Why this Trump voter says he’s now ‘on the fence’ about supporting Biden

‘I hate the Republican Party and I hate the Democratic Party, so there’s really nowhere else to go’

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Some Americans have had a rough go of it in the last few weeks under lockdown orders amid the coronavirus pandemic – but James Callahan says he’s “loving the hell out of it”.

A retired federal agent, the 54-year-old independent voter lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and says he’s “basically been quarantined for the last four years,” engaging in few social interactions besides the occasional errand or when grabbing a bite to eat.

Callahan spent the bulk of his career with the US Marshals, after serving as a border patrol agent in San Diego, California. The border, and specifically illegal immigration, are key issues to the former lifelong Republican.

“I hate the Republican Party and I hate the Democratic Party, so there’s really nowhere else to go,” Callahan says in a recent interview with The Independent about why he chose to drop his affiliation with the GOP nearly two years ago.

He cites “the failure of the Republican Party to get anything done” for the reason as to why he switched to an independent voter status, which forbids him from partaking in his state’s closed primary system.

Callahan is a former member of a Young Republicans club in Tampa, Florida, and often agrees in principle with the party’s platform. But as a federal agent living in Washington, he says he “saw the corruption first hand” before retiring nearly nine years ago. It made him loathe politicians in general, and led him on a path to who he is today: a voter that helped Donald Trump secure the White House, but now has second guesses about giving the incumbent his ballot a second time over.

“There was a short period of time when the Republicans had the congress, the Senate and the presidency, and they failed to get anything done – particularly on immigration and the national debt,” he says.

Callahan says he voted for Trump in 2016, and he supported his agenda in the White House despite having previously donated to Florida senator Marco Rubio’s failed 2016 campaign. His frustrations with the GOP leave him at an interesting crossroads, he says.

“I’m going through a struggle with family and friends over this very issue: I’m a philosophical conservative, libertarian is probably the best way to describe it,” he says. “But for the first time in my life I started looking at Bernie Sanders. I get he has his issues too, but he’s been singing the same song for years, he’s not nearly as corrupt and clearly we have a corrupt system. And you’re talking to a lifelong Republican.”

I spoke to Callahan after Sanders, the progressive Vermont senator who was once seen as the frontrunner in the Democratic presidential primaries, announced he was dropping out of the campaign and endorsing former vice-president Joe Biden.

Callahan says he “wanted to hear more about what Bernie had to say” and for him to more clearly outline his views on democratic socialism.

“Socialism doesn’t work, neither does communism – my own philosophy is that all ‘isms’ are designed to fail,” he says. “Capitalism is doomed to fail, too. It’s just the best of the worst, and it had a great run.”

Of course, Sanders is no longer an option in the race against Trump, as he plans to support Biden rather than launch an independent bid. Not that Callahan would likely have voted for him anyway – “I voted for Donald Trump, and if I had to pull the switch today, I’d vote for Donald Trump again,” he says.

But the president’s inability to fulfil his campaign promises – such as building a “big, beautiful wall” that spans the entirety of the US-Mexico border – has led Callahan to the point where he says he’s “on the fence” about casting his ballot for Biden.

He considers the choice to be some form of protest against the Republican Party: “I’m looking at all these Republicans who I used to support, and now they’re OK with bailing out people’s mortgages and paying their student loans. What does that tell somebody like me?”

Callahan says he pays “a disproportionate amount of taxes” and is concerned about what he describes to be excessive spending during the pandemic.

“People are dying, I understand that,” he says, adding that some measures must be taken to help flatten the curve and avoid the crisis worsening. But he also notes that federal debt has soared past $23 trillion (£18.4 trillion) – and now it seems to him even the Republicans have washed their hands of the problem.

“This thing hit the whole damn world,” he says. “But we have to remember our priorities.”

Click here to read more of The Independent's series, Polarized: Voices From Across America