Breaking the Political Mold
What happens when your views don’t square with those around you?
Story: Yaelle Kimmelman
Photos: Kjell Redal
Drug legalization posters and chalked anti-Trump messages greet passersby walking on the bricks across Western’s campus. But if you step off the main thoroughfares and take a quick jaunt up a set of stairs to walk through the door of a Kappa dorm, you’ll find Collin Magnusson, one of the few Western students who voted for President Donald Trump.
Magnusson, a sophomore studying math, grew up in Lynden and moved to Bellingham to attend Western. He knew the move would entail a drastic shift in his political surroundings, but he didn’t fully expect the reactions after the 2016 U.S General Election.
“It’s a little different being here, around people who are upset about the results of the election,” he chuckled.
Leave Magnusson’s dorm, jump in a car and drive north on state Route 539 until you reach the edge of town. Once you pass the abandoned lot where Costco used to sit, the “Make America Great Again” signs and pro-life billboards begin to pop up. Drive a few more miles and you’ll reach Magnusson’s hometown, the rare willing host Trump could find in western Washington for his May 2016 campaign rally.
Conservative signs adorn front lawns as you drive down Front Street and into the residential area, but one stands empty, save for a few scattered children’s toys.
Ryann Butela lives in the house with her family. A Democrat who voted for Clinton in November’s election, Butela is a liberal anomaly in conservative Lynden.
Lynden and Bellingham — two towns, two demographics, one county.
Despite Lynden’s conservative base, Whatcom County has been considered one of the “bluest” counties in Washington based on its liberal voting history, according to the Washington Office of Financial Management. In 2012, the majority of the county’s votes were for President Obama, the legalization of marijuana and same-sex marriage. In 2016, it went blue again with votes for Hillary Clinton and restriction to gun accessibility.
At first glance, it would seem as though most county residents are liberal, considering the strong voting trend favoring liberal ideas. But as in many places in the U.S., an urban-rural political divide defines Whatcom County.
“There’s parts of rural areas, like Lynden where a Democrat won’t get 10 percent of the vote and there’s parts of Bellingham where a Republican won’t get 10 percent of the vote,” says Dr. Todd Donovan, professor of political science at Western. “In some ways, [Whatcom County] is more divided or sorted than a lot of places you’d see in the country.”
With this consistent pattern, many people have understandably come to associate Bellingham with liberals and Lynden with conservatives. However, people like Magnusson and Butela are some of the few breaking their respective political molds.
“At the beginning, I did not tell anyone about my political views,” Magnusson says. “Mostly because that’s not what I consume myself with. But, as time went on, conversations came up and I let some people know my ideas.”
Magnusson says these opinions are sometimes misinterpreted at Western.
“I’m not sexist. I’m not homophobic. I’m a conservative. I just tend to have values that lean more to the right.”
Both Magnusson and Butela say that while the decision to move out of their respective political territories made them uneasy, there are times when they’re pleasantly surprised by the communities they’re welcomed into.
As Magnusson walks through campus, heading to his next class or the gym, he often runs into friends, giving them a fist bump and asking how their day is going.
“A lot of people were shocked about my political views. They were completely confused, kind of in disbelief,” he says. “But I’d say we were able to get past the differences, except for a couple [of people].”
While Butela works in Bellingham, she says she feels like a part of her Lynden community. Although she is the only liberal in her cul-de-sac, she says her neighbors are always willing to lend a helping hand.
“We have this Facebook group and everyone will post things like, ‘I’m baking cookies and realized I don’t have enough butter,’ and usually someone will respond saying that they’re sending their kid over with butter,” she says, laughing. “It’s really a great community. The other day we saw our older neighbor trying to shovel the snow and almost immediately all the other men in the neighborhood came out to help out.”
Magnusson and Butela both attribute their education at Western in influencing their worldviews.
As a math major, Magnusson says he doesn’t take a lot of discussion-based classes. However, the political science class he took in a previous quarter provided a discussion he wasn’t used to. His brows furrow as he tries to find the words to describe his experience in the Classical Political Theory class.
“I didn’t say anything political in that class. I just let everyone else do the talking because the class was super negative,” Magnusson says. “I didn’t want to have any confrontation because I felt it was a really negative atmosphere.”
He sat in the back of the lecture hall, afraid to speak up because he didn’t want other students to perceive him the wrong way. While the discussion in the class didn’t wholly sway his political views, he says he did begin exploring some other options.
“I didn’t support Trump from the beginning. I was a Marco Rubio fan,” Magnusson explains. “I know I’m a conservative guy, but coming to Western has helped me see the other side a little bit.”
Magnusson didn’t want to compromise his conservative ideals in the 2016 presidential election. When Trump became the Republican Party nominee, he explains how he still wanted to support the now president’s underlying platform.
“It’s really hard to be a Republican here because students associate me with things Trump says,” Magnusson explains. “But I knew the things [Trump] was saying [during the election] were wrong and completely unnecessary.”
As Butela reflects on her time at Western, she remembers a class that was the turning point in her belief system.
“I took a class at Western called Scripture Literature. It broke down the Bible as pieces of literature and broke apart different phrasing that was used to describe God or Jesus. You could recognize that different people wrote different passages,” she says. “Being born and baptized in a Catholic home, I never had really questioned the Bible until now. I stopped going to church after that class.”
Her political views, however, remained largely the same before and after she stopped going to church.
She says her support for Clinton and Democratic issues stem from her love of children, education, the environment and health care.
“I feel like Hillary is somebody who cared about those things and is going to help do good things in those areas,” she says. “I was extremely disappointed at the results of the election.”
According to the Pew Research Center, the recent presidential election left most of the country surprised and many communities further polarized. However, Butela and Magnusson are hopeful for the future.
“I’m a pretty open-minded person and I understand the concerns people have with Trump,” Magnusson says. “I think now it’s time for us to come together and move forward, and I hope I can help other people on Western’s campus see a little bit more of my view on things.”
Butela, in the middle of the divide, hopes for unity in the future.
“I can tell some people are hurt and they feel like they are being judged by the way they voted, but that’s always going to be the case and people feel it on both sides,” Butela says. “I think there’s a way to come together. You just really have to focus on the issues and even though you might not agree on the person who is making the final decision, try to find some sort of common ground on the big issues.”
While Whatcom County is indicative of our country’s increasingly polarized political landscape, both Magnusson and Butela push back against the pattern.
“OK, this happened. Trump is our president. Now what? How do we move forward?” Butela asks. “It’s going to take a lot — people just need to learn to respect and listen to one another a little more.”