On the right, left out: the city’s Trump fans
Proudly diverse S.F. isn’t entirely welcoming to all
My phone rang the other day, and the caller had a real man-bites-dog story — the unusual event journalists relish.
“You said in your column you wanted to know if there was anybody living in San Francisco who supports President Trump,” said a woman’s voice. “Well I am, and I do. What do you want to know?”
I like bluntness, and I immediately liked Vicky Berol, a Cow Hollow resident who when asked her age, said “past maturity.” The retired insurance broker and I got to talking, and she had many reasons for supporting the president whom I despise.
“I like that he is not a politician — that’s No. 1,” she said. “I like that he is a successful businessman. I like that he is more of a bulldog than a pussycat, which appealed to me because I knew he would be taken through the wringer.”
She likes his stances on curbing illegal immigration, renegotiating trade agreements and invigorating the coal industry. And she adores his “lovely family.” I disagreed with a lot of what she said. (Lovely is one of the last adjectives I’d use to describe Donald Trump Jr. or Jared Kushner.) But unlike Trump, Berol sounded well-spoken, clever and like she’d be fun to pass time with over a glass of wine.
In far-left San Francisco, we tend to assume all of our neighbors think like we do, vote like we do and hate Trump like
we do. But even in this liberal land of political correctness and rainbow flags, 37,688 city residents voted for Trump in November — that’s 9.23 percent of all those who cast a vote. And many of them don’t regret it.
A few weeks ago, I had a line in a column about immigration that read, “Who in San Francisco isn’t against President Trump? (If you live in the city and support him, I want to know. Really.)” It was the kind of snarky, throwaway line loyal readers know I enjoy, and I didn’t think much of it.
But readers sure did. A couple dozen called or e-mailed to say they live here and support Trump. Though many liberals are quick to dismiss Trump supporters as racist, sexist buffoons not worthy of actually engaging in a dialogue, I figured it couldn’t hurt to actually hear them out. Especially those with whom we share our beloved city.
A map using precinct-level data from the Department of Elections shows that Trump voters reside in every district, though they’re concentrated in the Marina, the Financial District, Sea Cliff, the Richmond, the Sunset, St. Francis Wood and the Lake Merced area.
Many Trump supporters didn’t want their names attached, as if they were copping to committing some kind of crime.
“The name has to stay out of it,” said a man in hushed tones on my voice mail. “It’s very necessary as I am applying for a job.”
Another man wouldn’t go on the record, he said, because whenever he’s had conservative-leaning letters to the editor printed in The Chronicle, he has gotten nasty phone calls.
“They call me racist, an —hole, say why am I living here, get out of here, I know your address,” he said.
A woman named Bev said on my voice mail, “I am for him 100 percent, and there are a lot of people like me in San Francisco. We’re not all overthe-top, lockstep liberals.”
According to my totally unscientific, very small sampling, Trump supporters in San Francisco appear to be older, mostly white and natives of the city, or at least old-timers who lived here long before the city became associated with Burning Man, electric vehicles and avocado toast.
The small sampling also showed they’re not wild about Trump’s bullying or poor Twitter behavior, but they’re even less wild about Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party and, yes, the news media. And they blame the latter two for pounding away at Trump for every perceived misstep.
“I think they’re showing their ignorance. They’re acting like spoiled 5-year-olds who just had a toy taken away from them, screaming,” said Howard Epstein, 70, a Trump supporter who lives in the Richmond, of liberals post-election.
Epstein, a retired smallbusiness owner, is the spokesman for the San Francisco Republican Party. Yes, there is such a thing. Epstein has lived in the city since he was born, and he said it’s not easy being a Republican here.
Shortly after the election, he was in line for coffee and overheard two women in front of him chatting about politics. One woman asked the other, “Why do you think anybody would vote for Donald Trump?”
Epstein said he couldn’t help but interject, “Because he’ll do a better job.” (Mansplaining in a coffee line — gotta love it.) He said the woman then countered, “You’re a white man” and went on to inform him that he has a particular piece of anatomy that she doesn’t so he wouldn’t understand.
“In situations like that, now I kind of shut up,” he said. “The last decade, decade and a half, the city has made a very, very hard left turn. And it’s not working out. You look at the housing prices, you look at the city budget, you look at all kinds of things, and it’s not working well.”
I agree a lot in San Francisco isn’t working well, but it’s functioning a whole lot better than Washington, D.C.
Mike McNulty, 56, is a registered Libertarian who lives in Ingleside Terraces and voted for Trump. He said government, from the local level to the national, isn’t working, and pointed as an example to the city’s homeless problem not getting any better despite $305 million in annual spending.
“I think there’s a troubling aspect to the status quo, and some of us just said, ‘Well, maybe something different would be good. Maybe we need to shake things up a bit.’ There’s a certain corruption built into the system, and Trump’s tipping it on its head a little bit,” he said.
As for Vicky Berol, she said she and her husband are proud to be Republicans and proud to be Trump supporters. And she won’t stay quiet about it — not even in San Francisco.
“There’s no reason for me to keep my mouth shut,” she said. “I haven’t committed a crime.”
Most of her friends here, naturally, are Democrats who voted for Clinton. She talks to some of them about politics, but avoids it with others. She said she endured eight years of President Obama just fine, and Democrats fretting over Trump should get some perspective.
“We’re over 200 years old,” she said of the country. “Four years is nothing.”
Sure seems like an eternity, though. Doesn’t it?