Since I possess the basic requirements of being an OWG (Old White Guy) and therefore was a likely Donnie voter, I reluctantly decided to check out the Trump “office” that’s a mile away from my office in West Chester Ohio.
For those of you who don’t have a clue as to where this is, it’s John Boehner’s old stomping grounds. West Chester is a booming suburb of Cincinnati and has a sad tendency of nearly always going Red during election cycles. Boehner and his staff get part of the credit for that, as The Other Orange Guy had a very strong GOTV ground game. I got to watch it first-hand for eight years, since his campaign office was located just 50 yards from my office. Boehner’s green yard signs were everywhere in town and in the countryside and a constant stream of (always white) people would visit his office to pick up signs, decals and sign up for volunteer shifts. Boehner was/is an arrogant asshole, but he thoroughly understood the mechanics of getting elected.
My clandestine visit was not an easy thing for me to do. Despite years as a journalist, I have two stunningly obvious personality flaws that pretty much rule me out as an undercover reporter:
(1) I have zero patience/tolerance for the profoundly and willfully stupid/evil and (2) I can’t fake number One. I have zero acting talent. (Definitely should have taken that Drama class in college instead of Public Speaking.)
To prepare for my descent into Donnie-Land, I took my motorcycle (so I had an excuse to not buy a yard sign or confederate flag) and just before walking in, I realized my phone with it’s Hillary sticker was going to be a giveaway. (FYI, they use very strong glue on these decals and scraping it off requires tough fingernails.)
The “office” is actually a sagging, elderly, quite small, white house sitting on busy Cincinnati-Dayton Road. It looks dumpier up close than the photo hints at, in part because it sits below the road, in its own little depression. It’s a nondescript dump in this mix of residential and converted-to-business homes in this area of “Olde” West Chester.
A gravel driveway on one side leads to a hand-lettered “entrance” sign on the kitchen door. An elderly Dodge pickup with a Trump sticker and a newer something-Japanese were the only vehicles on my just-before-noon visit. Phone with camera app running in one hand and helmet tucked under the other arm, I walked in. There were four people in the small room, filling it to capacity.
Now I run a business with walk-in customers and from too many years’ experience, can usually tell quite a lot about the customer within a few seconds. The vibes are obvious. Same deal here. A couple in their fifties, there to pick up a yard sign for the guy trying to get Boehner’s old job, and two unsmiling AOWGuys who looked at me with a mixture of suspicion and hope. I nodded at everyone and started looking around.
Two tiny rooms plus a kitchen. Signs, decals and t-shirts on tables, including a volunteer signup sheet for the Butler County Rethug Party. There were two names on it. A little bit of literature — a summary of Donnie’s policies, which will be the topic of another diary — and not much more. Yard signs were a $2 donation (they’re $20 a pop online) and when the couple who had preceded me tried to leave with just the Davidson sign they’d stopped in for, they were handed a Trumpence yard sign for free.
The husband said, “We’ll get that up for a day or two before the election.” Such enthusiasm.
They left as I completed my little tour — about 3 steps in each direction. There was no attempt to engage me in conversation, sign me up for anything or discuss the fine points of Donnie’s latest corkscrew (it ain’t a pivot). I decided to skip any attempt to photograph anything; it was just too unpleasant.
Zero GOTV informatio and no sense that it’s an actual campaign office because . . . it’s not. One of the two unsmiling dudes set it up on his own because he loves him some Donnie. The Butler Rethug Party kicked in some literature and other items, plus you can register to vote although I didn’t see any of the forms, which I keep front and center in my own office for customers. The t-shirts and most of the decals looked locally-made, rather than the polished designs on the official Trump Store.
After a few awkward minutes, I nodded at them again — no response — and departed. As I sat on my motorcycle waiting for a gap in the traffic, I felt embarrassed as the passing drivers looked at where I was coming from.
Parking across the street so I could take a few (bad) phone photos, I watched for more customers for the sad little place. None. I noted on the ride back to my office, past houses and businesses, there were exactly zero Trumpence signs on display. And this is an area that in the past has been unabashedly Republican.