The smiling grandmothers supporting Trump
Blue-collar men are his base, but billionaire appeals to wide variety of Republicans
TAMPA, FL.— Think of a Donald Trump supporter.
You can see him. (It’s a him, no doubt.) He’s a blue-collar guy wearing a baseball cap, maybe some camouflage. He’s got an edge, the product of his struggles, his anger, his prejudice. He has never been much into politics until now, and he wouldn’t mind seeing the Republican Party burned to the ground. Now meet Betty Myrick. She wore a pearl necklace and pearl earrings to lunch on Sunday. She has a gregarious manner and a bright smile. A grandmother of nine and the globetrotting wife of a senior air force officer, she lives in a suburban Tampa subdivision with its own website. She spent the summer of 2012 volunteering for Mitt Romney. When he lost, she cried.
This election, she started out liking “gentle” Ben Carson, then thought the tougher Scott Walker might be suited better to the times. But then she learned about Trump, and she decided there was no other option.
He was strong, aggressive, straightforward. He had turned himself into a billionaire “on his own.” He surrounded himself with smart people. And he had raised wonderful chil- dren and grandchildren who loved him. Surely no operative could train the little ones to feign such affection?
“I feel like I’m safe with him,” said Myrick, who is in her 70s. She added: “And I would walk through hot coals for him.”
Trump’s astonishing rise to the cusp of the Republican presidential nomination has been endlessly dissected. But the analysis of his voters has been focused almost exclusively on the rage and racism of suffering or stagnating working-class men.
Such men are indeed his base. But there aren’t enough Islamophobic, unemployed anti-establishment machinists to carry anyone to victory. The reality is that Trump, while still deeply unpopular with the general public, has managed to appeal to a wide variety of Republicans for a wide variety of reasons.
Jennifer Allen, a 69-year-old hospice social worker who also runs a skin-products company, described herself as “wishy-washy” and “sweet.” She likes that Trump, unlike her, is willing to “push back.” But she has also heard one of his employees describe him as “the kindest man.”
“He gives and gives and gives,” she said. “And I keep hearing that from the people that know him.”
Both women are part of a Republican club in Florida’s Hillsborough County. At the Star’s request, 10 members came to lunch on Sunday, two days before the critical Florida primary, to talk about their choice of candidate.
Everyone around the long table at Michael’s Grill had volunteered on past Republican campaigns. Two were former state legislators; there was a plastic surgeon, a registered nurse, a dapper cable-company salesman. They were, in short, the kind of conventional, comfortable voters Marco Rubio needs to secure if he is to save his candidacy, and perhaps the party’s future, by managing to beat Trump in Florida.
They weren’t having it. Five were for Trump (though one has already voted for Carson), three for Ted Cruz, just one for Rubio.
Their assessments of Trump were strikingly positive. Only the Cruz supporter who declared Trump “dreadful” said anything strongly critical. The lone undecided, Hillsborough Republican chairwoman and former Florida state rep Deborah Tamargo, called his Saturday speeches “excellent.”
“He seems to have toned down the vulgarity, which we didn’t like,” she said. “And like everyone else, I really honour the fact that he is a patriot. And his children are amazing. I really honour that.”
The one Hispanic in the room, Colombia-born salesman and Cruz supporter Miguel Buitrago, said he was turned off by Trump’s insults of opponents like the Catholic Church. But he added, “Nobody’s going to deny that he loves this country.”
“I am a pro-business person,” said club president Rebecca DeBoer, 67, a former Oregon legislator who used to support Carson. “And I just think that Trump will bring business back.”
Sitting beside Myrick was fellow grandmother Marsha Craig, a former teacher and nurse who sits on the board of their subdivision’s civic association. Craig, 70, wore a green shamrock scarf and a Trump sticker.
“I’m not sure there’s anybody else that has the strength to straighten this country back out. Our military is in deplorable shape,” she said.
She became devoted to Trump after she watched a Barbara Walters ABC special in the fall which showcased his loving family. Her mother was born in Nova Scotia, and her relatives there now think she is crazy.
“I told them I’m not real pleased with Justin Trudeau,” she said.