Western Slope a Trump hotbed
Grand Junction residents say “our lives have been improved”
GRAND JUNCTION» Laureen Gutierrez was part of the laststand attempt to block Donald Trump from earning the party’s nomination at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
Now, nearly two years into President Trump’s first term, the chairwoman of the Mesa County party can be spotted with a lifesize cutout of him at GOP events around this Western Slope town.
“Everybody is really pleased with what he’s accomplished in such a short time,” Gutierrez said as Grand Junction bustled with visitors in town for the annual Club 20 gathering of statewide politicians and regional leaders. “I think he’s doing fantastic.”
Gutierrez’s growing admiration for the president — including his active Twitter account — holds true for many Grand Junction residents. Voters in the state’s 11thlargest county overwhelmingly supported Trump during the general election: 64 percent checked his name on the ballot. He lost statewide by about 5 points.
Trump has had a tumultuous first two years in office, with a special investigation that has included legal action against former associates and reports surfacing last week from anonymous administration sources expressing concern about the president’s
fitness for office. Still, his support among his base in Colorado, like elsewhere, remains strong.
While some establishment Republicans, including Colorado’s Sen. Cory Gardner, remain tepid toward the president, 85 percent of Republicans across the country have a favorable view of Trump, according to a recent Gallup survey. To them, the headlines that portray the president and his White House as dysfunctional are retaliatory. Criticisms are viewed as attempts by his opponents — Democrats and the “fake news media” — to distract from his accomplishments.
And even if what’s portrayed by news organizations is partly true, his most devoted supporters in Grand Junction say they’re OK with it.
“With a personality like that, there’s going to be chaos,” said Lois Dunn, a real estate agent and property manager. She has supported Trump from the getgo.
“I’ve only been more and more proud,” she said. “Our lives have been improved.”
She and other Republicans here credit Trump for helping boost Grand Junction, which greatly depends on the state’s oil and gas sector for jobs, out of a recession that most of Colorado had recovered from years ago. Other accomplishments supporters tick off: tax cuts and conservative judges. Perhaps most importantly, they see in Trump a person who stands up for them.
“He’s listening to us and fighting for us,” said Bobbie Daniel, a Republican author who is working to help reelect state Sen. Ray Scott, a Grand Junction Republican.
Daniel is another Republican who was slow to embrace Trump. But after Trump secured the party’s nomination, she quickly rallied to his side. She even spoke at Trump’s campaign rally when he swung through Grand Junction during the 2016 campaign.
“We love him,” she said. Some voters are less enthusiastic but nevertheless supportive of the president.
“I wanted to see what a businessman could do,” said Cindy Clark, who was walking down Grand Junction’s Main Street early Saturday morning. The thoroughfare was just coming alive with locals and tourists eating brunch and sipping coffee. “I can’t say I’m totally happy. But I’m comfortable. I’m still glad I voted the way I did.”
Down the street, Troy Reynolds, who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and Trump in 2016, was less enthusiastic about the current president.
“I hate his Twitter,” he said. “If he put that away, he’d be halfway there.”
Reynolds, an unaffiliated voter, said he would be open to voting for a Democrat in 2020, but so far none of the dozens of potential candidates have caught his eye.
Despite Trump’s high approval ratings from the base, Colorado’s Republican elected officials and candidates continue to temper their support for the president.
“We’re gonna agree where we agree and disagree where we disagree,” Gardner, a Yuma Republican, told The Denver Post after delivering a speech at the Club 20 fall conference that was in part critical of Trump’s tariff policies. “But attheendoftheday,weall want our president to succeed. We have to have our president succeed, whether it’s Barack Obama, Donald Trump, George Bush. This country needs that.”
It’s not just statewide officials — who must appeal to an increasingly leftofcenter electorate — who are careful with their endorsements of the president. During an election year that is largely considered a referendum on the administration, some legislative candidates are wary as well.
Matt Soper, a state House candidate for District 54, which forms a circle around the city limits of Grand Junction, said he doesn’t talk too much about the president on the campaign trail. Instead, he prefers to stick to local issues such as water.
Voters, Soper said, “seem to be a bit tired of hearing his rhetoric. It’s an interesting dynamic where people like the results but aren’t too warm to the person.”
Felecia Bishop, a mother of three whose husband works on the oil fields of Texas two weeks every month, said her support for Trump is all about the results.
“He does what he says,” she said. “I like how he follows through.”
Trump’s tenure, Bishop said, has returned confidence to the oil and gas industry, which means her husband has gone back to work after being unemployed for two years.
“We want someone who is going to support that industry,” she said. “It puts food on the table.”
It’s hard for many of these voters to imagine a scenario in which Trump would lose their support.
Daniel, who spoke at Trump’s rally, said only definitive evidence that Trump broke the law in an effort to win the presidency would do it.
“We’re ruleoflaw people,” she said.
For others, a shift from his populist economic policies would be the only move Trump could make, they say, that could shake their confidence in the New York businessman.
“As long as he doesn’t stop taking action on the platforms he ran on, as long as he doesn’t give up,” Gutierrez, the local GOP chairwoman said, “he has my support.”