Naperville Nancy
| 🌱 | |
| Era | The Seventies |
|---|---|
| Age | 30-36 |
| Home | Naperville, IL |
| Demographic | suburban, white, civic volunteer |
| Lean | Swing voter |
| Race | white |
Nancy is a mother of three in a Naperville subdivision who chairs her town's League of Women Voters, her children's school parent committee, and her church's fundraiser. She is the cast's organised suburban moderate, and she decides her vote late every November.
Who they stand for
DuPage County doubled in population in the 1960s and 1970s, as Bell Laboratories, the Argonne National Laboratory and Amoco's research centre brought engineers' families to Naperville. The wives of those engineers built the town's civic life. Nancy's bloc is the college-educated Protestant woman of Chicago's collar counties. She is Republican because of her neighbourhood and moderate in temperament, and she supplies the volunteer labour behind the League of Women Voters, school funding referendums, and the first Earth Day in April 1970. Her decade is defined by the environment. The Clean Air Act of 1970, the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Clean Water Act, passed over Nixon's veto in 1972, are the legislation she identifies with, and the phosphates polluting Lake Michigan are her local grievance. Her senator is Charles Percy. Her state's unfinished argument is the Equal Rights Amendment, which Illinois never ratified. Watergate confirms her belief that the political parties are often run by people less trustworthy than the voters who elect them. John Anderson's independent presidential run in 1980, launched from his Illinois congressional seat, is aimed at a voter like her.
Playing to them
Nancy responds to competence, clean air and water, and a campaign conducted without personal insult. A president who signs environmental laws, funds schools, and behaves honestly wins her support regardless of party, and she is won more by what a president does than by what a president says. She will not forgive dirty campaigning, a scandal treated as ordinary politics, or extremism from either the left or the right. The 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago and the White House tapes released in 1974 each cost the party responsible her vote. She is torn on the war in Vietnam and on the women's liberation movement, so a president need not take a side on either issue to hold her support, but must not mock either side. Winning her support costs little on the left, since Upper West Side Ruth and Berkeley Bruce share her environmentalism. It costs support on the right. Pollution controls on industry irritate Muncie Merle. Federal money for schools loses the support of Sun City Dot. The moderation that wins her support is regarded as weakness by Southie Sean and Delta Earl, who want a president willing to fight.
Where they live
The five states where Naperville Nancy makes up the largest share of the electorate in the seventies:
- Oregon
- Illinois
- Washington
- Minnesota
- Colorado