Resistance makes subtle impact
EDMOND, Okla. — Vicki Toombs was watching the returns on election night 2016 when her phone buzzed — a text from her 22-year-old son, Beau, in Chicago. Beau, who is gay, was afraid that the new administration would end the Affordable Care Act and with it the insurance he and his friends used to pay for the drugs that protected them from HIV and AIDS.
“I just felt the bottom drop out of my world,” said Toombs, 61. She felt she’d failed her son, as if Donald Trump’s election was somehow her fault. She had to do something.
So, in one of the reddest cities in one of the reddest states in the union, Toombs sought out the Resistance.
It wasn’t as easy as it might be in places like New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., where multitudes of collegeeducated, predominantly white women have joined a rolling boil of activism since Trump’s election. The Democratic Party and liberals are plentiful on the coasts, but light on the ground in swathes of the country that hold the majority of electoral votes and congressional seats.
But even in Edmond, Okla., Toombs has found her sisters-inarms. And it’s the reach of antiTrump forces into red states like Oklahoma that gives Democrats hopes of a national resurgence, though no one suggests that the heartland will change its political allegiance on a dime.
Regardless, the simple act of local liberals emerging from their shells has the potential to subtly change the dynamics in places like Edmond.
“It’s been a revelation,” Toombs said of joining a group of more than 300 Democratic women in Edmond, a place she believed housed only a couple of other members of her political tribe. “We’re excited and also apprehensive thinking of what the fall’s going to be like. I hold my breath, hoping we created enough energy.”
These days, Toombs texts her son excitedly to tell him about how she and her fellow activists have made calls and knocked doors for Democratic candidates running for special elections and helped win four of five legislative seats. How they have supported thousands of teachers who marched on the state capitol and won additional education funding from the GOP-controlled state legislature and Republican governor. How they helped recruit candidates for every possible office in November, from their local city council to state legislative seats where Republicans usually garner double the votes of Democrats.
In states like Oklahoma, activists often say they came “out of the closet” when they started wearing their political affiliations on their sleeves after years of hiding them to avoid conflict. Still, they blanch at the term “The Resistance” and try to avoid mentioning Trump, knowing the key to swaying their neighbors is finding common ground on local issues rather than rehashing divisive national debates.
“I don’t necessarily think minds have been changed on Donald Trump, and we don’t encourage our candidates to talk about national politics,” said Anna Langthorn, chairwoman of the Oklahoma Democratic Party.
The emphasis on local issues makes particular sense in Oklahoma, which has seen mounting dissatisfaction over the low-tax, small-government approach of the current GOP administration. About 20 percent of schools in the state are only open four days a week and Republicans this year had to raise some taxes to patch a hole created in part when the state’s leaders slashed levies on the oil and gas firms that dominate Oklahoma’s economy.
Activists and the Democratic party they’re hoping to rejuvenate have their work cut out for them in Oklahoma, which Trump won with 65 percent of the vote in 2016. But even though Democrats are clearly outnumbered in Oklahoma and in other red states — and even though they know they face long odds — they believe intensity is a great leveler.
“It only takes a couple of hundred people to elect your state representative,” Langthorn said.