Residents weigh in on Trump’s win

As the country reacted to Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in last week’s presidential election, so did residents of the barrier island.

Locals who weighed in on the results included a 102-year-old Lido Beach woman born six years before women in America gained the right to vote. Ruth Berk, who has lived in Lido Beach for 54 years, came to Long Beach Middle School with her daughter Sandra Jacoby on Nov. 8 to vote, which women could not do when Berk was born in Brooklyn in 1914. She acknowledged flaws in both candidates, but cast her ballot for Hillary Clinton.

“I think … they’ve produced a monster in her and she has her faults, but giving her now a second chance, I think she’s going to be there,” Berk told the Herald on Election Day. “I’m for Hillary because she’s a smart woman.”

Berk, who was a child during the Great Depression and now has four children, five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren, said she remembered waiting in line for hours to vote on old-fashioned machines decades ago. She recalled supporting Franklin Roosevelt — who, in the days before the 22nd Amendment limiting presidents to two terms, won four presidential elections, and implemented his heralded program for relief, recovery and reform known as the New Deal — and said she cried the day he died.

Berk said she also admired men like President Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and said she thought that Clinton, like them, could have a positive impact on the country.

Though Berk called Trump an inarticulate rabble-rouser — claiming she would move out of the country if he were elected president — she emphasized the importance of people giving their opinions, and acknowledged that he appealed to many blue-collar workers, who stood in line for hours to have their say.

When the Herald followed up with Berk after the election, she said that despite having no confidence in the president-elect, she would wait and see what kind of leader he becomes.

“I know my daughter was sick, and I was sick,” she said of the results. “Speaking to certain people who voted for Trump, they’re willing to go along. He’s a president, there’s another side with him, and that is it.”

Long Beach resident Angelo Lomonte, a Republican who ran for City Council last year, was among the Trump supporters, and said that much like when President Obama was first elected eight years ago, the country is once again ready for change.

Lomonte said that although he wasn’t always happy with the way Trump handled himself during the campaign, he didn’t find Clinton presidential either, and decided to vote for the businessman, who he said will give Washington a fresh, outsider’s perspective.

“[People] looked at all his negatives, and how he could be [crass] and his lack of tactfulness and grace,” Lomonte said. “But at the end of the day, he was the antithesis of what most people see as the problem in Washington, the problem with our politicians, and that’s what they were really voting for.”

West End Neighbors President John Bendo, who didn’t vote for Trump or Clinton, said after the election that he could not make sense of his feelings, and would take a wait-and-see approach as Trump takes office. “He said in his [victory] speech that he wanted to be the president [of] all Americans, and we’ll see if he does that,” Bendo said. “Obviously, some of his rhetoric during the election was a little different, but I wait to see if he will be a uniter, or partisan.”

Meanwhile, Marcus Tinker, a community activist in Long Beach, called the day after Election Day “a sad day in America,” adding that Trump lacks Clinton’s experience, and has not put forward specific plans for fulfilling his promises.

“He ran on hatred, bigotry, all these things, and it’s just like, how can someone like him become president?” Tinker said. “The majority of people in this country have been attacked by the stuff that comes out of his mouth. He’s attacked Latinos, he’s attacked African-Americans, he’s attacked Muslims, and he’s attacked women. It’s pathetic that now we have to deal with this man as president for at least four years.”

Scott Bochner, a local environmentalist, said it was concerning to him that Trump has called climate change a hoax, despite the extensive scientific data that supports the phenomenon. He added that there are already major regulations in place to address what he called an environmental “global crisis,” and that it would be devastating to see Trump reverse that progress.

Like people across the country, many locals said they were more surprised by the results than anything else. “When you look at the spin cycle that was happening leading up to [the election], it really did seem like [Trump] didn’t have a shot in hell,” Lomonte said. “Running and campaigning is one thing. Governing is a totally different story. I’m cautiously optimistic.”