More than anything on this Election Day in America, in a midterm contest like no other before it, voters cast their ballots with one man in mind: President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would have never thought this country would elect Donald Trump as president,\u201d said Kimball Blake, 61, a Knoxville, Tennessee, energy engineer who called Trump\u2019s presidency a \u201cprofound factor\u201d in his decision to vote Democratic in his state\u2019s U.S. Senate race. \u201cIt got me out to vote this year, not that it usually takes that much motivation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Americans turned out in droves Tuesday \u2013 some lining up before the sun rose, some standing for hours or braving pouring rain or snow \u2013 to vote in an election that will determine control of Congress and render a verdict on Trump\u2019s first two years in office. The outcome could redefine the nation\u2019s political landscape for months and years to come.<\/p>\n
Democrats need to gain 23 seats to take control of the House of Representatives, and hope to ride the wave of liberal fury that organized after Trump\u2019s surprising victory in 2016.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy loathing for him knows no bounds,\u201d said Kathleen Ross, a 69-year-old retired professor, as she cast her ballot for Democrats in Olympia, Washington, confident the country will eventually reject Trumpism and the divisive governing it represents. \u201cI tend to think the arc of the universe bends toward justice, so I don\u2019t become discouraged.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump has sought to counter some of that rage by stoking anger and fear in his base. In recent weeks, he\u2019s put the spotlight on a caravan of Central American migrants fleeing poverty and violence that he calls \u201can invasion\u201d of criminals and terrorists. He ran an advertisement about immigration so racially incendiary that all three major cable news networks, including Fox News, either refused to air it or eventually decided to stop showing it.<\/p>\n
Among some Republican voters, that message resonated.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s going on right now is pretty scary to me, at the border, with all those people coming, and I don\u2019t think I\u2019m hardhearted or anything,\u201d said Patricia Maynard, a 63-year-old retired teacher in Skowhegan, Maine.<\/p>\n
When she voted for Trump in 2016, the blue-collar economy was her primary concern. Now, she said, immigration tops the list. She laments that Congress has so far failed to pass legislation to build the wall Trump promised along the border. So she voted for Republicans Tuesday, with hopes they would retain control and push Trump\u2019s agenda.<\/p>\n
In Westerville, Ohio, Judy Jenkins cast her vote at a suburban church and said she supports Trump\u2019s decision to send military troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to intercept the caravan \u2013 a move critics say is unnecessary and a political stunt, given the migrants are traveling mostly on foot and remain hundreds of miles away.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t know what that caravan is bringing,\u201d said Jenkins, who describes Trump as \u201cmy guy,\u201d though she concedes she cringes at some of what he says. \u201cWho\u2019s perfect?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
For many on the other side of the political aisle, the caravan controversy singularly represents what they find unconscionable about Trump\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s always used the scare tactics and found an enemy to band against,\u201d said 24-year-old Enrique Padilla of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Padilla considers his own family an example of the American dream. His father migrated from Mexico as a laborer at 18, raised his family, and now Padilla has a college degree. The president\u2019s persistent demonization of immigrants galvanized him and many of his peers to vote against Republicans, Padilla said.<\/p>\n
In Louisville, Kentucky, Mary Cross, a 64-year-old African-American voter, said she believes Trump uses issues like immigration to distract from more important topics, and in doing so infuses fear and distrust into society. \u201cIt\u2019s manufactured fear. It\u2019s uncivilized. It\u2019s just a bunch of mayhem for nothing. There\u2019s no substance to this,\u201d said Cross, who thinks the country should be talking about the Republican-led campaign to overturn the Affordable Health Care Act that protects people with pre-existing conditions.<\/p>\n
Cross, and others, expressed a heightened sense of unease and sadness about the state of America\u2019s political climate. The election comes just days after a series of hate crimes and political attacks, including the arrest of a man who mailed pipe bombs to Trump critics whom the president often derides as \u201cevil,\u201d \u2018\u2019un-American,\u201d and \u201cthe enemy.\u201d Where Cross lives, a gunman tried to get into a majority-black church but found the doors locked and went instead to a nearby grocery store, where he gunned down two elderly African-American shoppers in what police are calling a hate crime.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur president, with his rhetoric and vulgar language, continues to throw fuel on the fire. Racism has always been around, but since he\u2019s been in office, people feel free to express it and feel good about it,\u201d said the Rev. Kevin Nelson, the pastor of the Louisville church the gunman tried and failed to enter. The congregation has received cards and calls from all over the country, from Christians and Jews and Muslims and atheists \u2013 and also a white man in Texas who said he was sorry about what happened and promised to cast his ballot against the rhetoric he believed to be igniting hate.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re always hoping that somehow, some way, someday, it\u2019s going to change,\u201d Nelson said before he voted Tuesday. \u201cI\u2019m hopeful that it could this time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many voters said the political tribalism has infested their everyday lives. The Simon Wiesenthal Center released a survey on the eve of the election that showed a quarter of Americans have lost friends over political disagreements and are less likely to attend social functions because of politics.<\/p>\n
Odell White, a 60-year-old African-American conservative, described the state of the country\u2019s political discourse as veering toward civil war.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are dangerously close to that type of mentality \u2013 brothers fighting brothers. That\u2019s how bad it is,\u201d said White, who supports Trump and voted Tuesday for Republicans. Friends have turned away because of his political leanings. White said he doesn\u2019t like the president\u2019s aggressive rhetoric, but he\u2019s willing to overlook it because of the booming economy and the two conservatives Trump installed on the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
But Trumpism has proved too much for some.<\/p>\n
In Portland, Maine, Josh Rent, 43, a small business owner and registered Republican, said he voted mostly for Democrats all the way down the ballot for the first time to protest Trump, who he believes is unnecessarily dividing Americans for his own gain.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s just nasty,\u201d he said. \u201cLife doesn\u2019t have to be this nasty, in my opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Also contributing were AP reporters Steve Megargee in Tennessee, Jocelyn Noveck in New York, Rachel La Corte in Washington, Margery Beck in Nebraska, Kantele Franko in Ohio, Summer Ballentine and Jim Salter in Missouri, Matt Volz in Montana, Hannah Grabenstein in Arkansas and Chris Chester in Maine.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" than anything on this Election Day in America, in a midterm contest like no other before it, voters cast their ballots with one man in mind: President Donald Trump. \u201cI would have never thought this country would elect Donald Trump as president,\u201d said Kimball Blake, 61, a Knoxville, Tennessee, energy engineer who called Trump\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":97210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[299],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-97209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-national-elections"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97209"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=97209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}