In this dry stretch of northwestern Arizona, signs from the Trump campaign dot the desert landscape, and Trump’s flags wave from the back of the dusty trucks.
Last fall, an event called “Trumpstock” outside of the town of Kingman featured a Trump impersonator, a pro-Trump rapper, and a “MAGA Subs” menu. Last month, thousands of people criticized classic rock and surrounded Lake Havasu in a Trump-themed boat parade.
“This whole area is based on people who have the same thing in common,” said Alan Morris, a 36-year-old man who participated in the parade. “God, Guns, and Trump”.
Now, however, as the nation faces the coronavirus pandemic, an economic downturn, and massive protests against police brutality and racism, some voters in the former Republican fortress of Mohave County have begun to have doubts about the President.
“It is a shame,” said Ron Kennedy, 72. “And I voted for him.”
Kennedy, an Air Force veteran, said he had been suspicious of the president’s blunt style in recent years. But the turning point for him came this month when authorities rejected protesters outside the White House so Trump could walk to the San Juan Episcopal Church to be photographed by news teams.
“It turned me off,” Kennedy said. “Break a peaceful protest just for a photo shoot.”
Recent polls show Trump is now following presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden in the presidential race, a reversal driven in part by the erosion of his once-dominant leadership among white voters in battlefield states like Arizona.
To try to shore up support, Trump has visited the state three times in the past five months, including last week for an appearance at a Phoenix megachurch.
In Mohave County, a vast stretch of desert where 90% of the 212,000 residents are white and 73% of the votes went to Trump in 2016, there is still strong support for the president.
But he faces new challenges here, such as allaying concerns that he and the federal government have mismanaged the coronavirus. The death toll in the United States of more than 127,000 is the highest in the world.
Four years ago, Keith Eaton, 57, viewed Trump as a refreshing change: a stranger who did not speak like a politician and seemed to act on instinct.
“I just wanted to see what would happen,” said Eaton, who said to himself, “At least it will be a circus that we can see.”
But the Trump novelty is gone, he said.
“The lack of leadership with this whole COVID business, the lack of respect for the professionals who do these things … the last four months have turned me much, much more against him,” said Eaton, a firefighter. “There is no way for me to vote for him right now. And many guys I know feel the same way. “
Eaton still expects Trump to win Mohave County, albeit with less margin than four years ago.
Sam Scarmardo, head of the Mohave County Republican Party, at his gun shop in Lake Havasu City, Arizona.
(Kate Lithicum / Los Angeles Times)
Sam Scarmardo, head of the Mohave County Republican Party, said that if people have been changing their minds about Trump it is only because of “leftists who are doing everything possible to destroy him and bring the country to its knees.”
“A lot of people think that the coronavirus was disproportionate to harm Trump,” he said.
Scarmardo said voters in Mohave County have a Wild West mindset and are naturally drawn to Trump’s defense of gun rights, his disdain for government regulation, and his promise to stop unauthorized immigration from the border. Mexican, which is 150 miles south.
In an interview in the back room of his Lake Havasu City gun shop, where his four rescue dogs whirled underfoot, he recounted what he sees as Trump’s accomplishments: the reversal of Obama-era clean energy rules. , the movement of the US embassy in Israel, from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, new policies that make it difficult for migrants to apply for asylum in the United States.
“He has done more than the last 20 presidents,” said Scarmardo.
His store, Sam’s Shooter’s Emporium, features a life-size cardboard cutout of the President by the front door and a bulletin board that looks like Trump’s Twitter news comes to life. A poster questions the legitimacy of President Obama’s birth certificate; Another compares the hijab worn by US Rep. Ilhan Omar to a diaper.
In the bathroom are copies of the autobiography of former First Lady Michelle Obama, the pages of which are used as toilet paper.
Those uncomplicated displays of the kind of bigoted and divisive views adopted by Trump have never been a problem here, Scarmardo said.
“We don’t have much discussion,” he said.
And yet, a few weeks ago, a surprising thing happened on the street of the gun shop. A couple dozen people gathered for a Black Lives Matter protest.
More protests took place in Kingman, about 60 miles away.
At each event, participants were outnumbered by counter-protesters, some of whom were armed with rifles.
Government officials who monitored the event said they were less afraid of looting than protesters who were shot.
The protests ended peacefully and even sparked new kinds of soul searching.
Retired police officer Jeff Page, 57, said the protests made him question whether racial prejudice had ever played a role in his own surveillance.
He concluded that no.
“I spent 28 years in law enforcement in Idaho, and I can tell you that there is no person I have worked with who would like to go out and find someone to kill or beat,” he said on a recent afternoon at No Name Bar, a lounge in the city of Lave Havasu where he, his wife and some friends had met for a beer.
“It has been very painful,” Page said of the recent protests.
“It was horrible,” agreed his wife, Victoria.
She plans to vote for Trump again in 2020, but said her daughter, who voted for Trump four years ago, is undecided. She works for the local school district and is rejected by the president’s immigration policies that make life difficult for Latino students and their families.
They have had family conversations on the subject, with Jeff arguing that illegal immigration is a problem of public order. But those conversations don’t usually end well.
So the family found a solution, Victoria said: “We just don’t talk about politics.”
