“It’s a moral choice,” Dick Radder, a 68-year-old Republican, said as he cupped a black coffee outside a Starbucks here Tuesday. “I can’t get there. I can’t get to Trump. I’m a husband and a father. And I can’t convince myself to vote for a person who is weakening the fiber of the country.”
Most of the well-kept lawns here are dotted with signs for Sen. Ron Johnson (R) and for other down-ballot candidates, but support for Trump is less evident.
“You’re in a town that’s about going to college and raising a family. People are polished and hard-working. He’s not one of us,” said Andy Schwichtenberg, a 28-year-old stockbroker.
“I did try,” Schwichtenberg added with a sigh. “I went to a rally.” But he was not swayed and he was turned off by the crowd, which he noted was packed with men and women “who came there on Harleys.”
In the last days of a presidential race where Trump is targeting traditionally Democratic states to try to forge a path to victory, holding together Republicans who have reservations about him remains a vexing challenge for a candidate who has repeatedly clashed with his own party.
Nowhere has that been more true than Wisconsin, a state that celebrates civility and is the historic home of the Republican Party, which was founded in Ripon in 1854.
Trump lost Wisconsin’s April GOP primary by 13 percentage points to Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), and he lost in Waukesha County by 39 percentage points. More recent polling has shown lingering unease about his character in this small city and other Milwaukee suburbs, long a hub of deeply conservative Republicans — and where strong turnout will be necessary for Trump to win.
“They have just never been comfortable with Trump,” Charlie Sykes, a popular talk radio host, said in an interview Monday night. “The only question, the only thing people are talking about, is whether they’ll come home.”
No comments:
Post a Comment