CANAAN — After two hours of standing outside the Canaan Fire Station on Route 118 Tuesday morning, Leia Wood was starting to feel the bite of the 30-degree temperatures.
She leaned a wooden post, which held signs for several local Republican candidates with a Trump/Pence sign at the top, against her shoulder and flexed her hands, trying to warm her fingers. Then she stood up straight and adjusted the bright red “Make America Great Again” cap on her head.
“I’m here until I can’t take the cold any more,” Wood said with a smile.
Wood, a 34-year-old accounting student at Granite State College, had made the nearly hour-long trek from her home in Bradford, Vt., to join her father, Joe Girard, and other Donald Trump supporters outside the Canaan polls around 8:30 a.m.
“Trump cares about the American people,” Wood said, when asked why she’s throwing her support behind the president. “He puts America first.”
Campaigning outside the polls is not something she’s ever done before, Wood said as she lifted a hand to wave to several trucks that drove by, honking their horns. But this year is different.
“This is a very important election for this country,” Wood said, adding that she’s been attending Trump rallies and meeting other supporters throughout the year. Much of her support for Trump comes from actions he’d already undertaken, including the fact that the country enjoyed a low unemployment rate prior to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Wood also said she also supportive of the president’s push to keep jobs, including factory jobs, from moving overseas. Offshoring is a concern that’s particularly close to Wood’s heart because she worked a manufacturing job in Massachusetts prior to being a student. During that time, she said she watched companies lay off workers, and saw her own friends lose their jobs.
If Democrat Joe Biden were to win, Wood worried that she could face higher taxes as a result of “free everything: free college, free health care.”
“I just don’t want my taxes to go through the roof,” she said
Wood said she’s felt emboldened in her decision over the last year by the community of Trump supporters she has met. A fellow Trump supporter she had never met stopped by the fire station in his truck on Tuesday morning, and seeing her father’s Trump sign, handed Girard a free Trump hat, Wood said.
At a rally for the president that she attended last year, Wood remembered the entire crowd breaking out into the national anthem.
“The love among strangers was powerful,” she said.
Girard, a 64-year-old kitchen aide at Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital, echoed his daughter’s words. Wearing a bright red zip-up sweater bearing the words “Trump Train” and images of the American flag, he gave a thumbs-up to a man driving by, who returned the gesture.
“The best thing he did was the tax cuts,” Girard said, referring to the Trump administration’s 2018 tax overhaul. He added that he also likes the changes Trump has made, or tried to make, to former President Barack Obama’s health care plan, the Affordable Care Act.
A former Democrat, Girard voted for Bill Clinton and Obama in previous elections. But Trump’s persona, and the pushback he’s gotten from opponents, are among the main reasons Girard has changed his tune, he said. He sees Trump as a “regular guy” who has faced stiff opposition while in office.
“Trump says what he thinks and he doesn’t act like a politician,” Girard said.
Girard and Wood were by no means alone in their displays of support for the president at Upper Valley polls. Miles away, a group of five supporters gathered outside Plainfield Elementary School, holding tall wooden posts bearing different signs supporting Trump.
“I see him as the candidate who supports our rights,” said Pat Shaheen, 27, of Newport, who spent over three hours in Plainfield holding a “The silent majority for Trump” sign. “He has these values of self-determination and free market.”
The other four men with him nodded in agreement, including Louis Sabotto, 74, a Vietnam War veteran and Charlestown resident, who said his military background and his support of the Second Amendment played a role in his decision to back Trump.
“I believe in the Constitution… I don’t like people messing with my rights,” he said.
Anna Merriman can be reached at amerriman@vnews.com or 603-727-3216.