THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2020 N P11
“It’s gotten harder and harder to live in this
country. These essential workers that we
need — not just hospital workers but hotel
employees, restaurant employees — they
can’t afford to live downtown anymore.
When I was a kid, everybody lived down-
town, every race — everybody lived togeth-
er. There’s no diversification anymore.”
John Payne,44, Charleston, S.C.
“For me, a big thing is being able to respect
others’ viewpoints without bashing them. I
hope as a country we will come out of this
election and realize that even though we
may not be happy with the outcome, it’s
four years and it’s your civic duty to vote,
and you get to do it again in four years and
make your voice heard again.”
Kelsey Youells,24, Wilmington, Del.“I want peace within and peace outside. I
want the country to come back together as
caring, loving and concerned citizens,
where we really live in a way where we can
support each other.”
Phyllis Minsuk, 82“I would like for us to be sane again.”
Les Minsuk,85, Maryvale, Ariz.“I want this economy to grow, to be able to
support the undocumented, for the Latinos
to be able to unite with every other race and
the whole country to be able to come to-
gether and provide a better future for our
future generations.”
Diana Rivera,34, PhoenixCAMERON POLLACK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES RUTH FREMSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES ADRIANA ZEHBRAUSKAS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES ADRIANA ZEHBRAUSKAS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESCONTINUED ON FOLLOWING PAGEElection
YUTAN, Neb. — In the mo-
ments after the presidential vote
tally made it clear that Joseph R.
Biden Jr. had won the election on
Saturday, a teenager wheeled a
broken lawn mower across an
empty downtown street here.
Wispy white clouds blew across
the sky. Inside the Rusty Rooster
Saloon, a man with gray hair took
a swig from a Bud Light can, and
the only result that interested
anyone was the outcome of the
college football game on the tele-
vision.
Amber Thiessen was gassing
up her new pickup truck at a filling
station on the edge of town, a Re-
publican stronghold just like the
overwhelming majority of the
state. She voted for President
Trump and thinks Mr. Biden and
other Democrats like Hillary Clin-
ton are “snakes in the grass.”
“A lot of people, when this hap-
pened for Trump in 2016, they
started saying ‘not my presi-
dent,’ ” she said. “He has never
been given the opportunity to
show how much he loves the coun-
try because of these ‘not my presi-
dent’ people.”
Ms. Thiessen is unhappy that
her candidate didn’t win. But she
has no plans to say Mr. Biden isn’t
her president. Because she knows
that once he is sworn in, he will be,
regardless of whether she likes it.
The 2020 presidential vote ham-
mered home the political divide in
the country, with states support-
ing Mr. Biden largely located
along the coasts, and those sup-
porting Mr. Trump in a swath
down the middle. Nebraska is
tucked deep among them. More
than 90 percent of voters sup-
ported Mr. Trump in at least five of
its 93 counties.
But the knowledge here that Mr.
Biden won the presidency — and
that Nebraska even sent an Elec-
toral College vote his way — was
met with a what-goes-around-
comes-around kind of attitude.
Many Republicans said they
planned to show liberals, who they
said had whined for four years
about Mr. Trump, that it was pos-
sible to simply move on when you
lose.
“In America, you get four years
and you can do it again,” Ms.
Thiessen said.
Throughout the week, a little
blue dot glowed on the map of re-
sults in an otherwise red sea,
showing Nebraska’s single elec-
toral vote for Mr. Biden. And in
some ways, that dot could make it
easier to accept the results, re-
gardless of party affiliation. With-
out a winner-take-all system, the
state is not taken entirely for
granted, and that can make the
whole endeavor feel less futile.
Nebraska is one of two states
that splits its electoral votes; the
other is Maine, and State Sen. Er-
nie Chambers, an independent
who spent the early years of his
long political career as the only
Black lawmaker in the Nebraska
legislature, has fought to keep
that split-vote system on the
books.
“I couldn’t see in advance it
would have any significant out-
come in the race for president,”
said Mr. Chambers, who repre-
sents parts of the district in Om-
aha, which has the state’s largest
population of Black residents.
“Had I not fought like I did, the
votes and attitudes of the people
of the Second District would have
been insignificant.”
Yutan, population 1,300, is just
over the border from the Second
Congressional District, but a long
leap as far as its politics go. Sev-
enty-one percent of voters in
Saunders County, where Yutan is,
cast ballots for Mr. Trump.
It has the trappings of many ru-
ral Nebraska small towns: an
overwhelmingly white popula-
tion, grain bins alongside railroad
tracks, a water tower, a short strip
of stores both open and long-ago
shuttered, and roads that dead-
end into cornfields.
Ms. Thiessen lives in Valley,
Neb., just inside the western edge
of the Second District, but was
raised in Yutan, where she visits
her parents regularly and shares
the political views of her home-
town. She was annoyed by the at-
tention received by the Second
District, even if that is her district.
Still, she remains focused on mov-
ing on.
Not all of Mr. Trump’s backers
in Nebraska were brushing off the
latest voting results. In Lincoln,
supporters rallied outside the cap-
itol yelling that Mr. Biden had stol-
en the election. In Yutan, some ex-
pressed worries about trade and
the economy under Mr. Biden.
One woman stood in her lawn and
said she was waiting once Mr. Bi-den took office “for my govern-
ment-issued Chinese flag.” Her
neighbor worried about socialism
taking root. Both were worried
that if they gave their names to a
reporter, liberals would track
them down and destroy their
homes.
For many Nebraskans in rural
areas, seeing that blue dot on the
map stung. The neglect they feel
by the rest of the country, and
even by the cities in their own
state, has fueled their politics,
they said.
“Out here in rural America, no-
body else is going to do it for me. I
have to do it myself,” said Ann
Neiffer, who owns Tall Tails Taxi-
dermy, in Cherry County, where
more than 87 percent of voters, in-
cluding her, cast ballots for Mr.
Trump. “Because life comes so
hard here, the Republican ideal is
what we have. It’s kind of me, my-
self and I.”
The pandemic shut down Ms.
Neiffer’s operation for two months
earlier this year and the economic
fallout is the reason she believes
customers have not picked up and
paid for 33 deer, a bison, an elk, a
beaver and two bobcats. She wor-
ries a Biden administration will
further hurt her business bycracking down on gun sales that
could affect hunting.
Tucker Sheets, the owner of
Cowboy Welding, in Hyannis,
Neb., is worried about a Biden ad-
ministration cracking down on his
Second Amendment rights, and
has a host of other concerns about
the next four years.
“We want our tax breaks. We
want our guns. We don’t want our
money going to social programs,”
said Mr. Sheets, who voted for Mr.
Trump. “We all work hard out
here. There isn’t a lot of money to
go around in this rural area.”
Just 20 people voted for Mr. Bi-
den in Grant County, where Cow-
boy Welding is, “and I have a
pretty good idea of who a few of
them are. There definitely aren’t
20 signs out in yards.” Like a hand-
ful of other rural counties, Grant
also rejected a ballot measure that
would have stricken an old provi-
sion that allowed slavery to be
used as punishment, though the
measure overall passed.
Mr. Sheets said Biden voters
were unhappy with Mr. Trump in
much the same way he predicted
he would be unhappy with a Presi-
dent Biden. But he is anticipating
one key difference.
“In the 2016 election afterTrump won, we got nothing but
crying and whining and trying to
get rid of him for four years. I don’t
want to do that. I want to move on
and keep going.”
Or, put another way: “No one
died because of hating Trump,” he
said. “And I won’t die from not lik-
ing Biden.”
Inside the Cattleman’s Lounge
in Springview, Neb., signs sup-
porting Mr. Trump decorate the
restaurant.
Joleen Kienke, the owner, said
she had voted for Mr. Trump be-
cause the president opposed the
shutdown of the nation’s economy
during the pandemic. Cases of
Covid-19 are surging across Ne-
braska, but the effects of the virus
aren’t as obvious in Keya Paha
County, home to fewer than 300
residents, where Springview is.
Ms. Kienke said the income
from the lounge and her Cattle-
man’s Bunkhouse had increased
in recent months.
“I hear a lot of restaurants are
going under, but we’re doing
pretty good,” said Ms. Kienke, a
fifth-generation cattle rancher
whose ancestors immigrated
from Germany. “There’s very little
Covid here, and people who do
have it stay home.”
She is hosting two Italian and
French exchange students, and
during the Halloween season took
them to corn mazes and haunted
houses. She said the students sent
photos to their friends back home
who were quarantining, bragging
about how open America was in
comparison.
Ms. Kienke, like nearly every-
one else in the county, is a Republi-
can. She said that if Mr. Trump had
won the election, Democrats
would have rioted. But she pre-
dicted Mr. Trump’s supporters
would stand down and accept a Bi-
den victory.
“I don’t think they’re going toshoot up the towns,” she said.
When Craig Softley realized last
week that the presidential vote
was swinging Mr. Biden’s way, his
thoughts turned to a divided na-
tion. Not just the kind of political
division that has fractured much
of America, but literal, maybe-it’s-
time-we-cleave-this-country-into-
two-nations kind of division. He
was thinking of secession.
“Is there a point that this coun-
try becomes actually split?” he
said he thought as he watched the
vote tallies from around the coun-
try.
Mr. Softley, a Republican, lives
in Hayes County, where nearly 93percent of voters supported Mr.
Trump and which was named for
the 19th U.S. president, Ruther-
ford B. Hayes, who won an elec-
tion by just one Electoral College
vote.
But as he watched the counting
progress, Mr. Softley’s thinking
evolved. He is a volunteer fire-
fighter, drives an ambulance,
helps on a ranch, started a con-
sulting business, serves as the
county’s economic development
coordinator and helped found a
church, where he is trying to grow
the congregation. Most days he
starts his workday at 3:50 a.m.
“By Wednesday morning or
midday, it looked like a pretty
strong possibility it was going to
be Biden, and you just resign
yourself to the fact,” he said.
“You’ve got to keep working, just
got to move on.”A REPUBLICAN STRONGHOLD
Nebraska Gave Electoral Votes to Each Candidate, and Shrugs at Result
PHOTOGRAPHS BY CALLA KESSLER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESClockwise from left, Amber Thiessen, 32, is unhappy President
Trump did not get re-elected, but she has no plans to reject Jo-
seph R. Biden Jr.; the main street in Yutan, Neb., which voted
overwhelmingly for President Trump; the ceiling of the Rusty
Rooster Saloon in Yutan, where Mr. Trump had much support.
‘Because life comes
so hard here, the
Republican ideal is
what we have.’
By DIONNE SEARCEY