Democratic victory greeted with mixed reactions by local citizens

Asked how she felt about President-elect Joe Biden’s victory over President Donald Trump, Lisa O’Leary threw her arms outward and shouted one word:

“Overjoyed!”

O’Leary, a 66-year-old retired educator, was shopping Saturday morning at the Winter Market in Moscow’s 1912 Center shortly after news broke that the Associated Press had called Pennsylvania for Biden, giving him enough electoral votes to claim victory in the protracted contest.

“There’s a chance for sanity,” she said. “There’s a chance for calm. There’s a chance for attention to real issues, and not to a narcissist.”

O’Leary hoped that a Biden administration would renew the nation’s focus on things like environmental protection, health care and the “welfare of all people, not just the wealthy.”

“All people matter,” she said, “regardless of race, gender, age or country of origin.”

In Lewiston, Lynn Curtis offered a different take.

“I think Trump probably would’ve been better than Biden,” said Curtis, 64, who doesn’t work anymore because of a disability. “I think Biden was running for (Vermont Sen. Bernie) Sanders. He’s a puppet.”

Curtis said Trump did a good job of running the country for the last four years and deserved another term, although he did question the president’s social media habits.

“He just tweets too much.”

Thirty-year-old Joe Baylon of Pullman actually didn’t know Biden had been declared the victor until he was asked his opinion of the result. But he did wonder how Biden would be an effective leader if his fellow Democrats don’t gain control of the U.S. Senate.

“I’m not particularly attuned to the political beat,” said Baylon, an engineer at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories. “So I don’t really have a strong knee-jerk. But we’ll see where he takes the country, and see where the Senate goes. It seems to me like not a lot is going to happen if he’s got an opposed Senate.”

Two runoff elections this January in Georgia are likely to decide the balance of power in the Senate.

John Svancara, 41, of Clarkston, said that it is still too early to definitively say that Biden is the victor since not all votes have been tabulated nationwide. But as an employee of the Nez Perce County Sheriff’s Office, he did express worry about how much Biden would back law enforcement.

“I don’t know his level of support, given his previous comments,” Svancara said, noting Biden often expressed condolences first to the victims of police shootings. “There’s just a lot of issues where he’s buying into the media’s portrayal of stuff and not checking out the facts, or he’s just kind of keeping a blind eye to it and following what everybody wants him to say.

“I’m not saying there isn’t issues in law enforcement,” he added. “There’s bad apples in every profession. But to judge the whole profession based off of a couple of bad apples is not fair.”Stylist Danielle Gieser, 42, of Clarkston, said she was most thrilled that the nation wouldn’t have to endure Trump’s crass behavior anymore. She called Biden’s election a return to “basic decency.”

“I’m not politically in tune enough to know all the specifics, but to have somebody where we don’t have to look down and shake our head every time we see him on TV, I think that’s pretty cool,” Gieser said.

She said that as a stylist who is in close contact with multiple members of the public on a daily basis, she hasn’t appreciated the lack of leadership on a national level regarding behaviors that can stem the spread of the coronavirus, like wearing face masks.

“Why does it have to be our call?” she asked. “If everybody had put on a mask seven months ago for a month, things would be so much different.”

University of Idaho general studies major Nicole Sparano, 20, of Orofino, was volunteering at Moscow’s Winter Market Saturday. She said the news of Biden’s victory didn’t come as a surprise, but she worried that Trump wouldn’t concede.

“I don’t know what that entails, so I don’t really know what that means for us,” Sparano said. “It’s concerning for me. I would just like to see a peaceful transfer of power. If he’s super-passionate, he can run again. He has another term left. You can lose with dignity.”

Mills can be contacted at jmills@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2266.