An Oklahoma County Where Trump’s a Given but the Politics Are More Interesting
In the center of the country, there’s a place that’s home to what is likely the world’s only President Donald J. Trump Highway. But don’t go looking for Trump flags there, because you’ll have a hard time finding any.
Between now and November, the future of our nation will probably be determined by a thin sliver of undecided voters. But this is a big country, where there is considerable nuance to how voters choose which candidates to support. As a historian who believes that this summer will be a pivotal one in the future of American life, I’m interested in how communities that are rarely in the media spotlight are thinking about that future. Two weeks ago, I traveled to one such place.
By almost any measure, Cimarron County is “out there.” Situated at the very tip of the Oklahoma Panhandle, and sharing borders with Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas, it is both rural and remote. Here, fields of winter wheat and milo ripen beneath an impossibly vast, Dutch blue sky. Outside of Boise City, the county seat, the only substantial trees are those that surround isolated farmhouses, dark green islands floating on a golden ocean. Wind and sun are near constant.
So is religion. “Are you a Christian?” I was asked at the start of one interview. In Boise City, pop. 1,166, there are nine churches and one bar, while a hand-colored poster of a cross, labeled “You said give you a sign, so I gave you a sign — God,” adorns the hallway of the high school. Cimarron County does not live in some 1950s time warp. The local Girl Scout troop just built a pickleball court, I saw Thai spices at Moore’s Food Pride, The Boise City News is on Facebook and fentanyl has made an unwelcome appearance.
Still, Cimarron County is singular for other reasons. Oklahoma is the reddest of the red states. It is the only state where Barack Obama did not carry a single county in either of his presidential races, while Donald Trump carried every county in both of his. In 2020, Mr. Trump won Oklahoma by a whopping 33 points. That accomplishment paled, however, compared to his electoral prowess in Cimarron County, where he won 92 percent of the vote. Out of 1,054 votes cast in the last presidential election, Joe Biden won 70.
“I don’t watch Fox News — I thought they went way too liberal during the last election.” The speaker was Clint Twombly, a former Border Patrol agent who is running for sheriff. Standing inside the cinder-block building where the Boise City Rotary Club meets every Wednesday at noon, Mr. Twombly delivered his first ever campaign speech.
