Billy Squires is a lifelong Democrat and a friendly neighbor, as evidenced by the way he greeted familiar faces passing by as we spoke outside the U.S. Post Office on Main Street in downtown Oxford.
The 71-year-old Granville County resident retired from a career in sales but hasn’t stopped working.
“I have a part-time job at the bakery right down the street, at Strong Arm, which I highly recommend and tell ’em we sent you,” Squires urged.
“Hey, Karen!” Squires said to a passing woman as we discussed the current state of politics, particularly the presidential matchup between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris.
Squires’ friendly demeanor probably comes in handy at his regular Monday morning get-togethers. For the past three years, Squires has been meeting up at a local grill with a group of up to 12 people, half Democrats, half Republicans.
“The Democrats think they’re right and the Republicans think they’re right, so there’s not a whole lot of convincing but we do hash it out,” he said. “There’s not a lot of changing of minds.”
Just then, a member of Squires’ breakfast group drove by in a pickup truck, someone Squires described as the group’s most right-wing participant.
But I noticed a nice wave between the two men and said to Squires: “I mean, you guys are still neighbors, right?”
To which Squires replied, with a laugh: “Oh yeah, oh yeah, absolutely. I’ve known him for 50 years.”
‘Republicans have taken the lead in lying,’ voter says
But Squires said he’s tired of what he called the “divisiveness, craziness, and lies” that he mostly blames on the GOP.
“All politicians lie,” Squires said, “it’s in their DNA.”
He then added: “I think the Republicans have taken the lead in lying and untruthfulness and manipulation of facts.”
Like Squires, Sonya Falls, 76, is a registered Democrat and said she’ll vote that way this November. She is a retired public-school teacher and said she’s concerned about Trump’s authoritarian tendencies.
“Government run by one person who never wants to give up the presidency,” she said. “He makes that clear in everything he says.”
Falls said she’s feeling better about Democrats’ prospects now that Harris, 59, has replaced President Joe Biden, 81, atop the ticket. Biden stepped down several weeks after a disastrous debate performance against Trump in late June raised concerns about his age and mental acuity.
While Falls is more confident about the presidential race, she still thinks Republicans will maintain their majority hold on power at the state legislature. That concerns her because of GOP support for a school voucher program that she believes siphons money from public schools.
As much as Harris’ candidacy may have shifted momentum in this year’s presidential race, Herman Cooper, 72, said he isn’t taking anything for granted.
“Never relax always, always try to win,” the retired truck driver told me. “I was taught that in school when I played basketball, you don’t ever relax.”
Cooper is registered Democrat and criticized Trump for what he sees as negative campaigning.
“All he’s doing is making fun of people and acting like he don’t know how to pronounce somebody’s name,” said Cooper, who’s Black, referring to Trump’s repeated mispronunciation of Harris’ first name.
Susan Bryant, 69, a devoted Democrat, said she thinks abortion access will motivate voters to turn out this year.
“Especially women, who are going to choose a Democrat slate based on that one issue alone,” she predicted.
Mara Shelton said a key issue for her is LGBTQ rights and dignity. The 44-year-old is a military veteran and a local business owner. She and her husband started Tobacco Road Brewing Company in 2018.
One of the couple’s sons serves in the Army.
Shelton registered as a Republican more than 20 years ago but doesn’t seem bound by party affiliation. She said she voted mostly Libertarian in 2020 but is leaning towards Democrats this year.
“I have a child who identifies as transgender,” she explained. “So that is a big push that way for acceptance.”
Like North Carolina as a whole, Granville is politically competitive
Granville County sits along the Virginia border, to the north and northeast of the more heavily populated and solidly left-leaning Wake and Durham counties. Granville has a little more than 40,000 registered voters; more than half are white and more than a quarter are Black.
In terms of election outcomes, the county is somewhat more reflective of North Carolina as a whole than more purely urban or rural areas that tilt heavily either left or right, according to Michael Bitzer, professor of political science at Catawba College and author of Redistricting and Gerrymandering in North Carolina: Battlelines in the Tar Heel State.
For example, in 2020, Trump beat Biden by a 6-point margin in Granville. Whereas the margin for Trump was far greater — just under 50% — in McDowell County, in the far western part of the state.
Similarly, in 2020, Joe Biden topped Trump by a wide margin in the urban counties of Wake, Mecklenburg and Guilford.
Bitzer noted that Granville has a significant Black voter population that the Harris campaign is banking on mobilizing this year.
He said increasing Black voter turnout could offset any votes the Harris campaign fails to pick up among the 2-3% of true undecided, swing voters in North Carolina.
“And that means turning out your core constituency,” Bitzer said. “For Democrats, it’s going to be African American voters in a county like Granville.”
Inflation tops other issues for some voters
I caught up with Bobby Autrey as he emerged from a Food Lion pushing a shopping cart full of groceries in the small city of Creedmoor.
Autrey, 81, who is retired from the logging industry, said inflation is top of mind this election year.
“That would be the No. 1 thing, I would think,” he said. “Because people got to eat.”
Autrey’s wife, Cathy, is 72 and has worked for more than 30 years in a public-school cafeteria. The Autreys are registered Democrats but say they haven’t voted for candidates of that party in years.
“They don’t listen,” Cathy Autrey said. “They don’t do what you need done, so we go Republican.”
Cathy Autrey commutes to Durham County for work and said high gas prices are a major problem, one that she and her husband believe Trump and Republicans will fix.
Michael Vacher, 19, said he’ll vote Republican this year, too. It’s Vacher’s first presidential election. Bedecked in an Atlanta Braves t-shirt and a ballcap with a duck patch on it, Vacher said he believes the power Trump projects would ease global tensions.
“I mean, Israel’s in a fight right now, Ukraine and Russia are in a fight right now,” he said. “Him being that intimidating person, I think, would stop it.”
Vacher, who said he is a supporter of 2nd Amendment rights, had come to the post office in Creedmoor to pick up a federal stamp needed to hunt waterfowl.
At 18, Julian Hyatt also will be voting in his first presidential election. Hyatt is headed to East Carolina University this fall for his freshman year.
Hyatt said he understands why voters like Vacher would support Trump.
“I think a lot of Americans consider themselves patriots and when they see a candidate like Donald Trump who presents himself as very strong and forward and doesn’t take any crap, you know, that’s why they favor him, you know?” Hyatt said.
But Hyatt, who’s Black, said that he is not comfortable with some of Trump’s past statements, which include notoriously saying there were “fine” people on both sides of the violent white supremacist rally and counterdemonstration in Charlottesville in 2017.
Hyatt also said it might be hard for some young voters like him to relate to a candidate as old as Trump, who’s 78.
An irony of this year’s presidential race is that Trump was able to capitalize off of public concerns over the older Biden’s age, until Biden dropped out, leaving Trump exposed to questions about age.
“I think the Democratic Party definitely shows you just a sense of freshness,” Hyatt said. “I think people are more excited to get out and vote now because they feel like this is someone that they can relate to.”
This story is part of a series, Voter Voices, that looks at how voters view key issues in important electoral locations across North Carolina.
