With a Biden-Trump presidential rematch all but inevitable, a “fight or flight” mentality was already triggering voters casting ballots across the Bay Area on Super Tuesday.
For 73-year-old Velia Dominguez, a Democrat still stewing over the 2020 election, when a Trump-supporting family friend unfriended his own wife on Facebook, it was fight. After she cast her primary ballot in San Jose for Biden, she took aim at Trump supporters.
Velia Dominguez of Gilroy, left, and her husband, Ruben, talk during an interview on Tuesday, March 5, 2024, at the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters in San Jose, Calif. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
“It makes me feel like taking my bra off and choking ‘em,” the grandmother of seven said. “It has plenty of support, so it can choke a lot of people.”
Good thing she didn’t run into cowboy hat-wearing Robert Mitchell, 66, inside the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters office. The Dallas native, who now lives in San Jose, voted a straight Republican ticket Tuesday, with Trump at the top.
“We gotta get rid of Biden as fast as we can,” he said. “I like the country we had when Trump was president — it was patriotic, it was American. … It was Christian.”
Robert Mitchell, of San Jose, talks during an interview on Tuesday, March 5, 2024, at the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters in San Jose, Calif. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
From San Jose to Oakland to Antioch, turnout for the primary appeared low — only 16% of mail-in ballots had been turned in by Monday night in Santa Clara County — but many of those who trickled in to hand-deliver their ballots Tuesday were as passionate, divided and frustrated as ever.
The prospect of another eight months of conflict and vitriol were enough for Leslie Hardie, of Mountain View, to want to disengage entirely: “I’d rather put my head in the sand — and someone can tell me what the outcome is.”
National polls already show that if the presidential race were held now, the general election would be a toss up. A New York Times poll this week shows Trump ahead — 48% to 43% for Biden.
Although there’s little chance Trump will hold the same sway in the deep blue state of California, where Biden won more than 60% of the vote in 2020, one in three California voters chose Trump that year. And support for Trump grew slightly from 2016 when he ended up beating Hilary Clinton for the presidency in the national election.
For many voters, a Biden-Trump redo is a rematch nobody wanted. Over and over, voters expressed concern Tuesday that Biden is too old to lead and Trump is too dangerous for Democracy.
As one Democratic voter in San Jose put it: “I don’t think one will survive the experience, and the other isn’t capable of the experience.”
That sentiment led some Bay Area voters to leave the ballot blank when it came to choosing a presidential contender or to reach deep into the ballot to fill the bubble for Marianne Williamson or Minnesota Congressman Rep. Dean Phillips or independent Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Narcisa Heurta, 40, an East Bay hospital clerk, who usually votes Democratic, declined to cast a vote in the presidential race over Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza.
“Genocide is wrong, and that’s what we are funding,” Huerta, of Oakland, said.
A similar sentiment led some voters to support U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, an Oakland Democrat, for the Senate seat that opened when Dianne Feinstein died last fall.
But Katrina Brekke-Miesner, 72, who works as a grant-writer at a non-profit that helps the homeless in the East Bay, said that although Lee had “one good vote” opposing the U.S. entry into Iraq in 2001, she thought Lee did not engage enough with her constituents.
U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, a Los Angeles Democrat with ties to the Bay Area who led impeachment proceedings against Trump, was leading among Democrats in the Senate race in pre-primary polls, ahead of Lee and U.S. Rep. Katie Porter of Orange County. Political newcomer Steve Garvey, a Republican of baseball fame, was surging in the polls last week, appearing to be in a dead heat with Schiff.
Some voters said they were still traumatized by the aftermath of the 2020 election when Biden won by 7 million votes and the election was thrown into chaos when Trump claimed, without evidence, widespread voter fraud. He encouraged his followers to march to the Capitol on Jan. 6., and a violent insurrection ensued. The Supreme Court this week struck down efforts by Colorado and two other states to disqualify Trump from their ballots based on the 14th Amendment that prohibits people who “engage in insurrection” from holding office.
What might we expect this November?
Los Gatos resident Michael Morosin said that while he’s concerned about Biden’s candidacy, given his age, he wished after the 2020 election that Trump would simply “go away.”
“I was extremely disappointed to know that Trump is still out there in the shadows and every day gaining more and more momentum,” he said.
In Antioch, Mike and Brenda Dunn said they believe that Biden and the media have unfairly skewed Trump’s record against him.
“I think Biden needs to quit the attack, because they’ve just been attacking Trump from the very beginning,” Brenda Dunn, 70, said.
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Still, the problems with the economy and immigration will drive plenty of hidden Trump supporters in California to vote, they said.
“Even though they can’t stand Trump because of how he talks, they like what he did four years prior,” Dunn said. “So, they have told us, ‘Don’t tell a soul, but I’m gonna vote for him.’”
Kelley Ota, of San Jose, said that she cast her ballot for Biden even though he’s “kind of wobbly.” Still, she can’t fathom the conflict that lies ahead through November and beyond.
“I’m ready for it to be over already,” Ota said. “Can’t we all just be friends?”