Family, then politics: A Republican and Democrat manage to keep the peace in a nation divided
CBC
It's clear whose political camp Tracey Danka is in as you pull up to her tree-lined property in Calabash, N.C. Various flags promoting Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump flap in the breeze.
But there's also a giant banner for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and running mate Tim Walz prominently lashed between two trees.
"Well, let me tell you the only reason there is Harris is because I ordered it for my husband," Danka said.
Danka, who still believes the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump by U.S. President Joe Biden, is married to a lifelong Democrat who does not. Raised in Pennsylvania by parents who were Democrats, Danka is a mother of two recent college graduates, an organ donation advocate — and she once voted for Barack Obama.
But that was before Trump took a ride down that golden escalator in Trump Tower to announce his 2016 candidacy for U.S. president.
"I remember thinking that as sad as it is, our country is a business and we needed a businessman running our country rather than a politician, because these politicians would say and do whatever they needed to talk to the person in front of them," she said.
Trump, hot off his television show The Apprentice, was known for firing people who fell short of expectations, and Danka liked that. But, she said, "Do I agree with everything Donald Trump says? No."
For one, she doesn't believe in tax breaks for the wealthy, she believes in exceptions for abortion in cases of rape and incest — and the kidney recipient acknowledges that the Affordable Care Act, brought in under Obama, may have saved her family from financial ruin.
"If it wasn't for Obamacare, we would have lost everything and we would probably be renting some rat hole," she said.
But Danka is aligned with Trumpism on many other fronts.
"I want the illegal immigrants gone. I want our veterans taken care of. I want our children to be able to be children. I want the schools to not be able to take away the parents' rights. I want a [border] wall. I don't care who pays for it," she said.
Danka also continues to believe the myriad disproven claims of election fraud in the 2020 election, which is what brought her to the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021.
"Our voices didn't matter. It didn't matter how we voted," she said.
Danka said she went to support Trump, but while she marched to the Capitol — where a vote was being held to certify the 2020 election results and a huge throng of protesters had gathered — she didn't go inside the building.
