The making of a Trump voter: Ronny West

Donald Trump’s election may have shocked the nation, but it was no surprise in Georgia. After the votes were counted, the AJC dispatched eight journalists from the capital to the coast to the agricultural south to the mountainous north. Their mission: to meet the people who created the Trump groundswell. This is the fourth in a series of their reports.

Ronny West’s support of Donald Trump is genuine and deep. But so are his words of warning to the president-elect.

Don’t forget who elected you.

“As Mama used to say, ‘Don’t forget where you came from,’” West said. “It wasn’t the elite or the so-called well-educated who put you into office. It was the guys in the trenches, who work and sweat and get dirty every day.”

West is a member of that throng of white working-class American men who put Donald Trump over the top, delivering state after state that the New York state real estate mogul wasn’t supposed to win.

What impelled these men to vote for a billionaire whose life and experience are so alien to theirs?

How can they be so optimistic when people who oppose Trump have such grave concerns, seeing the president-elect as a kind of carnival barker, over-promising to draw people into his tent, full of sound and fury but believing nothing.

In a nutshell: Many of them have not shared in the economic recovery they’ve heard so much about, and they’re angry. West lost his job in 2009 and now works two jobs to earn $40,000 a year. That’s a big pay cut for him. In his eyes, the people running the country don’t know a thing about the Ronny Wests of the world.

“They forgot about guys like me,” West said.

Guys like him, though, made all the difference.

But even as Ronny West looks to the Trump presidency with hope, he also worries.

Make no mistake, he has punched his ticket on the Trump train. Even now, the 60-year-old church maintenance man is reveling in Trump’s ability to wield power. That’s something he rarely saw in Barack Obama. A few tweets was all Trump needed to help kill Ford’s overseas plan and the GOP move to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics.

“He has gotten things done,” West said.

But West understands why some people dislike the tycoon.

“The rudeness, the crassness, the disrespect he has shown,” he said. Trump “flip-flops” on issues, he added, which worries West that he won’t deliver on campaign promises.

Will Trump become so comfortable inside the Washington culture that he forgets about working-class people? West thinks about that, too.

He is working-class and proud of it. He’s born and bred in Texas. And it shows all over his life, from his Bible-based politics to the bumper stickers on his pickup to his choice of home decor: on the banister by the door to his Kennesaw home hangs a gun in a holster.

“It’s a fake gun,” said West, speaking with the twang of a country guitar. Then he added, with a bit of country boy humor, “But the bullets are real.”

He knows many on the left believe Trump’s working-class supporters are “all rednecks from Alabama.” And he wants to assure them, “I’m not going to hit you or yell at you.”

Guys like West are the backbone of Trump’s support. A whopping 72 percent of white, non-college-graduate men voted for Trump. (For the record, West graduated Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas.)

Credit: Curtis Compton

Credit: Curtis Compton

‘I’ll hit back’

Ronny West did not support Donald Trump right away. The road to that vote had its share of potholes and switchbacks.

He hitched his wagon to candidate after candidate till they ran out of gas, and when Trump was the last Republican standing, he cast his lot with him.

His support began with fellow Texan Rick Perry, the longest-serving governor in that state before he ran for president. When Perry bowed out, West shifted to Scott Walker, a Republican he saw winning battle after battle as the Wisconsin governor.

From there, he took a liking to Ted Cruz, another Texan. He liked the firebrand son of a preacher’s desire to limit government, and his hard line against illegal immigration.

“When they say comprehensive immigration reform, that’s code for amnesty,” West said.

No way he was going to support Hillary Clinton. He’s reduced his opinion of her to a bulleted list: “She didn’t help the vets. She left four men to die in Benghazi. The email scandals. The foreign donations.”

As a child, he said he learned, “If you hit me, I’ll hit back. I don’t mind toughness.”

Conservatism runs deep in his family DNA, emanating from the family Bible that rested on the coffee table in their Texas home.

“It’s probably the foundation of his beliefs,” said his younger brother, Troy West, who still lives in Texas. “Around the table, we didn’t talk about liberal and conservative. We talked about right and wrong.”

The teachings they found in the Bible seeped into their bones: Abortion is murder; homosexuality a sin. Ronny West will tell you that to your face.

The West kids, four boys, Ronny the oldest, grew up right by the woods, so hunting was as much a part of life as anything else. In lean times, hunting put food on the table. The family hung a rifle on a gun rack in the pickup, a familiar accouterment to just about anyone who grew up in the rural South. “That way, you could use it if you saw a coyote out in a pasture,” Ronny West said. “Or if one of your buddies wanted to go hunting after school.”

Though his parents were professionals — mom was a teacher, dad an accountant — the east Texas town of Center was largely a farming community, and the West boys picked watermelons beside Mexicans who slipped over the border.

Texans were angry about illegal immigration long before it became a national issue. West remembers conversations around the family table.

“They were coming over and getting all the goodies and benefits,” West said. “And they’re not paying school, property or income tax. Folks started to have a problem with that.”

His first political stand came as a college freshman in the mid-seventies. He wrote a letter to a Texas state representative who was pressing to escalate the Vietnam War.

“Just because you have an Army, doesn’t mean you have to use it,” he wrote.

He thinks the letter worked. He never saw that man talk like that again.

Credit: Curtis Compton

Credit: Curtis Compton

Angst to anger

By 2009, West was living in a Kennesaw cul-de-sac and working as a service adviser in auto repair. He lost that job in the recession, leaving him out of work for months, doing handyman jobs.

Thankfully, his wife, Connie, remained employed as a bookkeeper. They had to consolidate their debt and strip down their lifestyle: cut the cable TV, lose the land line, no going out to eat or to the movies.

Eventually he landed a maintenance job at the church, but he had learned a lesson about politicians and the working class: “They need (the working class) to get elected. Then they forget about them until the next election.”

His political angst built to anger. One ignition point: Obamacare, which West believes is socialism. He also does not approve of the way Democrats in Congress managed to push the law through in 2010.

“I thought, ‘Somebody needs to do something,’” he said.

Conservative-minded people across the country were having the same feeling. Thousands flocked to the tea party, and the group caught political lightning in a bottle. Tea party groups started meeting in living rooms, local libraries and rented storefronts.

In Cobb County, the Georgia Tea Party was drawing up to 100 people a meeting, and they were meeting weekly. That’s incredible for any civic group. Meetings were often led by a dynamic young man, hardly out of his teens, named Michael Williams. He paced the room in the Marietta Public Library like a preacher, waving his arms and pointing his finger, exhorting the crowd that the time was right for change, and they could bring it.

People cheered out loud.

Into this energized world walked Ronny West. He loved the group’s message of less taxes, less regulation and less government. During one meeting, Williams was recruiting people for the 4th of July parade in Marietta. He asked for a volunteer to wear the costume of a Revolutionary War patriot, replete with the tri-corner hat, vest and blue coat.

That’s when people usually start studying their shoes, but a guy in the front wearing a cowboy hat raised his hand.

“Ronny was just willing to pitch in,” Williams recalled. “The costume didn’t fit that well, but there he was, marching in the front of the parade.”

West quickly became a go-to volunteer, among the 10 percent in any civic group who do 90 percent of the work.

“Very genuine, very passionate,” said Williams, who now sits on the group’s advisory panel.

Never intimidated by public figures, West could quickly turn a political conversation into just two people talking. When he met Tim Tyler of the Concerned Veterans for America in 2014, West talked about his three children, two twin boys and a girl, and his pride in their serving multiple military tours in Afghanistan and Iraq.

He joined the veterans group and currently works part-time for it.

He also became a board member of the Georgia Tea Party. That group went through some intense internal disagreements in about 2012. After a heated debate one night, Williams received a call from West.

“I was just sitting and praying for you and the group,” West told him.

West shared a Biblical story of David. It was the time when David’s army turned on him after losing a battle. After some guidance from above, David recommitted himself and marched with soldiers loyal to him to another victory.

“It was just what I needed to hear,” Williams said. “I remember trying to hold back tears as I thanked him for the call.”

Credit: Curtis Compton

Credit: Curtis Compton

On the Trump train

Then came Trump. And his wall.

Suddenly, West was hearing a candidate bluntly letting loose against illegal immigration.

“He was saying about immigration what everybody was talking about,” he said. “He changed the narrative.”

He watched Trump make short work of his primary opponents. Sometimes, it took little more than a word from Trump to make them fall. Little Marco Rubio, No Energy Jeb Bush, Lyin' Ted.

Left-wing commentator Michael Moore, an early predictor of a Trump win, said he played a powerful role for the disenchanted but hardly disengaged white working-class voter.

"He is your personal Molotov cocktail to throw right into the center of the bastards who did this to you!" Moore wrote in an essay.

West said the way Trump threw out opinions “was like grenades, and it exploded, and whether it hit innocents or enemies really didn’t matter.”

Part of that he liked. Trump was speaking the language of workers, plain and free of spin and wonky policies.

“They were keeping it nicety-nice. He didn’t play nicety-nice,” West said.

But part of it, West thought, was just nasty.

“Being raised in Texas, I preferred more courtesy, more couth,” he said. “If I said those things, my mama would have slapped me out of the chair.”

Still, West didn’t buy many of the public attacks on Trump. He didn’t believe Trump was being all-inclusive when he linked Mexicans to rapists. He didn’t believe Trump was being offensive when he spoke ill of news anchor Megyn Kelly.

The Trump video: “I’ve heard worse myself.”

Trump avoiding taxes: “Wouldn’t you, if you could?”

Credit: Curtis Compton

Credit: Curtis Compton

Doubts persist

Welcome to the West home.

As Ronny West walks past his mailbox shaped like a covered wagon, he looks at his brown wood home adorned by a large American flag and a Texas flag he painted himself on a sheet of corrugated tin.

His sly sense of humor hits you at the door. There’s a sign with a picture of a six-shooter, which says, “We don’t call 911.”

Inside, the fireplace is crackling, adding a gentle warmth to a living room of dark woods decorated with paintings of cowboys, mountains and wide open spaces.

Sitting at the oak dining table, a cup of coffee in hand, West describes how his faith in Trump has grown since the election. It’s good to see Trump meeting with people, including some rivals.

West like his cabinet picks — Perry, a perennial favorite of his, for energy secretary, Sen. Jeff Sessions for attorney general, Georgia Rep. Tom Price for health and human services. Mike Pence, the new vice president, will help smooth Trump’s rough edges.

“He’s shown a little more maturity,” West said. He added, “He is saying I will do this for you, meaning you the country, you the people, you the working class, you the upper class. He’s president of all America.”

Other articles in the “Making of a Trump voter” series:

Trump supporter Ronny West’s opinions.

1. On guns: “There are three types. The wolves, who want to come and gobble you up. The sheep who don’t have any issues. And the sheep dogs, who come in and protect the sheep. The sheep dogs are the ones with guns.”

2. On immigration reform: “When they say comprehensive immigration reform, that is code for amnesty.”

3. On the Trump video: “I’ve heard worse myself.”