Sonoma County Republicans voice ambivalence about Donald Trump as presidential nominee

If Donald Trump is elected president, Victoria Carpenter of Santa Rosa, a registered Republican for 40 years, said she will consider moving to Canada.

That’s a common expression of political antipathy, but Carpenter, 65, said she will retire from teaching in a year and be “free to sell my house and go if that’s what I need to do.”

“It would break my heart,” she said.

Sonoma County’s 50,411 Republican voters, just one-fifth of the local electorate, face the prospect of seeing Donald Trump - the most unpopular candidate of either major party, according to Gallup - on the ballot in the Nov. 8 general election.

There’s a distinct lack of enthusiasm for that prospect among a sample of Republican voters, including the party’s county chairwoman and an accountant who’s run six times for legislative office under the GOP banner.

“There’s no alternative out there. I don’t see the ghost of Ronald Reagan coming through the door,” said Edelweiss Geary of Santa Rosa, a party stalwart in her second year as head of the Republican Central Committee.

In her message posted on the committee’s website this month, Geary said attendees at the California Republican Party Convention in Burlingame “had the opportunity to hear Donald Trump, John Kasich, Ted Cruz and Carly Fiorina” and watch demonstrators in front of the Hyatt Regency Hotel. She made no other comment about the candidates for the highest office in the land, devoting the rest of her statement to state and local races.

Voting for Trump is “the only option I’ve got,” said Lawrence Wiesner of Santa Rosa, a six-time candidate for Congress and the state Senate since 2000. Wiesner donated $1,000 to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, his first choice in the Republican field and the last to yield in a searing primary campaign that has established Trump as the presumptive nominee.

“I can’t vote for Hillary,” Wiesner, 72, said flatly. “Our ideologies don’t mesh.”

Animus toward Clinton emerges as a common theme driving local Republicans to vote for Trump, the real estate tycoon and former reality TV star known for disparaging remarks about Mexicans and Muslims and women who have challenged him.

But some Republicans also question whether Trump truly shares their conservative philosophy and fault him for lack of the gravitas expected of the commander in chief and leader of the free world. Some say they will vote for Trump largely because the next president will appoint one or more justices to the U.S. Supreme Court and Trump’s picks would hew conservative.

Still, Trump is the most unpopular major party presidential candidate in recent history, viewed unfavorably by 60 percent of Americans, Gallup said in January, noting that favorability tracking dates back to 1992. Clinton was second, with a 52 percent unfavorability rating, trailed by the other Republicans and her Democratic rival Bernie Sanders in the 30 to 45 percent range.

Real Clear Politics’ average of multiple national polls from March to May rated Trump at 65.4 percent unfavorable and Clinton at 54.5 percent.

“It’s really a choice between two poison pills,” said Greg Karraker, a Republican voter from Penngrove.

Karraker, 70, said he agrees with Trump’s advocacy for military strength and minimal government, but disdains his character, calling the billionaire “a rampant egomaniac with no filter.”

“The tragedy of Trump is that he is saying so many of he right things and is such a total boor in expressing them,” Karraker said. “I think he’s a game show host who is saying conservative things at the moment. I don’t trust his conservatism.”

He added that he thinks Trump’s go-to mantra - “trust me, it’s gonna be great” - rings as hollow for him as Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign theme of “hope and change.”

A former Democrat who said he is now “more of a libertarian” and supports gay marriage, Karraker said he viewed GOP candidates Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson favorably. But, considering the future of the high court, Karraker said he will vote for Trump “with extreme displeasure.”

Ellen O’Neel of Santa Rosa, who defined herself as “conservative by nature,” said she will “unequivocally vote for Trump” unless a surprise candidate emerges. “I just hope the man has got some common sense,” she said, noting that a number of Trump’s pronouncements have offended her.

“He’s got diarrhea of the mouth. He just doesn’t know when to stop,” said O’Neel, 78. She said she has never missed a major election and never voted for a Democrat for president, though in her youth, she admitted, she was smitten by John F. Kennedy and the Camelot aura of his presidency in the early 1960s.

What she says she likes about Trump is the independence from special interests that he enjoys due to his wealth, and her perception that he will clamp down on entitlement spending. “I think he wants to stop giving it (federal funding) away. I do think he has the right idea,” she said.

Trusting Trump to adhere to a conservative agenda is taking a risk, O’Neel said, “but I think it’s a better risk than Hillary or Bernie.”

Wiesner said it’s clear that a good number of Republicans dislike Trump, noting that both former presidents George W. Bush and George H. W. Bush have declined to endorse him and will not attend the GOP Convention at Cleveland in July. Some Republicans will vote for Clinton, Wiesner said, just as some Democrats will vote for Trump.

Polls this week showed that the GOP may be unifying around their often-divisive front-runner for president. Public Policy Polling reported on Tuesday that 72 percent of Republicans are comfortable with Trump as their nominee, while three-quarters of Democrats are satisfied with Clinton.

Trump is positioned as a “modest underdog” in the general election, “rather than a massive one,” Dean Debnam, president of the polling organization, said in a press release.

But the ambivalence toward Trump among local Republicans is mirrored by the 14 party members in California’s U.S. House delegation. Six of them have declined to say outright they support Trump, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Of the state’s 41 Democratic lawmakers, all but four are backing Clinton, the newspaper reported.

Leland Parker, a Republican with a “libertarian leaning,” said he doesn’t care for Clinton and has little respect for Trump.

“There isn’t anything I like about the guy,” said Parker, 69, owner of a Santa Rosa mortgage and investment company. “He’s just not a team builder. Even now that he’s the presumed candidate, he has yet to reach out, yet to act like a person of national standing.”

The GOP nominee in 2012, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, was “a guy that looked presidential, acted presidential, with a family background, a moral background,” Parker said. Romney, who came up 5 million votes short of Obama, has lately launched a strong attack on Trump, suggesting the businessman refused to release his tax returns because they would reveal “a bombshell of unusual size.”

Parker said he will vote for Trump, but noted that California’s 55 electoral college votes are likely to go to the Democrats. He was not optimistic about the GOP’s prospects overall.

“Pass the Rolaids,” he said. “In the end, the Republicans will, as usual, shoot themselves in the foot.”

Ryan Giannecchini of Penngrove said he won’t vote for Trump or Clinton.

“Why is it that in a country of 322 million people this is our only choice?” said Giannecchini, 37, owner of a Santa Rosa farm construction firm. “There are better options. I know 10 people that would be better individuals for the U.S. presidency.”

Within GOP circles, Cruz and Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO, would have made “a fantastic ticket” that would appeal to business interests and women, Giannecchini said. The problem, he said, was that Cruz named his running mate in late April, just after losing a round of primaries that precluded him from securing enough delegates to clinch the nomination.

Trump, Giannecchini said, is too reckless to deal with complex, global tensions. “There are a lot of razor wires out there. If you put someone like him out there, it could be a mess.”

On domestic matters, he is less worried about Trump because “there are checks and balances within the government that will not allow Mr. Trump to make sweeping decisions.”

In the absence of a palatable choice, Giannecchini said, “I think I will sit this one out and hope that we weather the storm. Better bring your raft because I don’t think umbrellas are going to be enough.”

Geary, the local Republican leader, said that despite her misgivings over Trump, he is “speaking for a lot of people who are fed up with what’s going on. They’ve had it; they are glad somebody’s out there and in your face.”

Carpenter, a lifelong Republican who teaches at Santa Rosa High School and Santa Rosa Junior College, said she understands the frustration and anger of people whose livelihoods and communities have been battered by economic decline and see Trump as a source of hope.

“Yet for me, Trump represents the worst kind of demagogue, someone who promises without policy and panders to fear and blame,” she said. Given the looming choice in November, her vote “will have to be for Clinton,” she said.

The election is 178 days away, with two unpopular candidates in a fairly close race for the White House amid global fear of terrorism and economic failure and in the U.S. a widening gulf between rich and poor mixed with racial tension.

It’s “going to be quite a spectacular November,” Wiesner said.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @guykovner.