he’s a first-year student at Georgetown University’s law school. As a member of a group called Protect the Vote, he manned a poll here to lookout for voter interference and other election-day antics.

“The war in Iraq for me is the most important issue,” he said. “My feeling is America has accomplished our mission there. So I personally would like to see more emphasis placed on Afghanistan and finding bin Laden.”

He said he identifies with Obama. “I think, like a lot of Americans, I see a little of myself in him,” he said. “He’s thoughtful and articulate and I think that will do the country a lot of good.”

Marine Cpl. Mark Malagisi, 23, an aircraft navigation systems technician with Marine Air Logistics Squadron 29, Marine Corps Air Station New River, N.C., also listed the war as his most important issue — which is why he planned to vote for McCain.

“Obviously it’s the war in my eyes,” he said of what the next president’s top priority. “As long as we’re going to be in this war, we may as well do it right so we don’t have to go back in later. We can’t have a president who can pull us out of this war right now.”

Marine Gunnery Sgt. Walter Jordan went to Iraq in 2003 with the initial invasion. He returned from a expeditionary strike group deployment to the Middle East in January. Jordan is combat cargo assistant assigned to the amphibious transport dock ship Ponce and he said the high pace of deployments has been hard on the force.

“A lot of guys are tired,” he said.

Yet despite the strain on the troops, he said the U.S. has made a commitment to the people of Iraq. “We need to finish what we started over there. If we pull out and don’t finish the job, what’s that say about our country and our military?”

Jordan said the high number of veterans, wounded and not, coming back from overseas need to be heeded.

“whoever is the next president needs to earmark for the veterans because there will be a lot of them,” he said.

He did not say who he chose. “I think it’s time for the people to see something different,” he said. “It’s a matter of Americans helping each other out and sticking together.”

And as a Marine serving with the Navy aboard an aging amphibious warfare ship, Jordan said the fleet needs a look from the top.

“Hopefully the next president will pay attention to the next classes of ships,” he said.

Army Maj. Chris Shields, who desribes himself as a “fiscal conservative,” voted for Obama, although he said it was a “hard decision” for him.

Shields, executive officer for the Fires Battalion, 5th Brigade, 1st Armored Division at Fort Bliss, Texas, said Obama won him over with his stance on the environment and his rhetoric on the need to get “us weaned off a gasoline-based economy.”

Shields said he doesn’t believe the Army will change drastically under Obama’s leadership.

“I don’t thing he’s going to change a lot of things,” he said. “I don’t think he’s going to pull out of Iraq that quickly, unless he wants to let it fall into anarchy.”

Shield’s said his main concern is future of funding for the Army.

His advice to Obama: “Don’t cut the military’s budget when you get into office. It’s a very large and convenient thing to cut, but it’s a very shortsighted fix to economic problems. We’ll just pay for it later on when we have to go into anther conflict.”

He also advised not cutting funds for future technologies like FCS. “That is what is going to get us through the next war after Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said.

Marine Sgt. Justin Peoples, 26, a helicopter mechanic with Marine Air Logistics Squadron 26 at Marine Corps Air Station New River, N.C., voted for McCain, despite the fact that he’d prefer to see troops pulled out of Iraq sooner than later.

“I know Obama would probably do that sooner,” he said, adding he believed McCain could better handle other issues. “Taxes, lower taxes. Lower gas prices. More jobs.”

For some service members, experience was a factor in their voting decisions. After casting his vote for John McCain in one Jacksonville, N.C., polling place, Marine Staff Sgt. Jess Horvath, 27, said he wanted to see the next president tackle immigration and the war on terrorism.

Horvath, an artilleryman with the Camp Lejeune, N.C.-based 3rd Battalion, 10th Marines, said one reason he voted for McCain is because the Arizona senator has “got more experience than the other guy.”

“I looked at the bigger picture — my job,” Horvath said. “I think McCain will focus more on my job, on the military, than Obama.”

Aviation Ordnanceman 2nd Class (AW) Linzell Walker is assigned to Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron 14 in Norfolk. He’s says the military is in good shape but the rest of the nation worries him.

“It’s the present state of the economy right now. Not just the military but everybody. To have these companies collapse is just unreal,” he said. “Things are getting bad to where [CEOs] who are supposed to be looking out for people but they’re ripping them off.”

Marine Sgt. Steven Castro, 33, who typed away on a computer at the Jacksonville, N.C., United Service Organizations the morning of Nov. 4 with plans to head to the polls later that afternoon, agreed.

“I’m voting for Obama,” said Castro, with Marine Headquarters Group, II Marine Expeditionary Force. “I definitely think the economy is the big thing. It’s hurting everybody. That should be one of the first problems he tackles. Take care of home and jobs and you don’t have to worry about a lot of other things.”

Respondents to a recent Military Times poll ranked the economy as the second most important issue, behind character of the candidate. The war in Iraq — the top issue in the 2004 election poll — ranked third.

Army Sgt. 1st Class Benjamin Philpott, a 12-year veteran who commands the Lakewood, Ohio, recruiting station and who voted for McCain, said he thinks Obama’s election will have an overall “negative effect” on th emilitary, based on … past Democratic administrations.”

But Philpott, a career recruiter with one Iraq tour under his belt, acknowledged that with Obama in the White House, his job of recruiting up to 13 people a month could get easier.

The Democrats “may decrease the number of troops and I won’t have as many people to put in the Army each month,” said. “The Democrats tend to slash military funding and put it in other areas.”

Col. Debbie Simpson, a case manager supervisor in the California National Guard’s Community Based Warrior Transition Unit in Sacramento, said she also voted for McCain, mainly because of Obama’s “lack of experience.”

“I’m concerned he will cut back on the budget for the military,” specifically “the money they are allowing for research for post-traumaticv stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. I live that everyday.”

Simpson also had some advice for Obama on the war in Iraq: “Choose very, very good advisors and listen to what they have to say.

“It’s going to take a few years” to safely reduce the U.S. troops presence, she said. “I think we need to do it, but I think we have to have a plan.”

Making the right choice “may not be the easy road for him as far as public support goes,” she said. “He’s going to have to make those hard decisions.”

But for Marmi Pintoff, “getting our military people home” along with affordable health care, led her and her husband, a 22-year Navy veteran, to vote for Obama.

“We just looked at both of them and we’re just tired of the Republicans,” Pintoff said after voting in the East Ocean View neighborhood of Norfolk. “I voted for John Kerry last time. I don’t vote the party. I vote for the candidate.”

Staff writers Andrew Scutro, Trista Talton, Matthew Cox and Gina Cavallaro contributed to this story.

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