Texans to Trump: ‘Press on’
Across the state, those who voted for president mostly happy with result
BROWNWOOD — In the shadows of rural courthouse squares like the one in Brownwood, in the burgeoning suburban rings scattered statewide from Conroe to Cleburne, and even in some conservative slivers in Texas’ biggest cities, Donald Trump has not disappointed his faithful.
Voters in Texas Republican strongholds who supported the New York real estate tycoon as president a year ago say he is doing just fine as he prepares to give his first formal State of the Union address Tuesday night.
Trump has plenty of detractors, especially in metropolitan areas like Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio. Thousands of them have marched and found other ways to voice their opposition to him. Democrats hope for a backlash against the president, believing his policies and his combative ways will help sweep Republicans out of local, state and federal offices in November.
But his never-say-die supporters say they’d vote for Trump again. Many of them consider anyone who doesn’t agree with them a sore loser, and they
aren’t worried about a backlash. In fact, they hope instead for even more conservative Republicans to win election to Congress and the Legislature — and help get more of Trump’s agenda enacted.
“I would probably give him an A or A-minus,” attorney Aaron Seymour said, standing just outside the Brown County Courthouse in Brownwood, a town of less than 20,000 people about an hour south of Abilene. “He’s been strong on the military, and he hasn’t screwed up my daily life. He hasn’t necessarily improved my life, but he hasn’t screwed it up, either.”
Seymour, 33, says he’s “not even a Trump guy” and mostly has better things to do than worry about politics. But he said for people in rural communities, Trump hasn’t done anything to trigger the daily panic that seems to be on the cable TV networks and in more liberal communities.
In a smoke-filled VFW post in Conroe, about an hour north of Houston, the view is that Trump is shaking things up just like many had hoped.
Trump dominated in Montgomery County, a mishmash of master-planned communities and still-rural land. With 73 percent of the vote in 2016 going to Trump, it’s not hard to find loyal Trump voters.
“He’s not a politician,” said William “Mr. Bill” Glass, one of a group of men drinking beer at the far right table at Post 4709’s bar area. “He’s a businessman. And that’s what we needed.”
Never mind that Trump’s list of accomplishments have been well short of his lofty campaign promises, that he sports the worst approval rating after his first year in office of any president post World War II, and that many a Democrat — and possibly some Republicans — would love to draw up impeachment papers. In places where Trump did best in Texas, those problems are easily overlooked.
About 30 minutes south of Fort Worth in Cleburne, Trump supporters acknowledge not enough has gotten done. But there is a strong sense that Trump isn’t responsible for that.
“You have a Republican Congress, a Republican president, and they still can’t get anything done,” said David Beans, 61. “I think it’s him not being a politician that has kept that from happening. He is not fitting into the mold that everyone wanted him to.”
But Tim Cook, 49, interrupts his friend.
“But it’s good, being a nonpolitician in office,” Cook said. “That’s the party’s problem, not his.” ‘People want to be proud’
Trump won Texas by the smallest margin for a Republican in 20 years, but he won 227 of Texas’ 254 counties.
In Brown County, where Brownwood is the county seat, Trump had one of his biggest victories, scoring almost 86 percent of the vote. It was one of only two counties in Texas with at least 14,000 voters where Trump won 86 percent.
Locals say Trump’s slogan of Make America Great Again and his approach has been a big reason for the support Trump gets now.
“He’s restored a pride of where we come from,” said Amy Seymour, 30, who has lived most of her life in Brownwood. “People want to be proud of where they come from. That’s the most successful thing he had done so far.”
That kind of response doesn’t surprise George Mason University assistant professor Justin Gest, who has been researching what Trump triggered in working-class voters in all parts of the nation, including rural areas.
“He’s (made) people who felt like they were on the fringes feel like they were represented and symbolized in the government again,” said Gest, who tackled those themes in a book he published just over a year ago called “The New Minority: White Working Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality.”
Every politician makes use of symbolism to win over people. But Trump has tapped into white working-class voters with symbolism that makes them feel they are no longer pushed aside, as many of them felt under President Barack Obama’s administration.
“They feel like they matter again,” Gest said. “Even if he cannot implement everything he promised, they know he is on their side.” Immigration concerns
Few issues speak to that more than Trump’s approach to immigration. He has proposed building a wall along the border with Mexico and ending the DACA program — two items that resonate with T.P. Herring. The 87-year-old lives in Weatherford, a city of about 30,000 people in Parker County just west of Fort Worth.
Herring is most supportive of Trump’s “America first” approach. Herring believes the country should close its borders and not allow more immigration because he says more immigrants would lead to fewer jobs and lower incomes for all. Plus, he said, the country’s identity would drastically change.
“We wouldn’t be the United States anymore. We would be controlled by foreigners,” Herring said from a table at Wanda’s, a local diner off Highway 180 that most mornings is bustling with regulars known as the “coffee guys.”
Immigration was also on Sharon Garrett’s mind last week. Despite being five hours away from the border, Garrett said, it’s important to secure the border between Texas and Mexico.
“They can just walk over into our state,” she said.
While immigration issues come up in nearly every conversation with Trump supporters who love his tough talk, it’s also among the most complicated topics for them. As a candidate, Trump said he would immediately end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
The Justice Department rescinded the program in September, but Trump has said he would treat the 800,000 Dreamers with compassion. And last week, the Trump administration released word of a proposal that could offer citizenship for 1.8 million young undocumented immigrants.
But that seemingly inconsistent approach isn’t unlike the position taken by many Trump supporters in Texas. They likewise are trying to find a balance between being compassionate to DACA recipients and maintaining a tough immigration policy.
In Weatherford, Herring said Trump should allow the Dreamers to stay, but “mama and papa go home.”
“They came over here illegally, and they’ve had all this time to become citizens,” Herring said.
Further west in Brownwood, Porter says he wants a secure border so Texans will know who is coming in and out of the country. But he said he’s not for trying to round up people and deport the DACA recipients.
“That is not going to happen,” Porter said. “I don’t think we want it to happen.”
Even the idea of the wall isn’t universal with Trump supporters. While most say they want a secure border, many question the practicality of building a wall through Big Bend National Park.
“I think we will have a wall,” Aaron Seymour said back in Brownwood. “But it’s stupid. People climb over walls.” Tearing up the establishment
Whether they are suburban, rural or live in the heart of major cities, Trump’s supporters are frustrated at one part of the new administration.
“I think he needs to control his mouth — some of his comments are offensive and indefensible — but other things he says are right on target,” said Davis Karriker, 61, a self-professed lifelong Republican with Libertarian tendencies who lives off Memorial Drive in Houston.
Maryleigh Proctor, 71, rolled her eyes when asked if she voted for Trump.
“He needs to control his mouth, but other than that he’s doing what I hoped he would do: tearing up the political establishment in Washington,” she said.
The lifelong west Houston resident said she is happy with what Trump is accomplishing and likely will vote for him again.
“He needs to have his mouth washed out with soap, but my husband does, too, occasionally,” said the retired executive secretary.
In Brownwood, 70-year-old Robert Porter’s Texas drawl slowed down just a little more when he started thinking about Trump’s language.
“We all wince a little bit at some of the ways he says some of the things,” Porter said from the insurance office his family has run for three generations. Note to Trump: Be positive
But while Trump may deserve some criticism, supporters say it has gone too far, particularly from people on the left. In Montgomery County, Olga Auffant, who volunteers in the local Republican county office, wrote to the White House perhaps a dozen times to urge Trump to be more positive in his comments. She thinks he would get more support that way.
Auffant doesn’t like to bring it up, lest people start trying to argue, but she wants people to give him a chance.
“They’re just criticizing his personality, which I don’t like much,” she said, “but I don’t give that priority.”
Trump supporters said during the years Obama was in office, they didn’t feel like they were part of the government and that the focus was on people other than them.
But with Trump, the conservative way of life isn’t being eroded every single day, Porter said.
“If I had him here,” Porter said, “I’d tell him: Job well done. Press on.”