Lifetime Democrat Votes for Romney as Uncles 'Roll Over in Their Grave'

Relaxing in a hallway chair at Grossmont Gardens retirement home, lifetime Democrat Walter Dickinson says he voted for Mitt Romney.

“My two uncles will be rolling over in their grave,” said Dickinson, 85, who has cast ballots since age 21 and the late 1940s.

A Jamul resident, Dickinson said he has been staying with his seriously ill wife at the Marengo Avenue assisted living center near Kaiser Permanente in La Mesa.

He says he admired former Gov. Romney for his work in making his former state a business success. And he also cited Romney’s father, George, for achievements as head of American Motors before becoming governor of Michigan.

“Look what he’s done for Massachusetts,” Dickinson said of the GOP candidate after dropping off his absentee ballot and chatting with poll workers for 10 minutes.

He recalled the late Richard Daley, the mayor of Chicago, and joked about his encouraging supporters to “vote early and often.” 

Dickinson also praised President Franklin Roosevelt, and even his wife, Eleanor, who he said suggested elements of the New Deal that helped bring the country out of Depression.

But Barack Obama is no FDR in Dickinson’s mind.

The octogenarian, whose uses a walker, accused Obama of messing the country up by helping Goldman Sachs and aiding the rich and not those suffering in the economy.

Dickinson said he grew up near Kansas City, MO, but has lived in San Diego County since getting out of the Air Force in 1954.