HARMONY, Wis. (KeynoteUSA) — It’s difficult to live in harmony during these politically divisive times.
But residents of a small Wisconsin town say they have a simple answer: They actually live in Harmony.
Harmony Township residents, spread across rich farmland and residential subdivisions on the outskirts of Janesville, tend to live up to the name of the 24-square-mile town near the Illinois state line. They also offer a reliable barometer of political trends in the swing state of Wisconsin.
Since 2000, Harmony voters have sided with the winner in all 13 presidential and gubernatorial elections.
“I think the country is pretty divided,” said Town Board President Jeff Klenz, sporting a long white goatee and a Harley-Davidson T-shirt. “I don’t believe the same in Harmony Township. “You don’t get the feeling that people are against each other.”
Klenz repeats a saying often heard in this town of 2,500: “Everyone lives in harmony in Harmony Township.”
Demographically, Harmony is the same percentage white as the state: about 86%. Nearly 12% of Harmony residents identified as multiracial, above the state average of 2.2%. But there is no black population to speak of, in a state that is 6% black, according to the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.
Still, given Wisconsin’s recent political volatility, Harmony’s ability to pick winners is astonishing. Four of the last six presidential elections in the swing state of Wisconsin have been decided by less than one point. The only other of Wisconsin’s 1,800 towns, villages and cities that share the distinction is Merrimac, a town of about 500 people about 75 miles (121 kilometers) from Madison, according to research by Marquette University professor John D. Johnson.
Donald Trump won the city of Harmony by just 36 votes in 2016, on his way to winning Wisconsin by 22,748 votes and becoming the first Republican since Ronald Reagan to take the state. Four years later, President Joe Biden won the city by 78 votes and won Wisconsin by just under 20,682 votes.
Loren Hanson, 79, a retired General Motors worker and 53-year Harmony resident, voted for Trump in both 2016 and 2020, but doesn’t know if he can stick with him for a third time this November. He is having a hard time accepting Trump’s felony conviction.
“I think our policy is a disaster, frankly,” Hanson said. “And really bad this year. I’ve never been a solid Republican or Democrat. And sometimes you vote for the lesser of two evils, and this year I don’t know which is which.”
Hanson said he doubts Trump because of his personal problems and calls him an “outlaw.”
“It would be very difficult for me to vote for Mr. Trump right now,” he said, referring to his conviction for remaining silent.
But Hanson also has reservations about Biden.
“I think it’s old,” Hanson said. “He has some problems one way or another. “Personally, I would like to see them both sent off and I am disappointed that the parties cannot find someone younger.”
Klenz, a 68-year-old retired police officer, said that having voted for Trump twice before, he will stick with him despite the conviction.
“Having worked in law enforcement for over 30 years, I’ve never had a problem with our justice system, but as I’ve gotten older and maybe wiser, I’ve seen that we certainly have some problems,” Klenz said. He said Trump’s conviction showed that the justice system “has been used really differently than it should be.”
Despite the deep divisions in Harmony, both Republicans and Democrats say they don’t let politics determine how they treat each other.
“There are roots here that are very deeply rooted and they are roots of acceptance, respect and cooperation,” said Lucille Vickerman, an 85-year-old retired nurse and Biden voter, sitting next to Trump voter Klenz.
“We voted almost half and half,” Vickerman said. “But we don’t hate each other. We don’t engage in massive backlogs.”
For starters, people talk to each other to understand where the other is coming from, Klenz said.
Politics is not a driving force in Harmony “because most people here are used to taking care of themselves,” Klenz said.
And when people talk, it’s usually not about national politics, Vickerman said.
“They talk about what’s going on in the school system or what’s going on with road repairs,” he said.
City Clerk Tim Tollefson, whose job it is to run elections, said politics simply don’t divide people in Harmony like they seem to do in much of the rest of the state and country.
“I don’t think people take that part of politics and focus it on whether people can be friends or not,” Tollefson said. “The signs in the yard? “You don’t see that many in Harmony Township.”
Vickerman said he was surprised last fall after seeing a large number of signs, including some painted on the sides of barns, during a driving trip through northern Wisconsin.
“To be honest, coming from here it was a little disconcerting,” she said.
Hanson said he avoids talking politics at Harmony “because I have friends on both sides and some of them are pretty extreme.”
Harmony is located in southeastern Wisconsin, about a 15-minute drive from the Illinois border. It consists of farms that the city boasts are on “some of the best farmland in America” and homes built by people working in the adjacent city of Janesville.
That’s the home of former House Speaker Paul Ryan and also the former headquarters of the nation’s oldest General Motors plant, built in 1919.
But when the plant closed during the Great Recession in 2008, the city and region went through economic and social upheaval, forced to readjust without a major employer for a long time.
Harmony was established in 1848, the same year Wisconsin became a state. It has the distinction of being one of the first in the country to build its own town hall building.
Built in 1876, the building was moved about 30 miles northeast and is now part of the Wisconsin Old World Living History Museum.
Coincidentally, the presidential election of 1876, the year Harmony residents began building their town hall, was one of the most contentious in American history. During post-Civil War Reconstruction, there were widespread accusations of voter fraud, violence, and disenfranchisement of black voters.
Rutherford B. Hayes won Wisconsin by 6,141 votes, or just over 2 percentage points, in 1876.
There are parallels between that period and today, including “intense polarization with a kind of shrinking middle ground and a high level of rhetorical violence,” said Stephen Kantrowitz, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in the reconstruction. was.
In this time of deep division, Kantrowitz said it was “wonderful” that both sides in a place as divided as Harmony can get along.
But the bigger question, he said, is what happens when communities like Harmony are presented with questions that get to the heart of people’s sense of safety, dignity and justice.
“It seems that Harmony is not in the middle of such a fight,” he said. “It behooves people who say politics is not a priority to think about what they will do when a problem suddenly arises that is not so easy to solve.” capable of delicacy.”
Vickerman, who moved to Harmony in 1960 when Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, did not vote in 2016. But she voted for Biden in 2020. This year she is bitter about him and Trump: “I wish neither of them would run. .”
“I’m not a Biden fan, but I can’t bring myself to be a Trump fan,” she said. “I am afraid that Trump will refuse to leave office if he is elected. “There is a part of me that does care about the survival of our democracy.”
Klenz voted for Trump in both 2016 and 2020 and said he will vote for him again. He believes the Republican is better on the economy than Biden.
And as is typical of Harmony people, Klenz adds: “I don’t worry too much about how other people vote.”
Tollefson, who has lived in Harmony since 1998, said other communities can learn from how people there address political differences.
“Relax,” he said. “Face the cards you were dealt and be happy. We will be here for a short time. Why waste time being miserable?
KeynoteUSA writer Michael Schneider in Orlando, Florida, contributed to this report.
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