Trump’s biz success is appealing
Wealthy town of ex-CEOs believes it has found an ally in the new president
In the state everyone said Donald Trump needed to win, this ultra-wealthy coastal hideaway for some of the nation’s business leaders came out strong for the Republican candidate, producing Florida’s highest county voter turnout with the help of many of the GOP’s most traditional and faithful members.
Trump’s victory wasn’t just about gaining the underemployed, angry, rural white vote. In Naples, one of the wealthiest communities in the country with a median household income of roughly $80,500, former corporate executives overwhelmingly supported Trump and his calls for cutting government regulations and rebuilding the country’s infrastructure.
Francis Rooney, the Naples multimillionaire CEO of Manhattan Construction and prolific GOP donor who was just elected to Congress, said he voted for Trump and supported his calls to get rid of the Dodd-Frank act, which went into law after the Great Recession. The law has been criticized for the regulatory burden it has put on banks and other business.
John Sorey, the ex-CEO of the Spectrum Corp. in Tennessee, said he voted for Trump in the hope that investments in the country’s infrastructure will have a “multiple effect” on job creation.
Phyllis “Flip” West, a Naples retiree whose family owned a West Virginia welding company, said she voted for Trump because the country “needs to be run as a business.”
“The whole big thing is the economy,” West, 78, said. “We need to bring it back.”
West is one of an outsized population of ex-CEOs and business supervisors in Naples, a retirement town with a population of roughly 20,000 that prides itself on its annual multimillion dollar wine festival fundraisers and high-end sports car shows.
The area’s rich donors and corporate executives, many of whom keep their private jets at the city’s municipal airport, turned out largely for former CEO Mitt Romney in the 2012 election.
But setting aside concerns that traditionally conservative areas might abandon this year’s GOP nominee, Trump’s background as a real estate developer and company owner helped convince Naples business leaders that he can grow the economy.
“He gets things done,” said Sorey, 73, who is also the former mayor of Naples. “The most similarity among Naples voters is the fact that they like success and see success as a positive attribute.”
Trump is also proposing a major tax cut for wealthy residents like the ones in Naples, including a cut of 6.5% to the country’s top 1% of earners, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center.
Naples business leaders, including some who have donated millions to Republican presidential candidates in the past, were split during the GOP Florida primary, with some leaders supporting former Florida governor Jeb Bush or Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
Rooney, who relocated his Oklahoma company’s headquarters to Naples in 2002, has close ties to the Bush family. His company built the Texas Rangers baseball stadium in Arlington when George W. Bush was part owner of the team. Rooney was a top fundraiser for Bush and later served as his ambassador to the Vatican.
Rooney said he voted for Jeb Bush in the primary. But once the Republican Party chose Trump as its nominee, Rooney said, he was “all in.” He said he supports Trump’s call to repeal or modify the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
John Allen, a real estate executive and major Naples donor whose waterfront home is valued at more than $12 million, said he voted for Rubio in the primary but ultimately supported Trump because of his business experience.
“On the heels of a president that was totally unqualified to be president — who never built a job or ran a company, had a payroll or created benefits — did I like the fact that Trump had tremendous success, that he has a background and did it in New York City and other difficult environments? Yes, I found that attractive,” Allen, 62, said.
“He understands investment and return and is willing to take risks,” Allen said. “He’s an outspoken advocate of the free enterprise system.”
The area’s less enthusiastic Trump supporters ultimately voted for him largely because of the flaws of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, said Kathleen Passidomo, a Naples lawyer and newly elected state senator.
“So many people I talked to — not just Republicans, but Democrats and independents — were really distressed about Hillary Clinton,” said Passidomo, who voiced concerns about Trump after a video surfaced of him talking disparagingly about women. “It wasn’t just the emails. It was the elitism of the Clinton dynasty and her expectation that she deserved the presidency because she was a Clinton.”
West, whose family owned a welding company, is a registered Republican, but said she flipped parties in West Virginia to vote for a Democratic governor who supported the steel and coal industry that bought supplies from welders.
She said she supported Trump since the beginning of the GOP primary because she believes he can “bring trade back to our country.” She calls trade the “tailcoat of the economy.”
Supporters see the possibility of Trump achieving on the national level the same kind of progress Floridians view from Republican Gov. Rick Scott, said Mike Lyster, chairman of the Collier County Republican Executive Committee. Scott’s 2010 gubernatorial campaign, similar to Trump’s presidential run, promoted Scott as a businessman who had never held elected office.
Trump has said he’s not beholden to his campaign donors, which could give him the “best chance of any of the elected officials in Washington to make good on his promises” to improve the economy, Passidomo said.
“That’s pretty amazing,” she said.
“He gets things done. The most similarity among Naples voters is the fact that they like success and see success as a positive attribute.” John Sorey, former mayor of Naples