Nahunta, Georgia
CNN
—
Shelley Lowell remembers her grandfather saying, “The Republican Party is for rich people.” “That’s what I was always taught: the Democratic Party was for us poor people,” she said.
Money remains tight for many in Brantley County in southeast Georgia, but residents are no longer counting on Democratic support. In fact, more than 90% of voters chose former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, making it the most pro-Trump county among the six battleground states that could decide the presidency this year.
CNN met Lowell at a small store in downtown Nahunta, a city of about 1,000 people. She had bought a Trump Yard sign and a black Trump hat there.
She took them to a cemetery outside of town and placed a sign beside the new grave. She placed the Trump hat right in front of the new marker for her first grandchild, Taran Tanner. Tanner died two months ago when he fell out the window of a pickup truck and was run over. he was 17 years old.
“No drugs, no alcohol, just young people being young people,” Rowell said. She was able to list the ages of the people his organs were donated to. “There’s a blessing somewhere. I mean, the Lord doesn’t make mistakes. But he loved Trump.”
When Taran’s parents arrived at the cemetery, they plucked a few grass sprouts from the top of the grave. His father, Michael Tanner, was kneeling next to him. Tanner said Taran became interested in Trump after he got his first job. “He said, ‘I’m making $9 an hour and I’m working these hours.’ Why am I only making this much money? And I said to him, ‘I’m making $9 an hour and I’m working all these hours.’ , “Son, that’s politics.” You have to pay taxes,” Tanner explained.
Taran began studying politics. “He said, ‘Dad, from what you and I have talked about, we need Donald Trump to be president.’ And he just became a big supporter of Trump. ” said the father. “We felt like this is what he wants. He probably wants people to know he’s a Trump supporter because he can’t say it here anymore. , we want it to be shown at his grave.”
Brantley County is a rural area about an hour from the Atlantic Coast, with the Okefenokee Swamp to the west. It’s a flat landscape with tall pines, palm trees, and Spanish moss hanging from the branches of live oak trees. Sources said this is not a place that has suffered because of factories moving overseas, but because there wasn’t much industry there in the past. A pawn shop in Nahunta tempts customers with a hand-painted sign that reads: Sell the ring and keep the money. ”
Brantley County Republican Party Chairman Ronald Hamm comes from a family that has lived in the area since the 1880s. His great-grandparents were farmers, he said, and it’s hard to make a living from farming these days without hundreds of acres of land. Ham rents his own land and works as an IT consultant.
Many people in the area live on fixed incomes and live in mobile homes rather than brick or wood houses. People have to drive outside of the county for work, so gas prices are very important. The same goes for inflation. “When you have too much money at the end of the line, people vote with their wallets,” Hamm said.
“They’re connected to him,” Hamm said of Trump. “They have a track record with him and feel he is fighting for them.”
Lowell said her life has changed rapidly since the presidential transition from Trump to Joe Biden. “We have to drive here for work. I drive 50-odd miles each way. Gas costs about $3 and a gallon. Four years ago it was $2 a gallon.” said Lowell. “I’ll take you to Piggly Wiggly in Nahunta, look at the prices. I don’t know where you guys are coming from, but they’re triple what they were four years ago.”
Lowell, a nurse, is as focused on her paycheck as her grandson was on his. “The taxes coming out of the checks are outrageous,” she said.
“Trump removed taxes on our paychecks…that made a huge difference,” she said.
Lowell said that a few years ago, he had the money to do extra things, like go to Walt Disney World. Even the children could feel the difference.
And that matters more to her than President Trump’s bombast.
“My position is that I’m living a better life, my family is doing better, and we’re not struggling,” she said. “So if he wants to tweet something, tweet about his brother, I don’t care.”
Lowell said she wasn’t against Kamala Harris. But she wasn’t convinced that Harris would be so different from Biden. “She should have come forward and run an independent party. Then we might have listened to her a little more.”
It was easier to talk about politics here than in more divided, close-knit places, where people avoided interviews or yelled at reporters.
In Nahunta, locals worked hard to find a rare Democrat in this pro-Trump place. People were happy to call their neighbors and invite CNN to breakfast at local diners, where regulars liked to debate.
At the Gold House, Hamm was sitting with three friends, including David Herrin, a large man with a large white beard who ran a trucking business. You used to pay 4.25% interest to buy a truck, but now you have to pay 7% interest to buy the same car. He said he understands that interest rates are high to control inflation. “I understand that it works, but I don’t understand why we should think taking away more expendable income is a good thing,” Herrin said.
CNN wanted to know what you thought of the Democratic proposal to address the economic issues that many people in Brantley County have been talking about. What about the idea of changing the tax code so that wealthy people pay more taxes and using that money to pay for education and health care in places like this?The people around the table didn’t buy it.
Baton Lee, a former firefighter, said he wants to pass on his home to his children and doesn’t want them to have to pay high taxes.
Herrin said he is pleased that President Trump has increased the inheritance tax threshold. “You think, ‘That’s a millionaire with $10 million,’ but that’s not the trucking business with the trucks and assets that we have to have,” he says. “If I die, I would probably be worth more than $10 million, and my children would have to come up with 40% of that to maintain my assets. We set the bar high enough that small-town businessmen like you wouldn’t be affected by it.”
Former union boilermaker Bill Middleton wasn’t impressed by Biden’s bailout of the Teamsters’ pension fund. “If the Teamsters’ pensions are in trouble, that means there’s a serious problem at the top of the Teamsters union. It’s either gross mismanagement or theft,” he said. Herrin complained that no one bailed out his 401(k).
And what about September’s big employment report numbers? They weren’t impressed with it either. Mr Middleton said those were “government figures”. “You can’t take that with a grain of salt and give Washington, D.C., any credit,” Herrin said. “It’s about the American people going to work every day, even in times of downturn, in adversity, even in times of upswing. You take credit for it. We stood up and kept working and kept fighting and making this country better. No one in Washington has the right to take credit for what the American people did. Isn’t it?”
But when two older gentlemen, Corbett Wilson and Donald Lewis, joined the Trump fans around the table, they were very candid in explaining their views on the presidential election.
“I’m not going to vote for a criminal,” said Wilson, an independent. The Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol should have been disqualified, he said, and Lewis agreed. “He’s an anti-American. He’s trying to overthrow our government,” Lewis said of the former president.
Mr. Wilson and Mr. Lewis said the connection that neighbors feel to Mr. Trump is stronger and more personal than their attachment to Republicans Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush or Mitt Romney. agreed that it was. But they had no explanation for it. “People would kill for him,” Wilson said. “I don’t know. I don’t even try.”
Still, there’s no animosity around the table. “They can vote how they want to vote,” Wilson said of her peers. Hyerin interjected, “Still, I’m going to eat breakfast again.”
