Andre Latondres has great love for his adult son, Chris, who is the CEO of Beacon Interface Housing Services.
“I’m so proud of him and I tell people he’s the greatest person I’ve ever met,” Andre said.
Chris reciprocates that love. But both felt that political rifts were creating distance between them.
A large part of the tension stemmed from Andre’s support for President-elect Donald Trump, for whom Chris has strong negative feelings.
MPR News helps cut through the noise and build common understanding. Please support this public resource and keep trustworthy journalism available to everyone.
Chris is a Democrat who served as a Hennepin County Commissioner in the Obama administration and supported Vice President Kamala Harris in the recent election.
“I often feel like there are places in our relationship where we can’t talk about things that are deeply important to us for fear of running into a land mine,” Chris said of his father. “And I don’t want that to happen during our time together.”
The father and son decided to take advantage of the opportunity to receive guidance in discussing politics from marriage and family therapist Bill Doherty, co-founder of the political bridging organization Braver Angels.
Chris LaTondresses shows a photo of himself and his sister in Moscow during the turbulent ’90s, when the LaTondresses family was on a Christian mission.
Nicole Neri of MPR News
On a recent afternoon, the three met at MPR News headquarters in St. Paul and allowed their conversation to be recorded.
“So what happens when two people talk about politics?” Dougherty asked.
“We generally don’t,” Andre said. “But it kind of stands like a wall, and you can go around this side of the wall and talk, and you can go around this side (the other side) of the wall and talk. When you’re on the other side, you’re like, ‘Well, I’m glad I’m protected by a wall.’
Andre is politically conservative and deeply committed to his Christian faith. In the 1990s, he moved with his family to Siberia for several years to serve as a Christian missionary.
Although he was initially wary of Trump, he eventually supported him in both elections.
Chris wanted to understand why his father changed his mind.
“At this moment of incredible and alarming change in our country, I am choosing to follow the path of curiosity rather than contempt,” he said. “If we’re going to move forward as a country, and we can’t do that with our own fathers, what hope do we have?”
Chris LaTondresses and his father, Andre LaTondresses, play cribbage together at Chris’ house.
Nicole Neri of MPR News
As their coaching sessions began, it became clear that there was much more at stake than Andre’s support for Trump.
Both father and son have grown up nursing old wounds.
Chris said his father had been “brainwashed” by liberal Christian thinkers. “Like, is this true? Are you brainwashing me at a Christian university?”
Andre said he was offended when his son harshly criticized a book he was reading. Chris said the author was a “bad historian” and told his father he “shouldn’t read that book.”
While the discussion seemed like a long warm-up for talking about Trump, Doherty said there are many other dynamics at play.
“When people have very strong political reactions like this, there’s a story behind it that goes beyond Republican, Democrat, Trump, or never Trump,” he said.
When they got to the topic of Trump, Chris had a hard time posing the question to his father in a non-judgmental way.
“I think the most open-minded, open-minded, curious approach is to look my dad in the eye and say, ‘How did you come to vote for Trump the second time?'” he said. spoke.
Chris Latondrez and his father, Andre Latondrez, at Chris’s home.
Nicole Neri of MPR News
He admitted he was tempted to start writing a preamble asking how his father could support Mr. Trump as an American and a Christian.
Eventually, he asked a more neutral question. Andre explained that he has come to view some of President Trump’s outrageous statements as acts.
“As I watched President Trump for a long time, I realized that he had a persona that he pretended to be,” he said. “That’s not appealing at all. But at the same time, I’m hearing from people who know him personally, ‘No, that’s not him at all,'” he said.
Andre went on to elaborate on the widely controversial view that Trump was the rightful winner of the 2020 election.
“I’m going to go to my grave believing the 2020 election was stolen,” he said.
As the conversation continued, father and son discussed the role of Christian faith in their lives. Chris emphasized that it is at the heart of all his activities.
Weeks later, both men said they had received positive feedback from their conversations.
Andre Latondrez shows his son, Chris Latondrez, a card trick at Chris’ house.
Nicole Neri of MPR News
“The fact that Chris brought the role of Christ in his life into the conversation in a secular context…I couldn’t be happier,” Andre said.
And Chris felt like he learned something really important about his father’s politics. The most eye-opening moment was when his father said he believed the 2020 election was stolen.
“If he had told me that without Bill (Doherty) sitting there, I probably would have immediately started saying, ‘How can you believe that?’ he said.
But this experience made Chris stop and ask himself: “If I believe that to be true, how does that affect my politics?”
After the coaching session, Chris went out to dinner with his father and said he had the deepest and richest conversation about politics he’d had in years. He said they might finally have permission to broach the subject and show their curiosity about each other.
