In purple Williamson County, presidential politics casts pall over voters

Sign up for the We the Texans newsletter to receive twice-monthly updates on our year-long initiative dedicated to boosting civic engagement and chronicling how democracy is experienced in Texas.

---

ROUND ROCK – On a scorching summer day, Tony Grady sat in the shade outside of the city plaza, watching passersby pop in and out of local restaurants and boutiques and parents chase their children at a nearby splash pad.

Grady has been thinking a lot about the presidential election in the last four weeks since President Joe Biden’s poor debate performance against Donald Trump, the Republican nominee. High-profile Democrats nationwide have called for Biden to step away from the race and let someone else lead the ticket in November, amid plummeting poll numbers.

Grady is not one of those Democrats. The 70-year-old Round Rock resident said he’s worried about Social Security and Medicare if Trump wins and is sticking with Biden. He sent an email to the White House to let the president know voters are still behind him.

“I don’t want Biden to step down. I want him to stay strong,” he said. “He’s better than Trump.”

Milling about the same city plaza about a half hour earlier, Linda Parmentier, a 72-year-old Trump supporter from Georgetown, shared different worries. A few days earlier Parmentier was watching Trump’s campaign speech in Pennsylvania, when a gunman took a shot at the former president, grazing his ear.

Parmentier was disturbed by the shocking act of political violence and she is hopeful the country will rally around Trump.

Parmentier has doubts about Biden’s mental acuity and fears what another four years under the Democrat might mean for the country. Trump, she said, reflected her conservative values and she was less concerned about his ability to do the job.

“He’s miles above President Biden,” she said.

The two opposing views expressed in such close proximity reflect a simmering tension in Williamson County, a political battleground just north of Austin that elects both Republican and Democrat officials to local offices and whose status as a consistently red district has shifted in the last 20 years.

In 2018, Williamson County voted for Democrat Beto O’Rourke over Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in one of the closest statewide elections in the last 25 years. The county also swung narrowly for Biden over Trump in 2020.

Democrats are hoping those trends continue and help carry Biden into a second four-year term but they acknowledge that there is tremendous division within the party at a time when the president is under tremendous pressure to withdraw as the party’s presidential nominee . They argue that this election is an existential battle for democracy and that reproductive rights and the fate of a multicultural society is on the line.

But Republicans note that Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, won Williamson County over O’Rourke in 2022 in a reversal of that trend. They say four years of Biden have damaged the working and middle classes as well as the United States’ reputation on the world stage. They hope to ride discontent over inflation, gas prices and immigration into GOP victories up and down the ballot. And in the wake of a historic assassination attempt on Trump’s life, they are seeing renewed loyalty and enthusiasm to their party leader.

Unease over Biden

When Nani Covar moved to Williamson County in 2005, she thought she might be the only Democrat who lived in the county.

“[I] felt like a blue dot in a big red sea,” she said.

In those nearly 20 years, Covar has seen massive population growth in the county from people who have moved north seeking more affordable housing outside of Austin as well as immigrants who have relocated there from other parts of the globe. As a precinct chair for the party, she’s also been part of large-scale organizing that has revved up Democratic voters and turned Williamson into a political battleground.

As she prepared to make 522 phone calls to prospective Democratic voters, Covar said this election is the most important in her lifetime.

“We’re either going to do democracy or we’re going to do dictatorship, those are our choices,” she said. “I would drag myself through broken glass for our candidates, from Joe Biden to down the ballot.”

Covar said she’s tired of the calls from some fellow Democrats for Biden to withdraw from the race. She said such calls are misguided and “possibly irresponsible” because there wouldn’t be enough time to coalesce around another candidate or set up a fundraising infrastructure.

Calling Biden the “greatest president since FDR,” she said there isn’t anyone better suited to take on Trump.

Among party organizers, that sentiment is strong. Kim Gilby, the chair of the Williamson County Democratic Party, and Trish Lopacki, president of the Sun City Democrats, said they’re “moving forward” and “riding with Biden,” respectively. They both said the election is about more than just one man. It’s about the team that Biden has put together around him to navigate a host of difficult issues.

Gilby said she thinks the talk about Biden stepping down is a distraction.

“Why aren’t we talking about January 6 or the 34 felony counts against Trump?” she said, referencing the former president’s role in the attack on the Capitol in 2021, and his recent conviction in a New York criminal case relating to his hush money payments to an adult film star.

Sue Duncan, 87, a retired teacher from Round Rock, also said she’s sticking with Biden. She said she likes that Biden brought “calm after Trump.”

“I like the things he’s done for health for older and younger people,” she said. “And I like his investment in infrastructure. He listens and knows how to run a country and puts good people around him.”

But there is more ambivalence among other rank-and-file voters.

Melissa Pride, 66, of Sun City whose gray hairs are punctuated by a blue streak, said for much of her life, she voted Republican. That is until she was won over by President Barack Obama and cast her vote for his reelection in 2012.

Her top issues are making sure LGBTQ+ Texans get fair treatment and that immigrants are treated with dignity as they pursue better opportunities for their families. But she is not set on Biden as the nominee, noting that he would be 85 by the end of his second term.

“I will certainly vote for Biden if he was at the top of the ticket, but I would not be upset if it was Harris — I would prefer it,” she said. “I think if we got someone else on the ticket it might energize people.”

Monica Silva, 19, of Georgetown, was also less than enthusiastic. She leans more toward the progressive wing of the Democratic party. She said Biden is too much of a centrist on issues like access to abortion and hasn’t used enough executive power on issues like student loan debt relief. She also is unhappy that Biden hasn’t been stronger condemning Israel’s military actions in Gaza.

She said Biden’s performance at the presidential debate last month was a “bad look” and while it didn’t make her lose faith in him she realized many other people would. Still, she said she’d vote for Biden because the alternative is unthinkable. She is the daughter of Venezuelan and Guatemalan immigrants and opposes Trump’s plan to end birthright citizenship if he is reelected.

“When it comes down to the choice between these two I’m going to choose Biden because I really do not want Trump elected,” Silva said.

Older Democrats know that many young voters like Silva need to be convinced to vote for Biden. As part of that push, the Sun City Democrats Club, who are residents of a community for people 55 and older are turning to Taylor Swift-inspired friendship bracelets with messages like “Vote Blue,” “Women’s rights,” and “Save the pill,” to try to engage young people to vote blue.

“We know the only way Democrats win is if we get younger voters out there,” said Alayne Jurgens, 68, who hosted a bracelet-making event at her home. “We’re trying to get as many people to vote as possible.”

Republicans are united

Annette Maruska has also seen the political shift in Williamson County since she moved there in 1986 – and she doesn’t like it.

A former conservative Democrat who worked for Gov. John Connally, Maruska became a Republican in the 1980s because she felt the party better reflected her Christian values, which include an opposition to abortion and support for prayer in schools. She’s now the president of the East Williamson County Republicans and is working to turn out her base for GOP victories up and down the ballot.

Maruska said she believes the county is still red but that voters need to be roused from their complacency. The assassination attempt against Trump in Pennsylvania last weekend should wake Republicans up, she hopes.

“We have so many Republicans that just need to get out and vote. They are too comfortable in their easy chairs,” she said. “When they see something happen like what happened to former President Trump, that's what ought to motivate them to get out and vote.”

That sense of urgency was apparent among attendees at a prayer rally at the county courthouse in Georgetown the day after the shooting. Michelle Evans, chair of the Williamson County GOP, said there was unity among Republicans after some division during the primary elections.

“We need to come together and recognize that this is a deciding moment in our history,” she said.

Charles and Crystal Votaw, a married couple who’ve lived in Taylor for 17 years, are also feeling more motivated to vote for Trump after the assassination attempt. They are distrustful of government and said they are disappointed that the U.S. Secret Service could allow such an attempt.

The Votaws said one of their top issues is the economy, with inflation and gas prices eating into their budget. Charles Votaw, 58, who works in highway field services, said the high price of gas affects his bottom line because the company has to pay more for fuel and can’t allocate that money for raises or bonuses.

Crystal Votaw, 60, who wore a “God, Guns and Trump” hat at a meeting of the East Williamson County Republican Party on Thursday, said Trump would be better for the economy than Biden because he would bring businesses back from overseas and increase wages.

Michael Salvo, a 36-year-old from Round Rock who runs the Williamson County Young Republicans, is also yearning for a return to a Trump presidency. His top issue is immigration and border security.

Salvo didn’t vote for Trump in 2016 because he didn’t trust his record. But he changed his mind after the first Trump administration and blockwalked for him in 2020. This month, he was in Milwaukee at the Republican National Convention hoping for another four years of Trump.

“I wish I’d never left those first four years,” Salvo said, also pointing to what he said was a much healthier economy under Trump than under Biden.

Salvo grew up in Williamson County and has been a lifelong Republican. He said he’s seen the county change with an influx of people from Austin but also from Democrat-led states like California and Illinois. He said liberal policies like cutting police budgets had made Democrat-cities like Austin too dangerous, leading voters to move to Williamson County which has more conservative policies.

“They’re leaving their blue brethren behind in the liberal wasteland that is ‘Commmiefornia’ and they’re realizing they’re moving here because Williamson County has been conservative for a long time,” he said. “Those are the values that make Williamson County so good to live in and move and retire to.”

Republicans feel they have an added advantage in Williamson County because of Sun City, the age-restricted community of about 15,000 open to people 55 and older, who tend to skew conservative. Ninety percent of the community’s population is white and it largely voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020.

Later this month, organizers will hold a Trump Golf Cart Parade to show their support for the Republican nominee.

Salvo said his party’s ticket is appealing to voters across the board, with the naming of Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as Trump’s vice presidential candidate representing a passing of the torch to a younger generation of Republicans. If elected, Vance, who will turn 40 in August, would be the first millennial to serve as vice president and the third youngest vice president in history.

“We’re trying to get young people involved,” he said. “It’s a new Republican party.”

Crystal Votaw, said that success in this year’s election will be highly dependent on unaffiliated voters who don’t align with either party and don’t regularly vote.

“Everybody in the county that isn’t your every election voter, not a hardcore election voter, they’re going to step up and vote and they want change,” she said.

---

Big news: director and screenwriter Richard Linklater; NPR President and CEO Katherine Maher; U.S. Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-California; and Luci Baines Johnson will take the stage at The Texas Tribune Festival, Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Buy tickets today!