RALEIGH, NC (AP) – Jay Copan does not hide his disdain for the modern Republican Party.
The 69-year-old has been a solid Republican voter for the past four decades and soon regretted casting his 2016 ballot for Donald Trump. When Trump ran for reelection last year, Copan appeared on roadside billboards in North Carolina, urging other Republicans to support Democratic rival Joe Biden.
Nearly three months into the new administration, Copan considers herself a “Biden Republican,” relieved by the new president’s calmer leadership style and efforts to distribute vaccines. Copan is the type of voter Biden is counting on as he pushes an agenda almost universally opposed by the Republicans in Washington.
While Biden meets with a bipartisan group of lawmakers on Monday to discuss his massive infrastructure plan, he is betting that the GOP’s elected leaders are making a political miscalculation. The party base remains overwhelmingly loyal to Trump, but Biden believes Republican leaders are overlooking everyday Americans who are eager to compromise and take action.
The question is whether there are enough Republicans like Copan.
“I really want there to be a good two-party system,” said Copan, a former senior officer with the American Gas Association. His vote for Biden as president was his first for a Democrat since Jimmy Carter in 1976, but probably won’t be his last. “I think there are a lot of people like me.”
Republican crossover ranks may be smaller than he might expect. According to AP VoteCast, only 8% of Republicans voted Democratic in November’s presidential race, an overview of national voters.
“If there are Republicans who vote for Biden, they didn’t vote for Biden, it’s just Never Trumpers,” said Phillip Stephens, a former Democrat who is now a Republican Vice Chairman in Robeson County, about 90 miles south of Raleigh. The county voted twice for Barack Obama, but went for Trump again in 2016 and last year.
In the early months of Biden, Stephens sees that the president is targeting the left more than conservative Democratic voters.
During last year’s campaign, Biden sometimes courted Republicans at the risk of alienating the Democratic left. Several prominent Republicans was given speaking positions at the Democratic National Convention, such as the former Ohio government, John Kasich.
A number of Republican groups also openly supported Biden. Republican voters against Trump spent $ 2 million on billboards in swing states, with Republicans opposing the re-election of their own party’s president. Thus the radiant and bespectacled image of Copan, 3.6 meters high, ended up on billboards with the words: “I am conservative. I appreciate decency. I vote for Biden. “
As president, Biden has opened up to cooperating with Republicans. But he also helped ram Congress through with the greatest expansion of the social safety net in a generation as part of a coronavirus relief and incentive package that did not get a single Republican vote. He now calls for billions more to be spent on infrastructure, and pushes for a proposal designed to appeal to people on both sides.
Biden has enjoyed broad, relatively bipartisan support so far, with 73% of Americans approving its response to the coronavirus and 60% approving its dealings with the economy. Still, favorable reviews don’t always translate into votes: Of the more than 200 counties that supported Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016, only about 25 went back to Biden in November.
The limited crossover power is even true in places that were bright spots for Democrats. Biden turned over the old Republican stronghold of Kent County, Michigan, which included Grand Rapids, the birthplace of Gerald Ford. But that gain was based more on the local electorate getting younger than any measurable wave of conservatives backing Biden.
Joe Farrington ran to Congress as a “working-class republican” and owns a bar in Lyons, Michigan, about 50 miles east of Grand Rapids, in Ionia County, where Trump won nearly two-thirds of the vote. In a candidacy debate, he called Trump “a bit of an idiot” – and finished fourth in a five-time primary race.
He says Biden is doing the right thing on infrastructure, social issues and the environment. Still, Farrington said he will remain loyal to the Republican Party – even if he runs for Congress again in 2022, unlike much of what it stands for. “We have to change it from within,” he says.
Scott Carey, former Tennessee Republican Party general counsel, wrote an op-ed in October saying he voted for Biden. He has been largely content so far, but is not about to become a born-again Democrat. He is concerned about tax increases and government overruns.
“I don’t see myself becoming a big Harris, or certainly not a Bernie fan or anything,” Carey said of Vice President Kamala Harris and Liberal Senator Bernie Sanders. If Biden decides not to seek a second term in 2024, Carey said, he would be more excited about the Republicans, including “ some governors I’ve never heard of who would stand up after Trump and get us back to sound government policy . . ”
However, others say they have left the GOP for good.
Tom Rawles is an ex-Republican county supervisor in Maricopa County, including Phoenix, and was critical of Biden’s swing-state Arizona. After voting for Biden, Rawles registered as a Democrat.
“I’d rather fight philosophically within the Democratic Party than for character in the Republican Party, because there isn’t one,” Rawles said. He is 71 and said he does not expect the GOP to return to principles it can support during his lifetime.
Rawles and his wife sat in their driveway along a busy road in suburban Phoenix, months before the election, hoisting Biden signs four hours a day. Some drivers stopped to chat or offer water. Others made rude gestures or shouted that they were intruders from bright blue California.
“Some people were shouting, ‘Go home!’”, Rawles recalls. ‘And we would say,’ We’re in our driveway. Where do you want us to go? ”