Opposites Aren't So Attractive; Voting Record Trumps Religion, Looks and Schooling
By ELIZABETH WILLIAMSON

In the tussle over whether President Barack Obama or Mitt Romney would be the better steward of the American economy, Barbie Adler has a thing or two to say.


Portraits by Bradford
Shelia Davis only dates Republicans.

Ms. Adler owns Selective Search Inc., a high-end matchmaking service in Chicago. With 28 offices across the nation, the firm pledges to find the ideal mate for clients paying fees that start at $20,000. Not in four presidential elections has Selective Search seen so much love lost over politics.

In this neck-and-neck, ideologically fraught presidential election season, politically active singles won't cross party lines. The result is a dating desert populated by reds and blues who refuse to make purple.

Being a member of the opposite party often beats religious difference, unattractiveness, and low educational and professional attainment on Ms. Adler's clients' list of turnoffs. The trend holds with less-expensive services, too, including OK Cupid, a free service found by a group of Harvard math majors, and Match.com, which surveyed 5,000 singles this year and learned that 95% of them haven't changed their political opinions because of a relationship.

"People now say 'I don't even want to meet anybody who's from the other party,' even if it's someone who's perfect in every other way," Ms. Adler says. In past election years, about a quarter of her clients wouldn't date a member of the opposite party. Now it is three-quarters, Ms. Adler says. She has fewer problems matching Democrats and Republicans in Los Angeles, New York and Washington, but in swing states, "it's 24/7," she says.


Image Source, Inc.
Charles Rawlings only dates Democrats.

Shelia Davis, who lives in the perennial dogfight that is Florida, ought to be a matchmaker's dream. Petite with long blond hair and born in Tennessee, Ms. Davis is an ebullient entrepreneur whose executive-search firm and other interests have provided her with a comfortable retirement at age 47. Divorced and a mother of three, she is a world traveler, art lover, wine collector, dedicated philanthropist and a serious ballroom dancer. She is drawn to professional men, mostly CEOs, doctors and lawyers, but the artist in her longs for "someone I can play intellectual ping-pong with," she says.

Most of all, she wants "a good person, with a kind heart…someone who would love my children as I would theirs…someone who soothes my soul."

And there is one more thing: "I will only date a Republican—or a Democrat who has come to his senses and is now a Republican," she says. "I believe in the free-market society that made America great. I don't believe in Obamacare and government handouts. I want someone who's a giver and not a taker." She worries that for anyone with a liberal viewpoint, "it's simply not possible."


BARBIE ADLER

She went out recently with a Democratic suitor, an attorney. Though there was "a little needling" over dinner, they parted as friends. When Ms. Davis texted a wish-you-were-here photo of herself at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, intellectual ping-pong turned to high-speed squash.

"I thought wow, we are really different people," Ms. Davis recalled. "It's important to me to share my life with someone," she says. "Whether at the RNC or a fundraiser, I want someone who wants to be there, by my side."

Eight hundred miles from Ms. Davis's side, in Winston-Salem, N.C., Charles Rawlings is a neurosurgeon, attorney, deep-sea diver and published photographer. Like Ms. Davis, Dr. Rawlings, 53, is from Tennessee, and he is divorced with three children to whom he is devoted. He leads underwater photography expeditions when he isn't driving his daughter to cheerleading practice and representing patients in medical malpractice cases.

Each time he operates on someone's brain, he recalls that "84,000 people die each year because of medical malpractice," he says. He travels widely, yet enjoys the South, where his children "love their town," he says.

Winston-Salem has offered slim pickings for a liberal thinker who says his new book, "It Really Is That Complicated," "grabs the reader and propels them through the exotic (and erotic) landscape that is the foundation for male/female relationships."

The city is "extremely conservative, politically and in its view on life," he says. There are plenty of eligible women, with one problem: "They could be Miss America or a member of Mensa, but as soon as they say 'I'm a Republican,' probably in five minutes we won't be talking."

Dr. Rawlings has rolled the dice on a few GOP women, especially entrepreneurial types. He recalls dinner in a fancy restaurant in Charlotte with a woman who intrigued him with her business ideas, until it emerged that "she was one of these right-wing conservative Republicans who give 10- or 15% of their income to the Lord," he says.

Dr. Rawlings isn't religious, and as a physician, "I am 100% for a woman having the right to an abortion," he says. "That, right there, polarizes so many people here right off the bat," he says. That is before he tells them he is a tort lawyer and writer of exotic and erotic nonfiction.

Dr. Rawlings paid Selective Search to scour the Southeast, then Chicago, then California for a mate who is "intriguing or fascinating."

In a different era, perhaps Dr. Rawlings and Ms. Davis, two artistic, accomplished entrepreneurs born in Tennessee, might see a way around their differences, the way two other politically opposite Southern-based overachievers, political consultants Mary Matalin and James Carville, did in the 1980s. Those two are still taking their act on the road.

Sometimes, Ms. Adler's consultants will try to bridge the divide by describing a Democratic woman as "fiscally conservative," or a Republican male as "socially liberal." But in the case of these two, Ms. Adler doesn't see any hope for bipartisan compromise.

The "gender gap" is seemingly a permanent feature of presidential politics, and although recent polling has blurred the picture, the 2012 election appears set to confirm the pattern. The most recent Wall Street Journal poll shows that 53% of men support Mr. Romney, while 51% of women back Mr. Obama. Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg pointed out last week that 70% of unmarried women voted for Mr. Obama in 2008.

Party preference has become the basis for "a knee-jerk, umbrella judgment about who you are, where you are going to live, how many kids you want and how good you are in bed," says Columbia University psychologist Judith "Dr. Judy" Kuriansky, author of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Dating." "It's like we're back to the Civil War—if anyone is sleeping with the enemy, they're keeping it quiet."

Ms. Davis is concerned she is coming off as a bit inflexible. "I'm not a man-hater, I'm really not," she says. "It's more about who they are as a person. In any relationship it's a compromise." For example, "I may not like to go skeet-shooting."

What about deep-sea diving? "I'm willing to try anything once, as long as it doesn't risk my life," Ms. Davis replied.

What about dating, say, a true-blue deep-sea diver from a red state?

"It's disingenuous," she says, "because I know at the end of the day this person's a Democrat, and I'm a Republican and we're just different. I don't want controversy, I want peace."

Write to Elizabeth Williamson at elizabeth.williamson@wsj.com

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203872204578069373224970996.html/?mod=e2fb

This is pretty crazy to me. I don't think that political differences should be a deal-breaker.

What is there to debate, when it is obvious as ever that politics is just like 'ping-pong'?
Goooooooooooooooooooo ROMNEY!!!!

People who use these expensive services to find a mate are usually too selective already.