Cass County town goes with Trump

No one seems to know what to make of this election.

Stunned by Donald Trump’s victory, mainstream media has pointed to the Rust Belt, saying that out-of-work or underemployed white folks are to blame for this. Hillary Clinton blames FBI director James Comey – if he hadn’t written that letter to Congress at the 11th hour about those emails, the woman who couldn’t beat a lying, groping, foul-mouthed billionaire repudiated by large segments of his own party insists that she would have won.

But what of Beardstown? Besides being the self-proclaimed watermelon capital of the nation, Beardstown, population 5,800, is the largest town in Cass County – eight of the county’s 20 precincts are located here. It’s also a central Illinois epicenter for Hispanics, who account for one-third of the population, although it isn’t clear how many are registered voters. Like a lot of Midwest burgs, Beardstown has seen better days, judging by vacant storefronts that dot the town square. Given demographics and geography, it should, at least in theory, be an apt petri dish for analyzing and understanding election results, given political pros who say that Midwest voters and Hispanics, who voted for Trump in greater numbers than they did for Mitt Romney four years ago, were critical.

There are no easy answers, but there is at least one uncomfortable truth. Just 55 percent of the 3,367 registered voters in Beardstown went to the polls last week; by comparison, turnout in Sangamon County was nearly 73 percent. A turnout of barely half the voters for a presidential election – especially this one -- might seem low, but it could be worse. Four years ago, when there were 985 more registered voters in Beardstown than today, the turnout was 41 percent.

Beyond turnout numbers that suggest apathy, choices made by Beardstown voters both defy and confirm conventional wisdom. Trump got 52 percent of the vote in Beardstown and 62 percent of the vote countywide, which supports the notion that Illinois, especially downstate, is turning red. But the same Beardstown voters who supported Trump went against Republican Mark Kirk, who got 46 percent of the vote in the U.S. Senate race against Tammy Duckworth in a tight contest that saw the Democrat win by just 37 votes. The margin in the comptroller’s race was a bit wider, with Democrat Susana Mendoza besting Republican Leslie Munger by 77 votes. Countywide, both Munger and Kirk clobbered their Democratic opponents, with the GOP winning the Senate race by more than 20 percentage points and Republicans taking the comptroller race by nearly as much. And so one alleged truism, that folks who live in towns and cities are more prone to vote Democratic than people who live in the hinterlands, held true on Election Day in Beardstown.

Gary Hardin, former chairman of the Cass County Republican Party, says that he didn’t expect Trump to win the White House.

“It was a total surprise,” Hardin said. Hardin figures that the retirement of Democrat John Sullivan from the state Senate helped Trump and hurt Clinton in Beardstown and Cass County as a whole. There was no Democrat on the ballot for Sullivan’s seat. Hardin suspects that a Sullivan campaign might have had local coattails for Democratic candidates.

“Sullivan had a lot to do with it,” Hardin said.

A Hispanic woman I spoke with at a Beardstown restaurant laughed when I asked whether she voted for Clinton or Trump. Clinton, of course, she answered. Then she grew serious. What, she asked, did I think would happen now?

Bree McClenning, co-owner of River Town, a Beardstown coffee house that also serves wine and beer, said that the combination of alcohol, caffeine and election results proved lively on election night, when she held an election night party that was open to everyone, regardless of political persuasion. Like much of the country, the group that gathered to watch returns was divided, she recalls.

“It got a little ugly,” said McClenning, who voted for Trump.

McClenning said that she voted for Barack Obama in 2012 but has grown disillusioned with Democrats, particularly when it comes to taxes and health care. She said she’s pro-choice and favors gay rights, but doesn’t fear a Trump presidency, although she said that she would have voted for Bernie Sanders if he’d been on the ballot.

“Everyone wants change, any kind of change,” she said.

McClenning said she knows that some Hispanics in Beardstown are concerned about what a Trump presidency might bring, but she believes much of his pre-election talk, including his vow to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, was just campaign rhetoric.

“You have to be smart enough to read through the lines,” McClenning said. “I’m not worried.”

Mayor Steve Patterson, a Democrat, said that he wasn’t surprised that Duckworth and Mendoza did well in Beardstown, which he says has strong Democratic roots. The presidential race, he says, was “up in the air.” Like McClenning, Patterson said he believes the result might have been different if Sanders had been the Democratic nominee.

“I just think that people in this county, from people I talk to, have more trust in him (Sanders),” Patterson said. “They just wanted a change. That was the big thing.”