photo by Tricia Romano

While millions of Americans tuned in to watch senators John McCain and Barack Obama face off in their first presidential debate, I headed to a neat little apartment in Marina Del Rey to see how the local Republicans reacted to the debate.

It probably wasn’t your typical Republican debate watch party. For one, the host, Carol Schleicher, is more of an independent than a hard-line Republican and she insisted that she never votes the party ticket. Rather, she and her husband, Richard Schleicher, had only recently registered Republican after years voting as an independent. She said she didn’t grow up thinking about which party to join. “That’s poppycock,” she told me after the party, adding that she had always thought it was silly to take sides. But Schleicher’s husband has a son in the military who has been in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and she said that has at least had an influence on their views of foreign policy and national security.

But the party was also somewhat atypical because it was a first for Schleicher and for many of her guests, and because she had opened her doors to visitors of all political persuasions.

“I don’t know many Republicans. I just threw this party figuring they’d come out of the wood works,” she said.

And so they did. Schleicher said she only knew three other people at her home on Friday night: her husband, her pet sitter, and a friend originally from Beijing named Xuling Wu. In the middle of the debate, (I counted 16 guests). Schleicher said one of them was actually for Obama (I didn’t hear a peep out of him all night). There may also have been a few holdouts who were either independent or still undecided. But almost half the guests were in favor of McCain and vocal about it.

It was a mixed group in terms of age, gender, even demeanor. A retired Boeing engineer named Kerry Lohr-Williams got worked up several times and talked back at the TV-Obama. A bit quieter that night, accountant Faye Neflas said it was her first debate watch party and that she didn’t know anyone else there. An anesthesiologist and writer named Andrew Kadar attended, as did an electrical engineer, David Garcia. One guy, Wu’s husband, described his occupation simply as “transport.” (He picks up the deceased from peoples’ homes and transports them to the local mortuary.)

So how did this group perceive the debate, and who did they think won? Most seemed to take it as a victory for McCain, as might be expected. And many were quite vocal throughout, with one younger man blurting out at the finale, “He (McCain) mopped the floor with him!” It was almost like watching a sporting event.

When Obama stuttered or strayed, the crowd groaned. They noticed his slip when he seemed to refer to either Jim Lehrer or John McCain as “Tom,” but they didn’t seem to notice McCain calling Ahmadinejad “Ach-ma-nen-i-jod.” When McCain gave a verbal jab and followed it with a left hook, they clapped, chuckled, and affirmed. They laughed at McCain’s response when Obama said he would meet with world leaders without preconditions—”So let me get this right. We sit down with Ahmadinejad, and he says, ‘We’re going to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth,’ and we say, ‘No, you’re not’? Oh, please.”

One of this group’s favorite McCain lines: “I’m not going to set the White House visitors schedule before I’m president of the United States. I don’t even have a seal yet,” referring to the flak Obama received for using a seal that looked distinctly presidential while still on the campaign trail.

Jabs aside, one of the major sticking points for the party was Obama’s insistence that McCain would be just another Bush. Several pointed out they were tired of hearing that argument and that it simply wasn’t true.
They also beleived that Obama was showing his lack of experience and world knowledge, and that was scaring off some who claimed they wanted to like him. Mr. Schleicher said he liked Obama but his main concern was that Obama was still too “wet behind the ears.” Garcia said he had started out an Obama fan but switched to Hillary Clinton when he “found out more about him.” When Clinton lost, he joined the McCain camp. In fact, at least one guest pointed out that Obama’s problem was that he wasn’t making himself known to the public, and they didn’t want to vote for a candidate that appeared unpredictable.

All in all, however, several guests said it wasn’t a total win either way, and they acknowledged that their tendency to see it as a McCain victory is a product of sharing the Republican candidate’s views. That’s something even a Dem can agree with.