CLEVELAND — On Thursday evening, as Donald Trump prepared to accept the Republican presidential nomination, three organizers — four, if you count the 5-year-old tagging along — set out to convince people in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood to vote against him.
One of their first stops was a blue two-story house where three adults, all of them white, sat on the front porch playing dominoes and watching four small girls play in the driveway. It was hard to guess how it would go — the organizers with Ohio Against Hate, who are Latino, said they most often get a friendly reaction but sometimes get quips about deportation instead.
Fifteen minutes later, though, the entire family was wearing white T-shirts that read “Ohio Against Hate,” which campaign coordinator Jerry Peña fetched from his car after they complimented his. One of the women had signed a card pledging to vote against Trump. All of them said they dislike the GOP candidate.
“I believe 100 percent he’s racist, and we’re far from racist here,” Mary Kile, 45, said of Trump. Her daughter Natalie Nelson, a 26-year-old mother of three who lives nearby, said she doesn’t like Trump either.
“I hate that guy,” said Bill Kile, 47, Mary’s husband. When asked why, he joked, “You ain’t got enough time in the day,” but listed off the businessman’s bankruptcies and his now-defunct for-profit Trump University, which is facing a federal lawsuit for exploiting its students.
Joseph Astronskas, Mary Kile’s 43-year-old brother, said he doesn’t like Trump’s deportation plan or the fact that he left Ohio in the middle of the Republican National Convention. “So basically, he don’t care about Ohio,” Astronskas said.
Mary Kile signed the pledge card, which the group will mail back to her to remind her to vote ahead of the election. It was one more signature to add to the thousands of pledge cards collected in the state during a campaign led by Center for Community Change Action, People’s Action, MoveOn.org and local progressive groups, including Ohio Against Hate. The goal is to knock on doors in 16 states overall.
But the family also demonstrated the challenges anti-Trump organizers still face when they talk to some potential voters. The Kiles, Astronskas and Nelson said they didn’t like Trump, but they weren’t enamored with presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, either.
Peña said they’ve run into that reaction before, including with people of color.
“They’re like, ‘Give me that card, I’m pledging to vote against Trump in November,’” he said. “The part that we’re not hearing is ‘I’m voting for Hillary.’”
At the Kiles’ house on Thursday, Nelson was the most anti-Clinton. She said the former secretary of state showed a “disregard for human life” and should have done more to prevent the death of Americans in a 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
Mary Kile, who supported Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for president, said she likes Clinton but doesn’t like her stance on abortion.
“I’m a Democrat, so that’s the only reason I’ll vote for her, is because Bernie’s not in the race,” she said.
Astronskas said he doesn’t know much about Clinton or whom he will vote for, but that it doesn’t matter who’s president because “they’re going to do what they want to do” anyway.
Bill Kile was the most enthusiastic about Clinton — he said he likes that she doesn’t let Trump bully her — but he also said he isn’t allowed to vote because he’s still on probation after a felony conviction.
“I’m a Democrat, so that’s the only reason I’ll vote for her, is because Bernie’s not in the race.”
- Mary Kile
The organizers walked to the next house, passing a man in a grey Trump T-shirt without stopping to talk. At one house, a woman said she wasn’t sure who she would support, but took a pledge card and said she would send it if she decided to oppose Trump. Another man they passed on the street said he was happy to sign a card, as did Mark Pestak, 61-year-old scientist who called himself an “old white guy.” He is part of the Cleveland Non-Violence Network and participated in the recent People’s Convention, where groups created a platform and then tried to deliver it to Republicans in town on Thursday.
Pestak said he supported Sanders and is a fan of Cornel West, whom he saw speak in Cleveland this week. West recently endorsed Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, and Pestak wants to find out more about her, although he hasn’t ruled out Clinton.
As he was talking, his daughter’s friend, 22-year-old social worker Alyssa Holznagel, walked by. She said she also supported Sanders and would probably prefer to vote for Stein. But she’s planning to vote for Clinton because it’s the best way to keep a Republican from winning.
“This is not the election to support the third party for me. I can’t do it,” she said. “As a social worker, reading the platform that just came out, it would just destroy my clients’ lives. I can’t not put my vote in the smartest spot to keep that from happening.”
Before You Go
