Meeting MAGA in the deep south

It’s just a theory, he tells me, but he reckons it’s because Republicans keep moving here. The native population isn’t necessarily getting more conservative, but the new transplants tend to be as red as it gets. I thank him for his time and return to my drink.

The next day, in the parking lot of a strip mall, Kermit is proved right. “I always tell people that if Harris wins Pennsylvania this year, I want the credit, because we’re skimming the red off the top,” says Sam Skardon.

Sam is currently serving as Charleston County’s Democratic Party chair, and spending the day telling canvassers where to go and what to talk about with voters. It may feel like pointlessly gruelling work, as South Carolina just won’t flip, but Kamala Harris isn’t the only person on the ballot.

“If Trump is re-elected, we would see this county-level government as our line of defence, to still have some kind of democratic values in the way our county is administered, our jail is administered, in the way law enforcement works here, the way the court systems work,” he says. “Those county offices are so important, because without that democratic check locally, the state would have its way here, which is much more conservative than Charleston wants to be.”

Back in 2020, 55.5% of Charlestonians voted for Joe Biden, but they remain in a minority. South Carolina as a whole was the fastest-growing state in 2023, and the ones who moved weren’t in search of liberal city life.

“It’s the central Pennsylvania factory workers retiring to Myrtle Beach, because that’s the only affordable coastline in the south-east,” Skardon says. “Horry County is a major retirement destination for a lot of upper Midwest, Trump, Republican, blue-collar, white working-class.” It was also the fastest growing city in the US last year, for the third year running.

Another factor, perhaps unexpectedly, is the runaway success of Charlotte, just across the border in North Carolina. One of the country’s big banking cities, it has been light blue for a long time, but its proximity to its neighbour isn’t helping.

“If you work in Charlotte, there’s this self-selection that happens where the conservatives live on our side of the border, and the more liberal people live on theirs. The more Charlotte grows, the more the Republicans who work in Charlotte move to South Carolina. That’s working against us.”

It probably shouldn’t be a surprise that the state is so attractive to conservatives. Even Charleston, a nominally liberal place, is littered with Trump lawn signs. Downtown, tourists and locals alike can buy T-shirts shouting “I’M VOTING FELON 2024”, or “I’M STILL A TRUMP GIRL – I MAKE NO APOLOGIES”. A particularly tasteless offering features a crossed-off picture of Kamala Harris, and the slogan “SAY NO TO THE HO”. There is no equivalent Democrat tat that can be found.

It is a state of affairs Mike Elder is pleased with. The vice-chairman of the local GOP, he has only been formally involved in politics for four years.

“I used to watch Fox News all the time because my dad did, but then when Trump – in my opinion, which I don’t think is an opinion – when he got his election stolen in 2020, you could see a change in Fox,” he tells me. I attempt to melt into the park bench we’re sitting on, but he keeps going.

“He beat Hillary and it was a big shock in the world, and it was great, and they prosecuted him the whole four years. He barely could get anything done. So 2020, we’re like, OK, we’re going to get it, and it was clear that the Covid and the mail-in ballots were all fraud.” This was the point at which Mike decided to stand for election as vice-chair of the Charleston County Republicans. He won.

Elder is, among other things, someone who refused to wear masks or get vaccinated, believing the latter to be “bad for you”. Towards the end of the conversation, he informs me that the British police are “siding with the immigrants and saying it’s OK to have all this influx of Muslims into London”.

A few days later at the Democratic HQ in Charlotte, North Carolina, I’m speaking to Andrew Richards, the deputy executive director of the Mecklenburg County Dems, and he struggles to celebrate the recent media storm surrounding Mark Robinson, the Republican gubernatorial candidate.

Robinson is, as one may put it, an interesting character. Earlier this year, CNN reported that he used to be an enthusiastic member of pornographic forum Nude Africa, where he called himself a “Black Nazi”, appeared to support slavery, stated his support for Adolf Hitler and called MLK “Martin Lucifer Koon”.

I ask Richards if he feels lucky to have him as an opponent, but he hesitates. “It might be electorally useful, but that’s not a world I want to live in, where that’s the guy that they’re putting up on the other side,” he says.

“When I was growing up, the president was George Bush, and I did not like George Bush. A lot of the things that he did were very bad. But there is a qualitative difference between the Republican Party of George Bush and the Republican Party of today.”

Crucially, Andrew points out, it is hard to effectively oppose people who have gone off the deep end. “A lot of times, if you tell voters what it is that Republicans are saying and doing, they don’t believe you. It sounds like you’re lying,” he says. “Trump is saying that he wants to deport 20 million people, right? And I don’t even really know how to communicate to a voter what that would mean.”

Still, at least there is hope in North Carolina. A nominally blue state, it had the tightest margin in the country in 2020, as Trump won it with a majority of only 1.3%. It was a big disappointment for the Democrats, and fingers were soon pointed at Mecklenburg County, where turnout was several points lower than in other Democratic counties in the state.

According to Richards, it wasn’t a surprise. “In 2022, there were 35,000 doors knocked in Mecklenburg County by the party. You just can’t boost turnout, build a base of habitual voters, or communicate to people on the ground if you’re knocking 35,000 doors in a county of 1.1 million people,” he says.

Since then, however, they have hired a number of paid organisers, and worked hard to recruit more volunteers. “We’ve knocked on over 200,000 doors for this election, and I would expect that number to increase by at least another 50% before election night,” he says. “It’s completely night and day from what existed before.” Will it be enough? God, they hope so.

They also aren’t the only ones biting their nails. A Preferred Women’s Health Center is only a few miles away from uptown, and times have been tough for the abortion clinic.

The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v Wade saw the state reduce its abortion time-limit from 20 weeks down to 12, and turn the 24-hour waiting period between the initial consultation and the procedure into a 72-hour one. The appointments also have to happen in person, when they could previously be done over the phone.

This matters because, comparatively speaking, North Carolina still has relatively loose abortion laws. As the clinic’s executive director, Calla Hales, explains: “We’re right on the border of South Carolina, so pre Roe v Wade about 40% of our patients were from out of state. That figure is now around 81%.”

We’re sitting in her office, in front of which sit dozens of cars with licence plates from all over the southern US. Before going in, I spoke to a man from Texas who was waiting for his wife in the parking lot.

The couple already have several children and just can’t afford another one, he told me, so they panicked and drove like hell to the closest place they could find that would perform the procedure. Neither could really afford to take four days off work, but, well, what choice did they have?

“[Before the ruling] we saw around 7,000 cases a year in Charlotte,” Hales tells me. “Now it’s closer to 14,000. It’s nearly doubled.” As a result of their popularity, they have become a target for anti-abortion protesters from all over the state. “Churches can bring in entire congregations to stand outside the clinic,” one volunteer says. One group even bought a plot of land next door so they can stand outside and shout through a megaphone all day without breaking any local laws.

Outside, a handful of women try to get me to reconsider what they assume is my decision to get an abortion. “Today’s a good day,” one of the clinic escorts tells me. “On a bad day, there can be hundreds of them.”

If the protesters aren’t going anywhere, then neither are the abortion providers. Hales has launched a website listing all pro-choice candidates to vote for, has been helping with mail-in registrations, and is looking into the possibility of offering people lifts to voting booths. “There are several races that have to be won or we’re screwed,” she says. Local Republicans can’t currently go much further to restrict reproductive rights, but it wouldn’t take a lot for them to have their way.

None of them replied to my requests for interviews in Charlotte, but Elder did have some opinions on the topic. “I don’t know why that’s the hot button issue when I talk to liberal women,” he told me. “If anything, Trump’s helped the situation because you can move to a state that is more liberal and you can have an abortion up to the day or even after if you choose to do that!”

We were walking around a park in downtown Charleston at that point, and I was pleased we were because I couldn’t quite keep my facial expressions in check. What can you possibly say to that? Of course, Elder is only one minor figure in an often forgotten state, but there are hundreds and thousands of others like him, up and down the US, seeking to reshape the country in their image.

Thankfully, there are just as many working day and night to make sure that the dam holds again this time. Let’s hope it does, for all our sakes.