America's Last Bellwether

Since 1980, my home county has gone Reagan twice, Bush, Clinton twice, Bush twice, Obama twice, Trump, and then Biden. As it goes, so does the USA. So how is it voting in 2024?

I don’t get home often enough, but as I hit traffic at a stoplight that wasn’t there when I grew up, I remembered why. The stoplight cycled three times before I got through. I’d gotten up before dawn to take the light rail to the airport, a tram to my gate, a plane from a state on the Mexican border to one on the Canadian border, a shuttle bus to pick up the rental car, and now more than three hours through Friday rush hour away from Seattle onto the peninsula at the edge of the continent. I’d been traveling for 11 hours, and I was almost back in Port Angeles, Washington.

Trace your finger on a map of the continental United States up and to the left to Seattle, then skip over the water up to the thumb of land in the corner wedged up against the Pacific Ocean and under Vancouver Island. That’s where I grew up. I’ve written before about my hometown’s oddball history: Twilight’s Bella bought her prom dress there; Hall-of-Fame quarterback John Elway was born there; the Y2K Al Qaeda terrorist was caught there, as was the Soviet spy Christopher Boyce, AKA, the one portrayed by Timothy Hutton in 1985’s The Falcon and the Snowman, though not at the same time; its Coast Guard station once attacked itself during WWII. And yes, I know Twilight is not real, but tell that to the tourists who come from all over the world to eat at Bella Italia, a real restaurant named after the fictional one in Twilight.* That’s where Bella and Edward had their first date and began their eternal lives together. Whereas when I grew up there in the ‘70s and ‘80s, it just seemed to take forever.

Port Angeles is also the county seat for Clallam County, which might be weirder than all the sparkly vampires and terrorists and spies and quarterbacks put together. There are a little more than 3,000 counties in the U.S. From 1980 to 2016, there were 35 bellwether counties that correctly predicted the winner of the presidential race. As they voted for Reagan twice, daddy Bush once, Bubba twice, baby Bush twice, and then Obama twice, so did America. Only 18 of those 35 counties voted for Trump in 2016. Of those 18, only Clallam County was ridin’ with Biden. It’s the last bellwether county in America.

Clallam County is the last bellwether county in America.

I was visiting home because they were cutting the ribbon on a new performing arts center my mother had worked hard to get built, and I wanted to celebrate her achievement. But on the drive into town, I wondered if the trend would hold. Would this town again hold clues about which way the wind was blowing? Forget the diners in Pennsylvania. I was going to Port Angeles.

By the looks of things, people are doing — and feeling — pretty good. A couple of restaurants have been replaced by offices for financial planners, and the road into town is dotted with pot dispensaries. Housing refugees from the Seattle area have jacked up the price of modest-looking homes, but no one buys in Port Angeles for the architecture. They buy for the view of the mountains or the Straits of Juan de Fuca. They buy because the lavender blooms in late July when you often need a jacket to sit outside.

The town seems a little less separated from the world than I remembered. Tess Gallagher did a reading at a reception for the new performing arts center where I chatted with Kate McDermott, the Beard-nominated author of Art of the Pie: A Practical Guide to Homemade Crusts, Fillings, and Life. No one talked politics aside from one mention that the world might end before the aquarium’s scheduled opening in 2027. Grammy winner Diane Schuur even sang afterwards, but I excused myself at intermission and took my Central timezone body to Pacific time bed.

The next morning we were reading the paper and I saw a headline about DeSantis doubling down on both-sidesing slavery. “Ugh, DeSantis,” I groaned.

“I want him to be president!” said my step-father. “Don’t say anything bad about him.” My step-father voted for Trump twice but became an anti-Trumper after Jan. 6. He’s also been married to my mom since 1988, and she seems happy. I let it slide.

We roused ourselves to attend the ribbon cutting under cold, gray skies. The street signs on the corner were in English and in the native language, and the director of the performing arts center began the ceremony with a land statement. The only hint of politics amid all the speeches from architects and elected officials was one old fart in the crowd wearing Dickies and a Hawaiian shirt… and a blue Biden 2024 cap. I realized that I’d driven a long time without seeing a single tattered Trump flag or red Trump hat. I fist-bumped the boomer in the Biden hat. “They have a ton of ‘em,” he said. “I paid $17.95. Best deal on the internet.”

At lunch, I caught my step-father staring off into space. I asked what was on his mind. He was thinking about Trump and how he’d taken over “segments of the Republican Party.” In his head, the Republican Party still existed as it had for him his whole life, and Trump was the interloper, the insurgent, and not the gravitational force for Team Red.

I asked him why it was Jan. 6 that turned him around when Trump had always been the same. He shrugged with an expression close to an admission that he’d been wrong, so I changed the subject to guns and how dumb it is that we can’t pass red flag laws or raise the minimum age required to buy an assault rifle. “A lot of Republicans are for those things,” he said, and I hope he’s right when it comes to this county. I could have argued that precious few Republicans in Congress seem to agree but I let it go. I let him pay, too. When it comes to mothers and politics, you have to pick your battles.

After afternoon naps, we again found ourselves reading in the living room. “It’s 5,” noticed my mom. “Anyone want to watch the news?”

“Anyone want to watch the news?”

“Sure, I’ve been in a good mood long enough.”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ve been in a good mood long enough.” But it was Saturday. The networks didn’t have evening news on the weekends, and either for her sake or mine she wasn’t going to watch Fox. Her best friend texts her all the time about immigration and the problems at our southern border. Mom hadn’t heard that border crossings were way down. “Oh good,” she said. “Thanks for telling me.”

I begged off from most of the evening’s activities, knowing I’d be asleep two hours before everyone else. I wandered around and found a book store, though not the Thunderbird and Whale Bookstore where Bella bought the Quileute book. This was Port Books and News, and unlike Thunderbird and Whale this bookstore was real. Not only that, it had a copy of Forget the Alamo on the shelf.

“Excuse me,” I said to the lady behind the counter. “I wrote this. Want me to sign it?” I’ve signed by now hundreds of copies of Forget the Alamo with my initials. Sometimes I’ve added an inscription. This was the first time, though, that I’ve added “PAHS Class of ‘88” at the end. It’s a helluva thing to sign your book in your hometown’s bookstore.

How is Clallam County going to vote in 2024? How the hell should I know? And frankly, as you can see below, no one should look to me for accurate predictions. We aren’t even for sure that Biden is going to live long enough to get renominated or that Trump won’t drop out as part of a plea deal to avoid the pokey.

All I can tell you is that in the last bellwether in America, people are optimistic enough to raise private money for a $56-million performing arts center, restaurants are jammed, help wanted signs are everywhere, and people seem to be glad to be done with the pandemic. People would really rather not talk about politics, thank you. If you’re looking for a leading political indicator, you could do worse.

* CORRECTION: The former owner of Bella Italia (the restaurant where Bella and Edward had their first date) emailed to point out that the restaurant opened in 1996, and the first Twilight book was published in 2005. So it’s the other way around, first the restaurant, then the imaginary date.

Jason Stanford is a co-author of NYT-best selling Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth. His bylines have appeared in the Washington Post, Time, and Texas Monthly, among others. Email him at jason31170@gmail.com.

---

Further Reading

---

We set up a merch table in the back where you can get T-shirts, coffee mugs, and even tote bags now. Show the world that you’re part of The Experiment. 

We’ve also got a tip jar, and I promise to waste every cent you give me on having fun, because writing this newsletter for you is how I have fun.

Buy the book Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick banned from the Bullock Texas History Museum: Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of the American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and myself is out from Penguin Random House.