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.
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