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Jonathan Paquette wants to buy a house. But supporting his wife and six kids on one paycheck feels like he can hardly buy anything these days. He’s hoping a second Donald Trump presidency will change that.
“We have had a bunch of Democrats that have had their opportunity. Now I know Republicans need an opportunity to change things,” he said. “In four years it either is going to be better or it’s going to stay the same.
But it can’t get much worse.” Paquette stayed up into Wednesday morning to see Trump claim 270 electoral votes after 2 a.m.
He took a nap, at best, before his alarm went off at 4:50 a.m. for work.
But as he bent large sheets of metal on Wednesday – making roofing materials – he was ecstatic. To him, a return to a Trump presidency will bring back lower prices in the grocery store and at the gas pump, costs he says have ballooned under President Joe Biden. “It just got harder and harder,” he said.
“I’m working class. I’m one of those people that at the end of the day, if my wages don’t go up, but the cost of living goes up, I can’t pay to feed my family.” Trump claimed a decisive victory on Wednesday morning, closing a tumultuous cycle marked by felony convictions, an assassination attempt and the withdrawal of a major party candidate, with just 100 days to go.
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Cross|Word Flipart Typeshift SpellTower Really Bad Chess The former president is now the oldest to be elected at 78, the first to win the White House with a criminal record and one of just two candidates in U.S. history to prevail with nonconsecutive repeat victories.
None of that phased Paquette, who was enthused by Trump’s campaign from the beginning – first voting for him in 2016, and again in 2020. And he wasn’t bothered by the former president’s dim presence in New Hampshire either. Polling from the University of New Hampshire showed Harris ahead by 5 percentage points and rumors of an appearance came and went.
Instead, his vice presidential pick, JD Vance, held a rally in Derry with 72 hours to go. On Election Day, Paquette dropped five of his kids off with grandparents, aunts and uncles. But he brought his youngest – at three weeks old – with him and his wife to the City Wide Community Center to cast his third ballot for Trump.
Angela Kontoes also thought of her family as she voted for Trump in Boscawen on Tuesday. Her two adult sons have autism and in recent years, the support needed to provide for them has lacked. “We’ve had a very hard time with insurance coverage and supports and services for them,” she said.
“We’ve definitely just seen a really big downfall with our government in the last four years.” Trump was never her solution in prior years. In fact, this election was her first time voting for him after she wrote in a candidate in 2020 because she found his first term too loud, too unfiltered and frankly, too much.
But once she decided he would help turn things around for her family, in particular, she was all in. Outside the polls in Boscawen on Election Day she and her husband passed out Trump stickers, standing behind yard signs for the former president. Despite both having stable jobs, Kontoes and her husband struggled to pay the bills, she said.
A year into Biden’s presidency, they started a side business buying and reselling storage units for some extra cash. “You can barely get by in this economy right now,” she said. “We know Trump has said many times that he’s going to change that for us.
” And hoping for that change, Kontoes woke up Tuesday, anxiously going on her phone. The country had never elected a female president before, but they had elected the businessman-turned-politician, she reminded herself. People would stick with what they know, she hoped.
Harris was too unfamiliar, she said. “What are the actual possibilities of Kamala taking the election over Trump?” she said. “I don’t think there’s a possibility.
” Most days, Paquette listened to Joe Rogan podcasts as he put metal sheets through large machinery at work. Until Trump came forward as a candidate, he didn’t realize how conservative his values were. And now as a father, he feels more of a responsibility to tune in to politics for his kids.
“It just seems like the Republicans are trying to do something. They’re trying to make America better,” he said. “But you know there’s only so much you can do.
” With that, the benefits of a Trump president will ring true when he sees prices go down and he can purchase that big home for his six kids, like he had growing up. He’d like to see taxes taken out of his paycheck go down and his dollar stretched further at the store. Until Tuesday, it was hard to envision that to be the case.
“The United States used to be a place where a dad could work alone and support his family,” he said. “Lately, everything seems to be going downhill.” Michaela Towfighi can be reached at mtowfighi@cmonitor.
com..
