SELMA, Calif. — Frank Krum, a member of the marching band festival committee here, vows never again to cast a ballot for the county supervisor who ran for reelection by taking credit for measures he had voted against. Lacks integrity, sniffs Krum, 52.
Dottie Jett, a real estate agent and retired banker, has turned her back on the local politician who shook hands with all the male voters while campaigning for office--but ignored the women.
"That does not show good character," explains an indignant Jett, 56. "Character is respect for all sexes, races and ages."
Character--and the lack thereof--is on the agenda under the flapping flag at Archie's Place, where the self-proclaimed Sidewalk Committee meets six days a week to sip and puff, cuss and discuss. But here in the raisin capital of the world, they're not just talking about Peyton Place on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Krum, Jett and their compatriots in caffeine are struggling to define just what character means in public and private life alike and to quantify how it will figure in the decisions they make on election day. For figure it will, one way or another.
In dozens of interviews conducted in small towns and mid-sized cities along California 99--this state's literal and figurative backbone--voters like those on the Sidewalk Committee said character does count when they cast their ballots, for some now more than ever.
Yes, many voters say it is the issues like education and abortion, the death penalty and gun control that draw citizens into the voting booth and toward certain candidates in the first place, as evidenced in the latest Times poll and other recent electoral temperature taking.
But many also say the character of the candidates will guide their decision-making when they stand, ballot in hand, on Nov. 3. President Clinton's affair with intern Monica S. Lewinsky--followed by a small parade of other politicians' recently admitted infidelities--has made certain of that.
Some voters, soured by a process that they say can rub the values right out of any politician, have given up and turned away. But most along this agricultural artery--where the billboards insist on everything from the need to impeach the president and the dangers of abortion to the nutritional value of black-eyed peas--say they are searching for candidates with belief systems that match their own. Some are looking for any beliefs at all out there on the hustings.
