Pro and anti-Trump Kentucky voters gear up for midterms
Voters in a Kentucky district are divided on Donald Trump ahead of November’s midterms; some love him for his imperfections, others are aghast.
Tom Norris stands on his farm in the bluegrass country of central Kentucky and says he has come to love Donald Trump because he is not the perfect president.
“He is real,” says Norris. “Donald Trump has warts, but all great men have warts. Churchill had warts, John F. Kennedy had warts, and so does Trump. But he puts America first, which is what we need right now. I hope the Australian government puts your interests first, too.”
Like millions of Americans, Norris, who is a retired computer programmer, will cast his vote in next month’s US midterm elections purely because of Trump.
Although there are a host of local issues at play in the districts across the US where the shape of congress will be determined, no single issue outshines Trump. The November 6 poll will be the first opportunity for most Americans to deliver a verdict on the performance of their maverick and at times mercurial President.
Polls suggest the traditional midterm backlash against a sitting president and his party will happen — the question is whether it will be large enough to give Democrats the 23 seats they need to win control of the House of Representatives and the two seats they need to win the Senate.
With Trump’s approval rating remaining historically low, between the upper 30s and mid-40s, history suggests the Democrats should win control of the house. The Senate will be much harder because the Democrats will be defending seats in 10 states that Trump won in 2016.
But if the Democrats are to win back control of the house they must win key battleground seats such as Kentucky’s 6th congressional district, where Republican incumbent Andy Barr faces a challenge from Amy McGrath, a former marine who was the first woman to pilot an F/A-18 fighter in combat.
Barr has strongly backed Trump despite the EU slapping tariffs on US bourbon imports in retaliation for Trump’s steel tariffs. Bourbon is a $US8.5 billion ($11.9bn) industry in Kentucky, employing 17,500 people.
McGrath has portrayed Barr as a creature of Washington and herself as an anti-establishment candidate who will reconnect the Democrats with working and middle-class voters. Barr has courted the conservative vote by attacking McGrath over her claims to be a “progressive” and a “feminist”.
The district includes the Democrat-leaning city of Lexington and extends into Republican-leaning rural hills of bluegrass country, studded with horse farms and bourbon distilleries.
Polls show the race is a toss-up, so much so that Trump and Democrat Joe Biden have held rallies here in the past week. In central Kentucky, Trump sharply divides local opinion even though the 6th district and Kentucky voted for Trump by a comfortable margin in 2016.
Sarah Hitchcock, playing with her children Jeffrey and Evelyn in a park near the small town of Churchill, says Trump has divided even her own family.
“When I told my father I had voted for Hillary Clinton over Trump, he said I had voted for a baby-killer,” says Hitchcock, who works at Starbucks and whose parents are staunch Trump fans.
“But I can’t vote for the Republicans because of the way Trump treats women,” she says. “For me, women’s rights and women’s issues are the most important. It was terrible that Brett Kavanaugh got into the Supreme Court — I mean that was just wretched.”
When Inquirer travelled through central Kentucky, the controversy over the confirmation of Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court was still raw in the minds of many. Some nominated the issue as the most important in swaying their vote. Both Republicans and Democrats predict the Kavanaugh controversy will fire up their base and get them to the ballot box. This is especially important in the midterms, where traditionally only about 40 per cent of Americans vote.
“I’m glad Brett Kavanaugh got approved,” says Jerry Barnes, a butter manufacturer, as he stands with his wife, Terri, outside the Buffalo Trace Bourbon Distillery near Lexington. “I don’t like America going down the road of having to prove your innocence first — that is against everything we are about.”
Terri Barnes, a health worker, adds: “I don’t think there is an honest professional woman in America who hasn’t been exposed to some type of sexual harassment. I think we have to take some ownership as women on how we present ourselves, also how we react to those things.
“I do realise there have been genuine victims (who) had their lives completely ruined (by sexual assault). But I don’t believe in going back and trying to persecute people from so many years ago.”
“What they did to Brett Kavanaugh was just terrible,” Jim Lynch says as he leans on a post on his farm outside Lexington. “The Democrats went totally crazy with all the protests and everything. What are you going to tell your grandchildren? That you walked around Washington protesting with a giant clitoris on your head? It’s just terrible.”
Lynch, 61, who runs a soft drink vending business, lost his son Lance Corporal Scott Lynch eight years ago, after he entered a booby-trapped Taliban house in Afghanistan. Lynch, who wears a gold chain and has a tattoo on his arm to honour his son, says it made him think hard about the sort of America he wanted.
“I like Trump because he is making a difference, he is clearing house, the economy is booming and he is getting America back to where it needs to be,” he says. “The Supreme Court and the NRA (National Rifle Association) are important to me. I think he will be re-elected easily.”
Those who like Trump in the 6th district talk about the booming economy and jobs, his tough stance on border security, tax cuts, trade, the Supreme Court and his “America first” view of the world. Those who oppose him frequently cite his manner and style, his attitude towards women, his treatment of immigrants, tariffs, his attempts to dismantle healthcare, and the Kavanaugh appointment.
Almost no one who Inquirer spoke to mentioned the Russia investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller as an issue that might affect their vote. The White House has always maintained that the Russia probe is an issue that attracts the attention of US media in the big cities but has little relevance to Trump’s voting base in the rural heartlands.
Chase Vossmeyer, a 19-year-old military policeman, is standing outside the arena near the town of Richmond where Trump is due to hold a rally in two days.
“I’m not sure who I will vote for, which is why I will go to the rally,” he says. “He is my commander-in-chief and in my 19 years of being alive I have never been to watch a president speak. I think what he does on Twitter is pretty childish. But if he wants to keep the military strong and also protect my job, then he is good with me.”
Down the road, 37-year-old John Green is setting up a small tent of Trump merchandise on a street corner in preparation for the rally. Green, who owns a car dealership in Orlando, Florida, is one of a team of unpaid Trump volunteers who travel the country to sell Trump merchandise, with profits going back to the campaign.
“This is not a job, it is a passion — we travel nationwide for Trump,” says Green, who has set up his Trump stall in every US state bar Alaska and Hawaii.
“His policies always made sense to me — and look what is happening now with the economy and jobs. I mean even Democrats who don’t like him are getting jobs because of him.”
But many poorer people in the 6th district say they believe Trump and the Republicans don’t have their best interests at heart.
“I was raised very poor,” Linda Tucker says as she carries her groceries from a Dollar General store. “And I just feel that the Democrats are more on the side of people like me. Also, he just doesn’t act like a president should. He is rude and crude, and what he did with Kavanaugh, that is a big factor for me. I’m with the #MeToo movement on that one.”
Bernice Shanks, a McDonald’s worker, stands on a hill outside the tiny wooden house she shares with her husband and two children and says she doesn’t feel Trump cares about people like her.
“For me healthcare is the most important thing, but I just don’t see him trying to help the poor,” she says. “Democrats like Bill Clinton tried to help the poor, but I don’t see that with Trump.
“I don’t care for him, and the way he tweets he is acting like a teenager, not a president.”
But Trump’s supporters in the district point out that with national unemployment at 3.7 per cent, the lowest since 1969, and the economy on track to hit 3 per cent growth, a rising tide will lift all boats, regardless of income.
Jimmy Tabb stands outside his tiny wooden house by the road south of Lexington and talks of how the Republicans will get his vote because his pay cheque has grown under Trump.
“We moved to Kentucky this year from Alabama for work,” the 52-year-old house painter says. “I look at my own pay cheque now and it has gotten better, so I’m going to vote Republican this time.
“Donald has a reputation for being a womaniser, but he is open about it, and he is a ruthless businessman but I’m sure they all are at that level. I know we have to take care of our environment but we also need industry and manufacturing for our jobs. I like that he protects that.”
Trump’s attempts to stem the decline in the coal industry resonate in Kentucky, which remains one of the top coal-producing states. But David McCoy, 66, who has worked his whole life as a coalminer, says although he likes what Trump is trying to do, he hasn’t seen much benefit so far.
“It hasn’t really happened yet but I would like to see it happen,” he says while chewing tobacco in the garage of his home.
Down the road, former prison warden Don Battles says Trump’s pro-coal stance is a reason he will vote Republican in the midterms. “Industries come and go, I mean there may not be many blacksmiths left, for instance,” he says as he stands in the driveway of his farmhouse outside Lexington.
“But I don’t think our president should ever make a concerted effort to try and kill off an industry, which is what (Barack) Obama did. Trump has tried to change that.”
Battles says he likes the way Trump has steered a more independent path for America in the world. “He understands the reality of the independent power that America is — I mean America was based on independence. We need to stop offering America as the adopted parent on the world. It’s time to take care of home first.”
Both Republicans and Democrats in the district are quick to raise the issue of Trump’s style of presidency. Many of his supporters say they don’t always agree with the way he conducts himself, but that his policies outweigh reservations about his style.
“Do we care for his rhetoric and some of his bombastic style? No,” Jerry Barnes says. “Every day it feels closer to a civil war in this country. But we also love the fact that whether you like it or not, he shows his cards everyday. And we have never been privileged with that from a president.”
Says Terri Barnes: “I am also not a fan of his rhetoric on lots of issues, but at the same time I don’t think there is anybody in Washington who can look in the mirror and say they are flawless or have not spoken out of turn. President Trump has been less respected and has had more of an uphill climb than anyone else I have seen in that position in my lifetime.”
In the hills south of Lexington, Tammi Warren, who runs her family greenhouse, says that Trump should keep some of his opinions to himself, but she likes his direct way of talking.
“I just like the way he tells it like it is, he is not afraid to speak his thoughts,” she says. “For us, we have seen the economy grow and our business has grown. I am a registered Democrat but this time I will be voting Republican.”
Sue Holman is cradling her grandson Lennox on her balcony in the town of Lancaster as she explains why she won’t vote Republican in the midterms.
“The way he does Twitter and the way he conducts himself in general is not the way a president should behave,” she says. “I voted for Ronald Reagan because his cowboy mentality instilled confidence in me. But Donald Trump is a very different kind of person and a different kind of Republican. He is nothing like Reagan. He doesn’t hold himself like a president. I will be voting Democrat.”
On the other side of the town, Carlotta Durham, a Walmart employee, is standing under the Trump flag that hangs off her house and holding a Republican teddy bear she calls “Trumpy bear”. “This is my third Trump flag, the other two wore out,” she says. “And I have another one upstairs for 2020.
“I think Trump is doing great. I like the crackdown on illegal immigration, the tax breaks, the cutback on regulations and the peace we are seeing in the world.”
Durham says Trump speaks to her in a way that no previous president has. “I like the way he talks,” she says. “I know a lot of people don’t, but he just talks to common people. Everybody else talks these big words that I don’t understand, but Trump I can understand.”
At the Keeneland racecourse outside Lexington, where the 2003 movie Seabiscuit was filmed, Mike Pauley and his wife Lory are watching the horses trot by ahead of a race. Mike Pauley, a retired mechanical engineer is wearing a “Make America Great Again” cap.
“I liked Donald Trump even before he entered politics, I enjoyed The Apprentice and I thought he would be different. He certainly has been different,” he says.
“Overall I think he is doing great — the economy is booming and he has done all the things he said he was going to do except build the wall. I can’t complain at all about how things are going.”
Cameron Stewart is also US contributor for Sky News Australia.
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