Rebecca Maz was raised in Radnor, Pa. in a Conservative Republican household, learning only one side of the political story.
She became interested in international politics in high school and joined the Model United Nations team, which allowed her to do her own research on international standards and policy.
In Spring 2015, Maz, 21, studied abroad in Antibes, France, where ironically, she learned more about American politics than she ever had before. She
remembers watching the American primaries for the 2016 general election and feeling as if every candidate was flawed or in direct conflict with her beliefs.
When it came time for her to cast her first-ever presidential ballot, there was no hesitation in her mind.
“It was fairly easy for me to vote for Hillary Clinton,” Maz said. “I’m not saying she’s a perfect candidate but I had a lot of faith in her being someone who has been present in politics for a long time and is clearly an intelligent and educated woman.”
Following her semester abroad, Maz secured an internship with the
French embassy in the fall of 2015, and subsequently was a White House intern for the Obama administration in the summer of 2016.
Now a registered independent, Maz represents a trend of hundreds of thousands of former and current conservatives who were dissatisfied with Donald Trump as the Republican Party’s nominee. Members of the GOP cite that they have never approached a presidential election where they’ve been this uneasy, hesitant, and not sold on the Republican Party’s candidate.
In a poll taken in October 2016 by the Pew Research Center, 80 percent of registered GOP voters say the Republican Party is mostly divided in its views on issues and vision for the future, while just 17 percent say it is mostly united.
It’s difficult to explain how Trump secured the win even with such disjointed views from the party he ran under.
One of Mitt Romney’s former Deputy Campaign Managers, Katie Packer, who was extremely active in promoting anti-Trump messages, spoke out on the strategic logic behind Trump’s rise to power.
“We always focused like a laser beam on one candidate at a time,” Packer said. “The way I viewed it, all of these candidates were going to look at Trump and think ‘if I get to a head-to-head with him, I can beat him.’ And so nobody was going to go after him early on. I was concerned that he was going to get too much strength behind him if nobody killed him in the crib.”
Packer, whose parents both came from the UK, was raised in Michigan as an Evangelical Christian. She voted for Evan McMullin, and said she isn’t sure if she still considers herself a Republican and doesn’t know what the party is right now.
“I’d like to think we can do better as a party than somebody who I have long considered to be a racist, sexist bully,” Packer said of Trump. “If you call yourself a Republican and you subscribe to that party, and he’s the leader of that party and the face of that party, then you are basically saying you’re with him. And I’m not.”
Other conservative organizations in Washington, DC are facing similar confusion.
Club for Growth is a national network of over 100,000 pro-growth, limited government Americans. The advocacy group openly opposed Trump during the primaries and did not comment on the general election.
Doug Sachtleben, 53, is the Communications Director at Club for Growth.
“When Trump got in in June of 2015, we were one of the first ones to put out a press release saying ‘this isn’t going to go anywhere.’ Obviously we ate our words,” Sachtleben said.
He also pondered with what to do with his personal ballot. Ultimately, he left the presidential slate blank, stating Virginia does not tally write-in candidates in any significant way.
Nonetheless, writing in a candidate was the best option for some right-leaning voters, such as American University sophomore Mikaela Williams.
Williams, 20, was raised in the blue state of Washington in a split household. Her father works for the state government and the two of them are right-leaning, while her mom and sister tend to have more liberal views.
She says being a millennial Republican is “not your mom and dad’s generation” but still finds the ultra liberal AU student body to not always be understanding or accepting of her views.
“I’m not some flesh-eating animal. I’m a human and I have feelings just like everyone else and they don’t always align with my party, but I still consider myself under that label Republican,” Williams said.
“I feel like there are no misconceptions about Donald Trump at all. I think he is exactly who he says he is,” Williams added. “I like the idea of new blood I just don’t like the idea of new blood in the most influential position in the country. That’s a little scary.”
Another AU Conservative student, Henry Carmichael, also felt the uncertainty that came with Trump’s campaign would have compromised his values too much. He ultimately voted for Gary Johnson, stating that the Libertarian seemed as if he wanted let people be and do what they want to do with the least interference.
“I’m a conservative voter but I would like to see peace in the world,” Carmichael, 21, said.
Packer agreed that we should unite as a nation despite the outcome of the election.
“I was as aggressively anti-Trump as anybody. But, the day after the election, I put down my arms and said ‘Okay, we’re all Americans, I’m going to hope that I was wrong about him and let’s see how he does,’” Packer said. “I don’t have the energy to hate him for four years.”
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