Economic view through eyes of mall voters

By Alexandra Berzon

Published Friday, Oct. 24, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Updated Friday, Oct. 24, 2008 | 2 a.m.

The mini-world of the Boulevard Mall was awakening. The sellers of wind chimes and wigs put finishing touches on displays and cinnabon odors began wafting through the expanse.

A left at KB Jewelers led into an atrium, and a very different scene. There, in line, were perhaps 100 voters. No one talked about shopping. They spoke about their struggles in the economy and their choices for president (the preference almost always was Barack Obama).

One man, sitting beyond the voting area, unbuttoned his Hawaiian shirt to reveal a secret T-shirt printed with a photo of he and his wife posing with Obama.

The first time I voted, it was in a neighbor’s garage in California. I punched my ballot next to boxes of a family’s mementos.

That garage was about as private a space as you could find. Elsewhere, voting is in churches and schools and community centers.

In Las Vegas we are accustomed to blurring public and private. Still, it was jarring for a newcomer to town to observe the most civic of actions occur next to a Dippin’ Dots, and to see voters in a consumer palace making choices based on a sour economy.

“Malls are where people are,” the Clark County Registrar of voters, Larry Lomax, said later, humored he was asked this dumb question in the midst of his busiest season. “It’s very convenient.”

Seventy-five thousand people voted at the Meadows and Galleria malls last election cycle, he said. This year 6,928 people had voted at Boulevard mall by Wednesday. In all of Clark County, 113,165 people had already voted, nearly 15 percent of voters in the county.

So malls become public places in election season, although not entirely.

I had gone to interview voters. A very large security guard decided that while it was OK for everyone else to talk politics, I couldn’t. (He watched as I walked to my car. The parking lot was private property, too.)

There’s a policy, he had explained. No interviewing customers. In the eyes of the mall, voters are customers first.

In most years that might be so. But this year, given the high enthusiasm for voting and the low state of the economy, voters appeared to be more interested in ballots than baubles.

Kicked out, I went to the Galleria in Henderson. Lines were equally long and the demographics included many John McCain voters.

As I waited at a customer service booth, women rented scooters for children and a security guard asked me why all journalists are socialists, which he said is evident by the absence of coverage of third-party candidates.

A public relations representative walked me to the voting area, between a Mervyns, which is going out business, and an FYE music and video store displaying a giant cardboard cutout of McCain. She said I could interview voters next to a photo engraving booth.

Angela Jones, a dental hygienist supporting McCain, said she and everyone she knows is hurting. Like nearly everyone I met at the Galleria, Jones made a special trip there to vote.

But she’ll probably also do some shopping. She sees that as a civic act, too.

“If we don’t spend money, more and more people will be put out of a job,” Jones said.

Galleria spokesperson Marie Martorano said shopkeepers are thrilled with the extra traffic. Through Wednesday, 13,662 people had voted there.

“Everyone is pumped up and optimistic,” Martorano said. “It’s great timing because it kicks off our holiday season.”

Martorano and I seemed to agree: It says something about the current state of the union that voters go to the mall and turn into potential customers instead of the other way around.