Donald Trump is in serious political trouble. The white grievance movement he metastasized, however, is going to be with us for decades. If you want a glimpse into what's coming in a world where Trump is no longer in the Oval Office, take a look at tiny Montevallo, Alabama, where an August non-partisan election for mayor became an ugly race that saw white conservative Rusty Nix prevail over Joyce Jones, a Black woman in the era of "partisan everything".
Perhaps no one was more surprised to learn that Joyce Jones wanted to defund the police than Joyce Jones herself.
On Aug. 11, Ms. Jones was in the final stretch of her campaign for mayor of Montevallo, a town of 6,674 people in central Alabama, when she appeared in a candidate forum alongside her opponent, Rusty Nix. The moderator asked both candidates how they would work with the town’s police department. Ms. Jones said she was grateful for the work of Montevallo’s law enforcement, and that as mayor she would consider adding social programs to help the town not just respond to crime (of which there is little in Montevallo) but prevent it, too.
She awoke the next morning to find her phone clogged with social-media notifications. “‘Defund the police,’” she remembered. “It was like a wildfire.” Citizens on one of the local Facebook groups accused Ms. Jones, who was running to be the town’s first Black mayor, of using the “same language” in her answer as the Black Lives Matter movement, implying that she had a hidden agenda. “Very few people will actually say ‘Defund the police,’” one man warned.
Montevallo’s elections are nonpartisan, and there was a time when they felt that way. Candidates would run on proposals like updating the sewage systems, beautifying Main Street and starting a townwide recycling program.
But as Ms. Jones, a 44-year-old lifelong Montevalloan, was finding, not even her tiny town was immune from the divisions roiling the Trump era, the political tremors that once would have felt out of place in casual conversations at Lucky’s supermarket, not to mention local elections, but that now seemed to color everything.
Ms. Jones tried to quash the rumors. She posted on her campaign’s page about her daughter in the Alabama National Guard, her niece and nephews in law enforcement, how she did not believe in “de-funding the Montevallo PD.” But the falsehood continued to ricochet across social media. One man shared a photo of activists in Austin, Texas, holding a giant black-and-white “Defund the police” banner, captioning it, “Montevallo’s future if liberals keep getting elected.”
For Ms. Jones, it was but one partisan-inflected battle in a campaign season of many, an election that would go on to mirror national fights over poll watchers and targeting of Black voters; include sobbing staffers, charges of racism and warnings of Marxism; and culminate in an unsettling feeling among many that, by the time the final vote was counted on the evening of Aug. 25, something in the town had been lost.
“It has always been in my heart this center of civility,” said Montevallo’s outgoing mayor, Hollie Cost. “Before the age of Trump, before all” — she paused — “this, whatever this even is, we all got along. It just ripped us apart.”
And in rural Alabama, everything old is new again, including that oldest of foes, racism.
On the morning of Aug. 25, Ethel Blake, Ms. Jones’s mother, loaded her own 88-year-old mother, Sadie Burns, into the car. It was raining as Ms. Blake drove to the polling station and helped her mother stand in the long line. They were wearing their Joyce Jones T-shirts, which, as they’d checked on the Alabama secretary of state’s website, was legal to do when voting.
Each candidate has the opportunity to appoint a poll watcher inside the building. Like most candidates had done for years in Montevallo, Ms. Jones’s campaign did not appoint one. All four members of the Conservative Coalition, however, had watchers on duty.
Ms. Blake felt their eyes on her when she reached the front of the line. As she helped her mother obtain her ballot, she learned why. The poll watchers had flagged the two women for their T-shirts. They would have to go home and change.
Ms. Blake’s face burned — she knew she’d read the website right, but didn’t know how to respond — as she went to retrieve her mother, who became upset. “But I haven’t voted yet,” she kept repeating. Back home, Ms. Blake urged a plain blouse over her mother’s head. “Momma, I know, just please,” she said, fighting back tears as Ms. Burns said she didn’t want to change.
Ms. Blake prayed for God to cover her mouth as they returned to cast their ballots. She called Dr. Reece to tell him what happened. “Not as an adult have I sobbed that way,” Dr. Reece said.
They weren’t the only Black voters stopped for their T-shirts. Herman Lehman, the city clerk, said the poll watchers — none of whom agreed to be interviewed for this story — had been misinformed about the rule. But white voters who wore campaign gear said they had cast their ballot without issue. “It was really crazy, because it was after I had voted that we got the reports of people being turned away,” said Andrea Eckelman, who had worn her Jones T-shirt, button and mask to vote. “And the only people getting turned away that I heard of were people of color.”
Ms. Jones’s campaign spent the rest of the day trying to confirm that anyone who had been turned away for a T-shirt had ultimately returned to vote. Finally, from a tent outside the polling station, they listened to the results trickle in.
It had been a record turnout in Montevallo, a 60 percent increase from 2016 that included many first-time voters. Out of 1,307 votes cast, Mr. Nix won by 49.
Shortly after the results were announced, according to Ms. Jones and three others who witnessed it, a pickup truck filled with teenage boys sped by. “You suck,” they yelled, appending a racial epithet.
Ms. Jones reflected on that moment. “Listen, I’m not the angry Black woman. I’m not. Like, I fight really, really hard to not let that be my narrative,” she said. “But we, even I, walk around thinking that these things don’t happen — not here, not anymore.”
Win or lose, this is going to keep happening around the country for quite some time. The difference is how virulent -- and violent -- things are going to get if Trump wins as opposed to if Biden does. The rest of the GOP that went all on on white grievance politics will still be in office for the most part, and outside this cycle, especially in 2022 and 2024, I expect their numbers to grow.
And if you're wondering what the present of Trumpism is, it's the Traveling COVID-19 and Hatred Roadshow, all day, every day.
President Trump has asked his campaign to put him on the road every single day from now until Nov. 3.
Behind the scenes: His team is in the process of scheduling events to make that happen, two sources familiar with the discussions tell Axios. But not everyone thinks this is a good idea. One adviser said, “He’s going to kill himself.”
Why it matters: Look at the polls. Trump is in need of a rebound, and he's betting he's got a better chance on the move than sitting around the West Wing.
What we're hearing: The campaign is more worried than ever that seniors — a crucial voting bloc — are abandoning Trump over his handling of the pandemic.
"He really f----d up with seniors when he said not to worry about the virus and not to let it control your life," one Trump adviser told Axios. "There are so many grandparents who’ve gone almost a year without being able to see grandchildren."
We still have a lifetime of work to do.
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