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.
