Let’s call her Barbara. She doesn’t want to use her real name for reasons that will become clear.
She lives in Virginia, has voted for Donald Trump in the last two elections and until very recently was prepared to vote for him again. She is Baptist, has been married for 15 years to the same man who works for local government and they have an eight-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter. She is a registered Republican and says she has voted in every election since she was 18. She has never crossed party lines to vote for a president but did so in a state race when Danica Roem ran for the state house for the first time. Roem is the first openly transgender woman to be elected to a state office in Virginia. She is now a state senator and Barbara told me that she has voted for Roem every time she has been on the ballot. It might seem odd that a devout Baptist would vote for Roem, but Barbara said it was something Roem spoke about in her first election campaign that changed her mind.
“Her opponent was talking about what a danger she was to us, but she was the only one that was talking about the huge traffic problems we have near where I live. She was the only one who said she’d try to fix them. I had to drive those roads. My husband drives them for work every day,” Barbara explains. That was why she voted for Roem. “I didn’t tell my husband because I thought he’d be mad. But when it came time to vote, I thought I’d give her a chance. I haven’t regretted it once.”
Roem recalls, “That was the route 28 issue.” She explains that. “It meant a lot to people who live in the area. Constituent service means a lot.”
As it turns out, Barbara’s husband also voted for Roem for the same reason. “We were both surprised. We actually had a laugh at that. But we haven’t told any of our friends,” she revealed.
Now she is considering crossing party lines once again.
“I haven’t made up my mind,” she explains., This time she is talking with her husband, who might also change lanes. She admits she’s been dissatisfied with Donald Trump. “I’ll never vote for him again,” she vows, listing a variety of reasons that include his misogyny, angry rhetoric and divisiveness. “I agree with his policies a lot. I want a border wall. I want to hold the Chinese accountable. I want more conservatives in government,” she noted. But at the end of the day, she concluded, Trump is “wearing me out.”
She has former friends she never talks to anymore. “We just don’t get along because of politics and religion. We never used to talk about that stuff. Now, it seems like that’s all we talk about.”
She doesn’t like Trump’s hush money case with Stormy Daniels, his other court problems and “the fact that lately, all he talks about is himself. I don’t care if he’s in debt. He’s supposed to be a billionaire? Honey, where I come from, if you’re rich you don’t talk about it.”
At the end of the day, she said, Trump’s efforts to sell gold sneakers drove her over the edge, and selling Trump Bibles sealed the deal. “I ain’t voting for him. That’s the Golden Calf right there as golden sneakers.”
You never know what will turn a voter off, or on. “Isn’t it amazing? Insurrection, fraud, racism, division, trying to kill the Affordable Care Act, bullying and hatred,” for some people that wasn’t enough to turn away from Trump, Roem remarked . It boils down to shoes.
But that doesn’t guarantee Barbara will vote Democratic. She said she may not vote for president at all – and her husband told her the same. They’ll vote Republican up and down the ballot and leave the presidential slot blank – even if that helps Joe Biden. “Well, we can’t vote for a Kennedy,” she explained as she talked about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent candidacy. “You can’t trust them.” And while she says she’s most likely not to vote in the presidential race, “I’m just so fed up with all of it,” she explained, something that happened to her recently has opened her up to the possibility of voting – for Biden.
“My cousin sent me a tape on Facebook,” she said. “It was Joe Biden talking about Snickers bars. I thought it was crazy at first, I mean, what the heck is a president talking about Snickers bars for?” She asked. “But my cousin pointed out he said something I’ve said ‘there aren’t enough Snickers in the Snickers bar anymore,” and that hooked her. “I hadn’t even heard of ‘shrinkflation’. I didn’t know that was a thing. I sure didn’t know it was a topic a president would talk about. Yeah, that made me think.” She said Biden finally put a face on an issue that has bothered her personally for a long time.
Now, she says she’s open to listening to Biden. She’s ignored what he said for so long, because she figured, “he was just an old man with Alzheimer’s.” Now? “Well, he got a bill passed on roads and bridges (the $1 trillion infrastructure bill) and I didn’t know that. I just tuned him out to tell you the truth. So, I’m listening now.” Her own experience with Virginia’s Route 28 also helped her to re-think Biden as a viable candidate.
As for the age issue, “Well everybody in the race is old. That don’t mean nothing at this point. Who is going to actually do what’s best for us? That’s the question.” Barbara said. And while Trump is asking people if they are better off now than they were four years ago, “He ain’t no Ronald Reagan,” Barbara added. “My mom and dad were Reagan fans and they ain’t never liked Trump – though they voted for him too. I don’t know if they will again.”
At the same time, Barbara admits she has no idea if any of the friends she talks to at church or the few friends that still talk to her outside of church feels the same way she does. “I just don’t know. We don’t talk about it. You can’t. I’m sure most of them still will vote for Mr. Golden Sneakers, but I can’t. I don’t regret that I did the first two times, but if anyone has real problems, it’s Trump. I don’t know if he has dementia, but all he talks about is himself.”
But Barbara’s story does beg the question – are there hard-core Trump supporters ready to ditch the Donald in favor of Biden – or will they just stay home? In several swing states, the answer to that question could hold the key to the outcome of the 2024 election.
Roem has some experience with that issue, and a few candid observations to offer.“There is a narrative that politics is so partisan and so divisive, but in my district, a lot of voters have no problem splitting the ticket.” Several precincts in swing states are similar to Prince William County in Virginia, where there are hardcore Republican enclaves.
As Roem describes it, Heritage Hunt, a mostly gated community with a country club and a home owner’s association in Gainesville, VA is one of those enclaves. “It is almost 90 percent white, 55 and older. Not everyone is rich, but they got money,” Roem said. “Upper Middle Class. And even in off year elections more than two thirds of them vote.”
The first time she ran for office in 2017, Roem lost by 16 points. Things were different when she ran there in 2023. “The last time I won it by 35 votes,” she explained. “And they split the ticket for me and a few other Democrats, but voted mostly Republican up and down the ballot.”She noticed a change in 2022 when Democrat U.S. Representative Jennifer Wexton bested her Republican opponents there.
“I figured okay, let’s make a play for Heritage Hunt,” Roem explained. She began an aggressive door-knocking campaign in the heavily Republican area and was surprised at what she heard. “These were hardcore Republicans and it was amazing the absolute revulsion they had over Donald Trump. I didn’t bring him up. That wasn’t part of my strategy. They brought him up,” Roem explained. “They hated his guts. It wasn’t even a pitch. ‘Danica, I’ve been a lifelong Republican until Donald Trump.’ I heard that told to me over and over again. That’s not to say he won’t have a ton of votes out of Heritage Hunt,” Roem added.But the bottom line is that “We are now at the place where I’d be shocked that it goes for Donald Trump. Trump will win the election day voters, but if you count the early and mail-in votes, Biden will win. And I remind you, they vote straight down the Republican ticket for everything there. They are hard core Republican in Heritage Hunt,” she said.
That portends well for Biden in a number of swing states for a very specific reason. It takes both campaign infrastructure to knock on doors, and constituent service to sway those voters fed up with Donald Trump.
Biden’s campaign, flush with cash after record donations and a recent campaign stop in the New York area that drew Bruce Springsteen, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, speaks to the infrastructure. Biden can go door to door as much as he wants, while Trump will have to sell more than 416,000 Bibles to match what Biden got in one stop in New York – and Trump would still languish behind Biden in fundraising – as he languishes behind him in campaign organization and infrastructure.
There are people who are willing to split the ticket – and they are angry with Donald Trump. They just may not talk about it openly – afraid to raise the ire of friends, neighbors and family – who may also be harboring the same concerns.
If hardcore Republicans in Heritage Hunt will vote for a transgender female for state senator, they might be willing to vote for an old heterosexual white man for president – after all it isn’t that big of a stretch. According to Roem, it boils down to rock solid constituent service. Roem has focused on that as a state senator, and it has made all the difference. “As it turned out, I became pretty well liked in Heritage Hunt.”
Biden has that ability in all the swing states. He has the issues, he has the money and he can show solid constituent service – if he can cut through the foghorn bombast of Donald Trump.
In one case, it only took a Snickers bar to make a difference.
