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Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com

Published - Saturday, September 06, 2008

Palin draws enthusiastic crowd in Cedarburg

CEDARBURG, Wis. (AP) — Sarah Palin gets Jeanne Cassinelli excited.

The 39-year-old homemaker from Oak Creek hadn’t heard of Alaska’s governor before Republican John McCain picked her as his running mate last week. But now there’s a candidate Cassinelli can identify with. She said Palin’s about her age, also has children and is involved with organizations like the PTA.

“I just think she’s exciting,” Cassinelli said.

She’s not alone. Hundreds of like-minded voters began lining up before dawn at three security checkpoints to get into the picturesque downtown of this solidly middle-class Milwaukee suburb of 11,000. Many said they would have voted for McCain anyway, but Palin’s addition to the ticket made them enthusiastic about their choice.

They greeted her with chants of “Sarah, Sarah!”

Palin thanked them for “that warm Wisconsin welcome to one of the most beautiful towns in America.” Then she quickly recycled one of the best zingers from her convention speech. Her experience as a small-town mayor in Alaska was similar to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama’s work as a community organizer, she said, “but you have actual responsibilities.”

The crowd roared.

Marty Wolf, 48, of Cedarburg, started researching Palin after McCain introduced her as his running mate. What he learned gave him greater confidence in McCain, said Wolf, a part-owner in a construction firm.

“I didn’t realize Sen. McCain was such a hero, but he is,” Wolf said. The choice shows McCain is willing to bring in a reformer with fresh ideas, he said.

“When Nancy Pelosi came to power, she demanded a bigger jet to fly back and forth to her district. When Sarah Palin came to power, she sold the jet on eBay,” Wolf said, recounting a story McCain later told the crowd was one of his favorites.

Jo Sadownikow, 37, of West Bend, said she considered McCain as one of two or three candidates she liked in the primary and planned to vote for him after he secured the party’s nomination. But Palin changed her attitude.

“She has me fired up,” said Sadownikow, who owns a small real estate company.

McCain has experience and the ability to work with Democrats, she said, but she had reservations about how conservative he was. Not so with Palin.

“She’s going to help lead him in the right direction,” Sadownikow said.

She said Palin’s experience dealing with the oil industry in Alaska will provide a good foundation for setting policy on offshore drilling, and Sadownikow is counting on Republicans to keep taxes down. But Palin particularly appeals to her one issue: abortion.

“We haven’t had someone running for office in so long who’s so outwardly pro-life,” she said.

That also appealed to Michelle Engman, a 43-year-old computer skills trainer from Cedarburg. She and her friend, Joan Scholz, got in line with their families at 7:45 a.m. to see the candidates speak at 11 a.m.

Engman said she supported former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in the primary but was now behind McCain. She wants a candidate who is pro-life and strong on defense. She watched McCain’s “awesome” convention speech Thursday night and appreciated him “thanking George Bush for everything he’s done since 9-11.”

Scholz, 41, a comptroller at Concordia University, was one of few in the crowd familiar with Palin before McCain introduced her as his running mate. She had hoped McCain would pick Palin and thought the choice would appeal to voters who had supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in her failed bid for the Democratic nomination.

“I thought a woman would help him out, a strong conservative woman to balance out the ticket,” Scholz said.