by PATRICK BABCOCK
Lifestyles Reporter

The 2008 election will be historic and, possibly, the most important in the nation’s history, Larry Keeter said.

Keeter served as the mayor of the Town of Boone for two terms in the early 1990s and served on the Town Council for four years prior. He is a now a professor in the Department of Sociology at Appalachian State University.

Keeter

“Big difference, of course, is that they let you vote… in the Plemmons Student Union for the first time,” Keeter said “They are permitting you to register and vote on campus.”

This is a remarkable change, Keeter said, given the past history of student exclusion from voting.

“When I was in big-time local politics, we were very skeptical of [Appalachian students],” Keeter said.  “[The student body is] a sleeping giant… You get a thousand students to vote for you and you could be mayor of this town.”

Student voting has always been the x- factor in local elections, he said. Alcohol voting has always been a sore spot for student voters.

“When I was on the town council in 1982, we had the first vote on alcohol in Boone since the 1940s… and it did not pass,” he said. 

The vote was scheduled after the students went home for the spring, he said.

“They did that to exclude the students,” he said.

Purposeful exclusion occurred again recently, Keeter said, with the liquor by the drink vote, which passed.

The demographics have also changed, Keeter said.

There are more outsiders living in Boone than insiders, he said.

“Watauga County is traditionally Republican,” he said.

The student population and alumni who stayed in Boone after graduation have influenced the political demographic.

“The thing passed [without a significant student vote], so that must mean maybe, maybe there are people living in the city limits of Boone that weren’t raised here and who, therefore, might not be as opposed to liquor by the drink,” he said.

There are other demographic changes having to do with issues, particularly race and religion, he said.

“The southern Baptists are supporting McCain, and his wife is a beer lady,” Keeter said.

When he was in office, he said southern Baptists would never have supported someone sponsored by alcohol.

“That’s maturity, or that’s the secularizing of religion, the triumph of culture over religion, I don’t know what it is,” he said.

There has also been a shift in how people are influenced to vote, he said.

“Obama has inspired and attracted young people, that includes college-age people, and also African-Americans are registered to vote in record numbers.”

Other issues are also influencing voting, especially the economic crisis, he said.

“The economy’s stupid – you get people’s pocket books, that’s where they live – so that’s really struck a chord,” he said.

Because of all of this and the early voting, he said this will be a record voting season.

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