The day of Joe Biden’s inauguration, Nick Toney was sitting in the booth of a rural Banks County café, still wearing a cherished hat with the words “Trump 2020...No more (expletive).”
“I’m not going to take it off,” said the 61-year-old heating and air conditioning contractor. “And I’ve got two more for when this one wears out.”
In one of Georgia’s most solidly Republican and Donald Trump-loving counties — he won nearly 90% of the vote this time around and last — there is more than just frustration over an election that didn’t go as many locals had hoped.
There is anxiety about what Biden and Democrats might do. But also concern about what the angriest Trump supporters might stoop to. And, for some, disenchantment with the nation’s two main political parties, including Republicans who have won handily here for decades.
Of more than a dozen people interviewed in the northeast Georgia community, most hadn’t seen Biden’s inaugural address with its call for unity or Trump’s departing speech wishing “the new administration great luck and great success.”
Instead, a few said they fear more unrest.
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com
Ashley Knight, a 32-year-old certified nursing assistant, said she is convinced a “civil war” is brewing because so many Trump supporters believe the election was rigged and because riots and lootings spun out of Black Lives Matters protests. She said she worries that socialism and COVID-19 will hurt her children’s future.
Trump, she said, never was given a fair shot as a president. As for Biden, “I’ll pray for him as our president, but I don’t think I’ll have too much support for him.”
A woman who works in a health products store said the combination of politics and the pandemic has her anxious and smoking more cigarettes.
“You feel like you are sitting on a warhead,” said the woman, who didn’t want to give her name because, she said, you never know how people will react to things these days.
“Nobody knows what is ahead,” she said. And “you don’t know who to trust anymore.”
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com
Roger Cosby, who works for a nearby construction rental equipment company, said he’d like to stay positive: “I’m willing to give the man a chance.” But, “I hope like hell they don’t kill the construction industry.”
Still, he said, he talks to people from all walks of life, and he said he suspects an uprising is coming from the right.
“Hopefully it can be defused,” he said, adding later, “I don’t want to live through that.”
People in Banks say they worry about what Democrats in the White House and Congress could do. Among concerns: higher taxes, bigger government, more abortions, higher illegal immigration, fresh limits on guns and an expanded U.S. Supreme Court to give it a liberal lean.
Most — but not all — told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution their support for Trump wasn’t diminished by his efforts to have votes thrown out over claims of fraud or by Trump supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. None expressed support for the attack.
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com
Paul Murphy, a 66-year-old farmer and manager at a poultry company, said he supported enough of Trump’s policies to be willing to put up with the former president’s name calling and weakness in fostering unity. But he didn’t buy into contentions that there was so much voter fraud that it changed who won the election. And what he considers Trump’s failure to quickly and forcefully speak out about the attack on Congress made him regret voting for him.
“That deal in Washington when they stormed the Capitol, I was ashamed to be a Republican,” he said.
Democrats are too liberal for him, though. “I’ve always been a Republican. I’ve gotten to the point now that if there was a third party, I’d probably vote for them.”
Others interviewed also volunteered openness to voting for some party other than Democrats or Republicans.
Banks County Republican Party Chairman Jerry Boling, a 77-year-old local farmer and businessman, predicts “only a very small group of people” would make such a move locally. “Some of those people are never happy with anything.”
Republicans will regroup and come out the same in Banks, he said. More broadly, “the election is over, and Biden won. It is time to move on. There’s no point in looking back.” He is hopeful, though, that state legislators will tighten rules on absentee ballots.
It’s not unusual for people to get uneasy when their party loses power.
Financial planner Michael Housworth witnessed that when clients who are Democrats saw Trump win the presidency. They called wanting assurances about their investments. Now, Republicans are doing the same. “At the end of the day, half the country is going to be excited, and half the country is going be nervous.”
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@
He chatted before the start of a weekly gathering of the Banks County Rotary at a local golf club. The meeting started minutes after Biden was sworn in. TVs in the golf club’s neighboring grill were tuned to sports channels, not the events in Washington D.C.
Rotarians were reminded that political talk wasn’t on the meeting agenda. At the end of the gathering, they recited Rotary’s “four-way test,” a guide for what Rotarians are supposed to strive for in what they think, say or do. “Is it the TRUTH? Is it FAIR to all concerned? Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS? Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?”
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com
Rotary member Rick Billingslea, a former local chamber of commerce leader who is now pastor at the 225-year-old Hebron Presbyterian Church, confided later that he has long been frustrated by politicians from both major parties. In speeches, “they say, ‘blah, blah, blah and nasty, nasty, nasty.’ Then they turn around the next day and they talk about unity.”
There’s a lot of anxiety among some in his flock and happiness among others, depending on their political persuasions.
“There’s more of a sense of urgency for us to find common ground instead of just getting our way,” the pastor said.
“The problem is we have paid people on both sides that are instigators. Some people thrive on chaos.”
He shared advice: “Stop. Take a breath.”
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