ASHEVILLE – For some Buncombe County Democrats, the Sept. 10 presidential debate felt like the first of this year’s election season, even though it was really the second.
In July, when Vice President Kamala Harris announced she would seek to replace President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, energy among Democrats appeared to skyrocket across the country. Eight weeks later, when more than 100 supporters turned up at the party’s county headquarters in East Asheville to watch their new candidate debate former President Donald Trump, the excitement was still palpable.
“The energy is off the charts,” said Buncombe County Commissioner Martin Moore in a Sept. 10 interview with the Citizen Times just before the start of the debate. Moore, who is running for a seat on the N.C. Court of Appeals, said the atmosphere reminded him of 2008 when Barack Obama first ran for president.
In a short speech before the debate, Caleb Rudow, the Democratic congressional candidate for North Carolina’s 11th District, asked everyone in attendance to enjoy the moment and take a deep breath. He ended his remarks with high expectations for Harris.
“We’ve got way more work afterwards, but I think she’s going to kick his ass tonight,” he said.
Several attendees wore Rudow or Harris T-shirts, while another supporter wore one bearing the name of Trump’s 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton. Before the debate, one woman sipped from an insulated cup with a photo of Harris that read, “Madam President.” Another knitted, while life-size cardboard cutouts of Biden and former presidents Barack Obama and John F. Kennedy lined a nearby wall.
At the beginning of the night Doug Clark, 67, stood outside party headquarters along Old Fairview Road and directed traffic. Just before the debate, Clark, a retired tool and die maker and chair of precinct 54.2, told the Citizen-Times he expected to see a similar debate performance from Trump — “a lot of untruths, a lot of rule-breaking, a lot of trash talk,” he said.
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During the first half of the debate, which was projected on one of the headquarters’ basement walls, there were several laughs, guffaws and varied loud reactions to comments Trump made during the debate, including when he called Harris a Marxist. At the same time, some supporters played debate Bingo, looking for Trump to “mispronounce Kamala.”
In an interview with the Citizen-Times on Sept. 11, Clark said he didn’t think the debate spiraled into ugly rhetoric. He thought Trump was likely coached to tone down the personal attacks.
‘Unimpressed by both sides’
Less than 10 miles away at the Buncombe County GOP headquarters in West Asheville, approximately 25 people gathered to watch the debate on a small flat-screen television positioned on a bright red wall. They also played Bingo, looking to mark spaces when words and phrase like “guns,” “tariff” and “trans rights” were spoken. Just before 10 p.m., a winner stepped forward wearing a long red dress. She won a bottle of wine and a “Never Surrender” yard sign with Trump’s face on it.
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Reaction to the debate at GOP headquarters was more subdued. There was a lone laugh, a silent clap, a few muffled coughs or nods of agreement in response to comments made by Trump and Harris, like when Trump said crime was “through the roof.”
T.J. Martin, a registered Republican from East Asheville, watched the debate in the middle of the crowd with a cowboy hat resting on his knee. Around the halfway mark of the debate, he told the Citizen Times that he was surprised with how well Harris was doing and believed she might have been “greased,” suggesting she received debate questions ahead of time. He also said both Trump and Harris were straying off topic.
“I think, unfortunately, the candidates are all over the place,” Martin said.
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Andy Keith, an unaffiliated voter watching the debate at GOP headquarters, told the Citizen Times on Sept. 10 that former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s recent endorsement helped cement his support for Trump. Keith, who said he was in his late-40s and worked in residential construction, told the Citizen Times he was a strong supporter of Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement.
A short time later, a Citizen-Times reporter and photographer were asked to leave GOP headquarters by one of the people in attendance.
Reached by phone on Sept. 11, Keith said he was “unimpressed by both sides,” though he thought the fact-checking of candidate statements was biased in favor of Harris and that she got more of a pass from debate moderators.
Martin told the Citizen Times on Sept. 11 that he thought the moderators did a “pretty good job” and that Trump’s debate performance wasn’t his best.
“I think she knew the questions,” Martin said of Harris. “I’ve never seen her communicate at that level.”
‘Are you OK?’
Julie Weatherly, 80, a Harris supporter who attended the Democratic watch party told the Citizen Times on Sept. 11 that she was pleased with Harris’s performance. “She annihilated Trump, absolutely annihilated him,” Weatherly said.
Chris Cooper, professor of political science and public affairs at Western Carolina University and the author of the forthcoming book “Anatomy of a Purple State: A North Carolina Politics Primer,” told the Citizen Times on Sept. 11 that Harris clearly outperformed Trump, and that Harris, specifically, exceeded expectations.
“This was, in a lot of ways, her coming out party to many voters, and she performed well,” Cooper said. “She wasn’t heavy on policy specifics, but she certainly presented herself as competent and informed.”
In a Sept. 11 interview, Clark, the precinct chair, said he, too, noticed that Harris wasn’t specific on policy proposals, but chalked it up to her short time as candidate. He expects more from Harris on policy, specifically economic policy, if there’s a next debate.
During her closing statement on Sept. 10, Harris said as a prosecutor she didn’t ask victims or witnesses about their party affiliation. Instead, she asked if they were ok.
When posed the same question by the Citizen Times on Sept. 10, Clark said he’s measuring the sense of security he feels now with “the hope that we don’t wake up with a dictator,” referring to the potential reelection of Trump in November.
“What we got is working,” Clark said. “We just have to get the hate and division out of the system.”
On the Republican side, Martin told the Citizen Times it wasn’t even a fair question.
“It’s either prosperity or poverty,” Martin said. “Pick one.”
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Jacob Biba is the county watchdog reporter at the Asheville Citizen Times. Reach him at jbiba@citizentimes.com.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Buncombe County Dems, GOP react to Harris-Trump presidential debate
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