The Village That Flipped Back

Nestled in the winding valleys of the Driftless Area, you might pass right by Steuben, Wisconsin, a little village of less than 140 people, if you aren’t paying attention. The roads twist and turn through its heavily forested terrain, a result of being untouched by the glaciers that pushed across Wisconsin during the last Ice Age. Cell service is spotty at best. The residents still have dial-up internet, use landline phones and pagers, work with their hands, and some of them don’t watch TV. The only main businesses in the isolated town are the two dueling bars down by the river, Lou’s Railroad station and Jo’s Kountry Bar.

Jo Bunders, like many people in this fiercely independent area of Wisconsin, used to be a Barack Obama supporter. Now, though, she is a die-hard supporter of Donald Trump and a reliable Republican.

“I personally vote for who I like. I’m independent, I voted for Obama twice, and I voted for Trump just because I’m sick of the politicians who are out for themselves,” she told a group of Media Milwaukee student journalists in 2016 and, visited again in the wake of the 2018 midterm elections that toppled Republican Gov. Scott Walker, she hasn’t changed her mind. Her support for Trump remains unwavering, for pretty much the same reasons, and she voted for Walker.

Lou Atkinson, the other tavern owner in Steuben, is a Democrat with nothing but animus towards the president and Governor Walker. She chose Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Tony Evers for governor in 2018. Jo and Lou – who are both women – have a friendly rivalry competing to be the town’s watering hole. Or at least they used to, before a nightmarish surge on the Kickapoo River flooded the whole area nearly to the roofs. The playground across the street was reduced to rusty metal and mud. A wall of sandbags surrounded Jo’s bar, well below where the waterline finally broke. Jo and Lou are resilient folk who plan to rebuild their former livelihoods. But for now, people will need to drive at least 20 minutes out of town if they want to find a place to drink. And odds are that bar was flooded too.

The 2016 election and areas like Steuben created a trend, of which Jo was a part, that assisted Trump in winning the election against Clinton. Rural voters came out to vote for the billionaire from New York all around the country. States that made up the traditional “Blue Wall,” like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, all broke ranks and flipped to Trump. Steuben led the pack in this phenomenon. A Dutch news crew even visited because this town had the highest flip percentage between Obama and Trump in Wisconsin (it went for Obama by 35 points and for Trump by 38). It’s in a county that also flipped for Trump in an area along the Mississippi River Valley that largely did so. In 2016, Trump won Crawford County with 50.1 percent of the vote, a margin not dissimilar from the state as a whole, which he won in a surprise victory by a very small margin, cobbling together enough rural voters like these to win and benefiting from lower voter turnout in Clinton-tilted areas.

However, fast forward two years later, and the political realities are very different, albeit with a slim margin once again and turnout a key factor:

Steuben – and Crawford County – have flipped back.

It’s the Democrat this time, Evers, who’s claimed victory over the area, besting Republican Gov. Scott Walker, winning 50.7 percent of the Crawford County vote. Evers flipped Steuben back as well, although the number of voters was very small (Evers won Steuben by a margin of 23 to 17 with 2 votes going to the Libertarian), although the turnout was lower than in 2016.

So then why did Crawford County and Steuben elect Democrat Tony Evers for governor in 2018 after electing Republican Donald Trump in 2016 and after supporting Barack Obama for eight years before that? And, perhaps most interestingly, what does this mean for Donald Trump in 2020 in Wisconsin and perhaps the nation? To what degree is this tiny village Trump’s canary in the mine, the bellwether? Where Steuben goes, goes the nation?

To be sure, the reasons Walker lost Wisconsin were very complex. They include a greater turnout for Democrats in historically rock-solid red counties like Waukesha, marijuana legalization referendums in some counties, and presidential-like enthusiasm for Evers in Democratic Dane and Milwaukee Counties. However, it turns out the people who didn’t vote in 2018 (but did vote for Trump two years before) – people like Jo Bunders’ son, Clay – may also hold part of that answer.

It turns out that Walker, after surviving two terms and a recall election, had simply worn out his welcome with some voters – and it was for a variety of reasons very unique to him.

Anger Toward Walker

Even within Crawford County, a sparsely populated rural county located along the state’s western border with the Mississippi River, no one seemed to have a good answer for this phenomenon and even Trump voters aren’t sure whether it means he will lose the area in 2020 too. Some of the residents who voted for the Democrat in the most recent election didn’t even seem to know who Tony Evers is. But they all knew the incumbent, Scott Walker, and very few people had positive things to say about him. In fact, one government worker unleashed a stream of expletives and stormed out of the room when asked about Walker in a Crawford County tavern.

While Trump voters out here still claim they like the president because he’s not a politician in their minds (they see his Twitter tone as authentic), it’s not hard to find someone in Crawford County who refers to Walker as “Mr. Politician Man.”

In the village of Gays Mills, a short drive from Steuben along the Kickapoo River, many held a resentment towards the governor for what they perceived as his disinterest in helping them recover from the historic floods that wrecked the area. Many also worked as state employees, who once were part of unions, and the effects of Walker’s Act 10 and erasing collective bargaining paid their toll and created resentment for Walker. Others offered a motley of different reasons for being upset with the Republican governor, including dislike of his strict no-pardon policy or his stance on FoxConn. Perhaps most critically for Trump, there were others who came out to vote for the president but who, in the midterms, simply stayed home (that stands in contrast to populous Democratic areas that saw a surge of almost presidential level turnout in the midterms.)

“Walker was a buffoon,” says Jeff Christie at Halvers Town Tap in Gays Mills, another small community in Crawford County. “Why support FoxConn over roads and education?”    

Among the Trump supporters in Crawford County, though, it was almost impossible to find a single person who lost faith in the president’s ability to run the country. It was possible to find people who liked Trump but not Walker, though – or who just didn’t care enough about Walker to get out and vote. All of that makes it an open question about whether Trump can win this area again. Most of those interviewed said they aren’t sure.

A handful said they might consider another Republican if he had a challenger in the 2020 primaries, but not one said they would consider voting for a Democrat or staying away from the polls entirely.

“He (Trump) must be doing something right because he’s got everybody’s undies in a bunch,” said Clay Bunders, a logger, a handyman, and Jo’s son. Clay had a bushy beard and wore a camouflage hoodie. He drove a white Chevy pickup truck and built his mother’s house.

“I’ve only voted twice in my life,” said Clay.

The two times Clay voted was for his local sheriff, who happened to be his neighbor, and for Donald Trump. He shrugged when asked why he didn’t vote in the midterms at all, indicating he just didn’t have the time. For Trump, though, he made the time. For Walker? He didn’t.

Clay is a prime example of this political shift that occurred during the 2016 election. The problem was that part of the coalition that came out of the woodwork to elevate Trump to the Oval Office failed to come together once again to re-elect Governor Walker.

“There are times when I’d be out combining corn and I’d just forget to go vote,” said Kurt Forde, an organic farmer raised in Crawford County near a town called Rising Sun. He’s tall with red hair and almost looks like he could be Robert Redford’s stunt double. He’s also a Trump supporter.

Overall, the 2018 midterm elections in Wisconsin appeared to be as much or more of a referendum on Scott Walker’s history than on Trump. At that point the incumbent sat in the governor’s mansion for eight years.

The flip to Trump in 2016 wasn’t exactly partisan. Even though he managed to turn the Mississippi river valley red on a presidential level, folks in Wisconsin’s 3rd congressional district still elected Democrat Ron Kind to the U.S. House of Representatives for an 11th term. Kind won easily in 2018. Signs that read “Kind Country” could be seen in the front yards of many farmhouses. Forde, like many others, said he knew Kind and felt he could trust him to speak on behalf of the county.

“When my car goes off the road, I don’t go to the first liberal democrat for help. I go to the first house,” said Charley Preusser, a local journalist of the Crawford County Courier and the Kickapoo Scout. Charley wore glasses and had a bushy, grey mustache that covered up his top lip. He carried the same look of trust and kindness in his eyes that so many in the area seem to share. Many people in this area are, like Preusser, disarmingly friendly. One woman even offered the reporters a place to stay at her farm.

The Forgotten Ones

The smell of freshly cut timber and sawdust fills the air of Lou’s bar. New insulation is in and wall panels are ready to be installed. The under-area of the bar has been filled in with concrete to limit the damage of a future flood. Lou was inside remodeling and hoping to open soon.

“We changed the insulation because the old stuff would wick up the walls when it got wet and we’d have to scrape it off,” Lou Atkinson said, a short, thin woman with large teardrop-shaped glasses. Her voice was raspy, but she spoke with authority.

Jo Bunders is also in the process of rebuilding. She lives in a white trailer home not far from her bar. Her son just finished building her garage.

There’s sewing equipment all around the living room and multiple cans of bug spray on the counter. Jo wore sweatpants, a sweatshirt and moccasins. She sat at the kitchen table with her grandchild and sipped from a Disney coffee mug.  Her son, Clay, leaned against the counter with his arms crossed.

She used to feel like the people of Steuben were part of the “forgotten ones.” During the 2016 campaign Trump characterized rural folk, those left behind by urbanization and technology, as the “forgotten ones.” Jo now feels like Trump addressed the issues that allowed them to become characterized as such.

Lou, on the other hand, believes that they’re still forgotten and that Trump has not addressed the issues he said he would during his campaign.

“Hell yeah,” said Lou in response to whether or not she believes the folks of Crawford County are still part of the “forgotten ones.”  However, she believes that Democrats are the best ones to solve those problems and hasn’t wavered.

It’s easy to see why the people of Crawford County might feel forgotten. No interstate freeways run through Crawford Co. A few smaller state highways pass through, but some are currently out in places due to bridges collapsing and poor road conditions. The ones that still operate are in constant need of repair and wind through the countryside almost like a lazy river. It can take nearly an hour to travel across this county, which is about half as large as Milwaukee County.  A quick google search reveals that there isn’t a single music store in the whole county.

Steuben is named after Friedrich von Steuben, a Frenchman who was recruited by Benjamin Franklin to help the Continental Army during the American Revolution in the late 1700s. Von Steuben helped the Army survive the harsh winter at Valley Forge. Today, military heritage is visible in place names and the occasional tank parked in the grass throughout Crawford County. Some of the area’s towns – like Soldier’s Grove – took their names from the Blackhawk War (the soldiers chasing the great chief’s people camped among the white pines there, and the land was initially deeded to veterans.) It remains a hardy and isolated place where it’s not hard to find people who make a living cutting down and lugging trees out of forests. It’s also a place where many people confide that they get their political news largely through Facebook.

Crawford County has not shared in the rest of the state’s prosperity: Its per capita income is less than the state’s and its unemployment rate is greater.

In 2008, Barack Obama won Steuben 32 to 16, and he handily won the county 4,987 to 2,830, according to election data provided by the county. Obama bested Mitt Romney in 2012, too, in Crawford County, but by a smaller margin (4,629 to 3,067 votes). Steuben stuck with Obama, 38 to 17 that year. The county also went by quite a bit to Democrat Mary Burke against Walker in 2014 (as did Steuben). If you go back further in time, though, you see that this area was full of the classic “Reagan Democrats.” Ronald Reagan won the county twice, although it switched to Michael Dukakis against the first George Bush.

It appears Trump, like Reagan, was the outlier. Crawford County switched from Obama in 2012 to Trump by 25 percentage points. Steuben is in a set of five towns that flipped the most in the county that flipped among the most in the state, which is part of the region that flipped the most in the entire country percentage wise from Obama to Trump.

The average age of Steuben is 45, and the village is 100 percent white, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. All of this made the area a petri dish for Trump’s populist rage toward the system and on behalf of the so-called “forgotten man,” but it appears it doesn’t carry over to Walker, perceived as a more traditional Republican.

Augie is another Crawford County woodworker. He’s blue collar and donned a worn-out hat and camouflage patterned clothes. He likes Trump – a lot – but detests Walker because of his no pardon policy. Augie has a long red beard with a warm smile underneath it. He lost his Gays Mills home in the record flooding over the summer. The water washed away the very foundation. Augie, his wife, his two dogs and two teenage stepdaughters spent eight weeks sharing a mobile home while they searched for a more permanent residence – forgotten again. Once they finally found a new place to call home, they invited the entire town to come celebrate.

Randy Swiggum, a neighbor and friend of the family, grilled chicken legs in the backyard with his homemade grilling machine. It was essentially a metal flatbed trailer turned into a grill. He didn’t want to talk politics at first, stating that he was at a housewarming party and that they should celebrate. But he still had something to say. He felt like the whole town was forgotten, especially because of the floods. But that thought didn’t make him angry. It gave him a sense of pride.

“We are the forgotten ones, and I’m OK with it,” Swiggum said. “People need to self-sustain and be a community.”

Swiggum didn’t say who he voted for.

Mr. Politician Man

Augie’s story is similar to that of many others in the area. Halvers, one of the only still operating downtown pubs, replaced all electronic slot machines because the old ones were rendered useless due to the flooding. The water line from the river’s surge is clearly visible on walls, well above the bar top.

While there was plenty of finger pointing for why the recovery effort took so long, a good number of residents put the blame squarely on Scott Walker and his administration. It took nearly eight weeks for any type of recovery effort on the state level to trickle down into the Gays Mills area. Through the bitter cold of mid-November, several residents still didn’t have functioning furnaces in their homes.

The crowd at Halvers Town Tap in Gays Mills accused Walker as guilty for this calamity. They claimed that he failed to submit forms to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in an acceptable amount of time. They waited and waited for eight whole weeks before any help came to the people of Gays Mills. Naturally, they had a lot to say to the FEMA agents when they arrived to discuss matters at a town hall.

“Walker was too worried about his election to send us help,” Augie said, “He’s a dick. He’s Mr. Politician Man.”

Could bitterness over their troubled situation have turned them against Walker? It’s possible. However, voting records show that Gays Mills has a history of voting Democratic. As with Steuben, though, the economic scene in Gays Mills was even bleaker in 2018 than the students found it in 2016. The cafe next to Halvers had a handwritten “closed” sign pasted to its smudged window. In 2016, that cafe was full of the smell of homemade apple pies. If these people were forgotten in 2016, they seem worse off in some ways two years later.

Even as Trump flipped Crawford County red overall, the village of Gays Mills still voted for Hillary Clinton 119 to 95. Trump’s brand of politics apparently didn’t sway this blue town in a sea of red. Walker’s troubles must have come from another region that Trump carried but Walker couldn’t muster: Largely the cluster of little towns around Steuben.

Many in the town work for the state government, such as the highway department and guarding the state prison over the river in Boscobel. Walker’s union-busting policy, Act 10, had the greatest effect on them.

“I love my job, but when (Walker) took our rights away, I’m done,” said Tod Salmon, a local worker for the highway department.

Even Walker’s supporters sometimes felt disheartened by the governor’s actions. Clay Bunders said he would have voted for Walker in 2018, but he didn’t turn out to vote. He’s planning to vote for Trump in 2020 unless his logging income tanks completely due to tariffs, although right now he trusts that Trump is playing a long game on that. He believes that Trump is speaking in the voice of the common man.

So it begs the question, does this lack of turnout for Walker create a canary in the mine for Trump in the 2020 election?

The locals – even those who love Trump – themselves aren’t sure. Turnout will be an obvious factor. The enthusiasm gap. What happens in the next two years. Even Jo, who voted for Walker, acknowledged the governor had an Achilles’ heel.    

“The heart of Crawford County is family,” Jo said. “Walker’s school cuts hurt kids, and that hurts the family.”