Friendships in Puget Sound's only red county tested by the tight presidential election

Mason County is the only county bordering Puget Sound that appears to have gone for Trump as of Wednesday night. Voters there describe a community divided by politics, but have hope for reconciliation.

At Casey’s Bar and Grill in Belfair, Washington, a lone mustachioed man nursed a beer and ate popcorn shrimp. He worried his fingers through a large stack of pull tabs.

He is a Trump supporter, he said, and he fears that if Biden is elected, Kamala Harris would send the country in a more liberal direction. As he started to explain why he felt this way, the bar manager emerged, frowning.

“Are you talking politics?" she asked. "Political talk is not allowed in this bar.”

When I asked why, she said, “Conversations about politics leads to fights." She knew this from personal experience, she said.

And so I decamped to the parking lot of McClendon’s Hardware store down the street and started talking to customers.

They described a community divided.

Trump supporters took it personally that the president wasn't leading; they assumed he would win in a landslide. Large Trump signs displayed throughout the county may have led the president's supporters here to feel more optimistic, one man told me.

Many Trump voters here credit the president for economic success they’ve achieved in the last four years.

Jennifer Ramsey, who said she’d spent the day isolated from friends and media, listening only to praise music, said she’s afraid that if Biden wins, the good economy she’s enjoyed could go away.

“Here’s what I know: I know I like my house,” Ramsey said. “I know if Biden wins, taxes will go up, and I won’t be able to afford that. What am I going to do, live in my car? I probably won’t be able to afford that, either. What can I say? I like low taxes. I like America First.”

Biden has said he won't raise taxes on people who are not wealthy. But Trump supporters who spoke to me in Belfair don't trust his word on that. They fear that he lied.

Trump supporters also said they fear the election wasn’t free and fair. They’re waiting for votes to be counted, and they’re nervous.

“Something’s not right. It just doesn’t make sense,” Ramsey said of later votes favoring Biden.

“It’s looking a little goofy,” Jerry, another Trump supporter, said.

Goofy in what way?

“The results… are not coming out like they should be," he said. "Quick, on time."

For weeks, officials have known results would take more than a day to count. Some states weren’t allowed to begin counting absentee ballots until Election Day.

But Trump has insisted that we should have known the winner by the end of election night, and his supporters in Mason County repeated that concern.

Jerry, who didn't give his last name, said the deeply divided nature of Mason County has bothered him lately. He said he can't talk politics with family and friends anymore.

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verett Harris said the division runs so deep in this community that liberals fear violence.

Harris said that as a Lakota tribal member, he has not been able to find common ground with neighbors who support Trump, due to disputes between the president and Native American tribes. Harris voted for Biden.

He said the divisions run so deep in this community that other people fear gun violence against Biden supporters, should the former vice president win.

But the Trump supporters that I spoke to seemed more depressed than violent.

And Biden supporters here aren’t flaunting their candidate’s edge in the vote count by dancing in the streets, either. They spoke of disappointment that the election wasn’t more decisive, or that it doesn't seem to have won democrats the Senate.

Despite disillusionment and division on both sides, some Mason County residents said they’re open to reaching out to their neighbors, as long as those neighbors tread carefully around the battle wounds from this election.

Karen Brown said if she visits her neighbors house, “and they start talking politics – I say, ‘I don’t want to talk. Because we can’t agree. There’s no way.’ You know, I’m not going to get in a pissing match with people that I care about. I mean, they’re my friends.”

But political talk happens regardless.

At the Blessed Treasure, a thrift store in Belfair, I asked, "How are you feeling, on this day after the election?"

That inspired a fierce political conversation between cashier Edward Myers and Ursula Wasmer, a customer whom Myers described as a good friend.

Wasmer railed against immigrants without visas.

“Don’t come in and stay illegal, and then get pregnant and all this other crap and take all our money,” she said.

“They take all your money?” Myers pushed back.

“Not all mine. I’m not talking all mine. I barely make any,” Wasmer said.

“I know, you’re speaking in general. However, they do work hard,” Myers said.

“They do work hard,” Wasmer said, “But they don’t pay taxes.”

“How do you know they don’t pay taxes?” Myers asked.

“Everybody says it!” Wasmer responded.

“Do you believe everything you hear and read?” Myers asked.

The conversation plowed through other topics on which the pair of friends vehemently disagreed – Trump’s character, Trump’s response to the pandemic.

At one point, Wasmer sighed loudly and said, “All right, I’m done. I love you, but I’ve got to go.”

Before she left, I asked her: If not political agreement, what is the basis of your friendship?

“He’s a nice person,” she said. “He’s a nice human being, and kind and sweet. And that’s enough for me. And he treats me well, no matter what he thinks,” she said, laughing.

“Love you,” she said to him. When I asked to take a photo of them, they embraced.

It’s probably not appropriate to assume that because two people in Mason County can disagree on politics and stay friends, that the U.S. can be similarly healed. That would be naïve. But this one example shows that friendship, despite political differences, is a an option one can choose, whoever wins the presidency.