Provincetown, Massachusetts (CNN) — Dawn on the Atlantic is a gradual, hypnotic explosion of coloration. Black skies flip ash grey; subsequent, a sideways sliver of orange divides the huge horizon.
A pause, then a wide ranging ocean daybreak: Churning deep blue waters collide with the palest of blue skies. Wisps of clouds flip whiter and brighter because the solar climbs.
First gentle modifications every little thing.
A pod of dolphins emerges to play alongside the “Jillian and Peri” because it motors out to deeper waters. Their squeals as they go under the hull echo onboard and stir Andrew Konchek from his wood bunk under deck.
Time for an additional subfreezing day on the workplace, fishing 15 miles or so off the Massachusetts coast.
“It’s a little cold,” Konchek mentioned. “It’s definitely hard work. Not for everybody.”
Nevertheless it defines him.
Konchek went to culinary faculty. Labored as a chef. However the ocean known as him again.
“Because I love it,” he mentioned. “I can’t see myself doing anything else but fishing.”
That love powers his politics and his perception that Donald Trump again within the White Home is his finest hope for job safety.
“Oh yeah, all day,” is the reply when Konchek is requested whether or not the brand new Trump time period makes it extra possible he’ll nonetheless be working the water two and 4 years from now. He provides this bitter capsule for Democrats: “Republicans are for the people.”
We met Konchek 16 months in the past, within the early levels of our All Over the Map undertaking — an effort to trace the 2024 marketing campaign via the eyes and experiences of voters who reside in key locations or are a part of crucial voting blocs.
Although fishing off Massachusetts this go to, he’s a New Hampshire resident who backed Trump within the state’s early main after which once more in November, as he did in 2016 and 2020.
Konchek is only one instance of Trump’s blue-collar attraction, his capacity to attach with working-class voters who have been lengthy thought-about loyal Democrats.
Immigration is a central piece of this puzzle. Konchek is with the overwhelming majority of Trump voters who need extra aggressive and efficient border insurance policies, even mass deportations.
“If they came over to the country legally then it wouldn’t be a problem,” he mentioned.
However Konchek’s assist — and hope — for Trump is extra private: The president-elect mentions the fishermen when he involves New England, and he guarantees to reverse plans for offshore wind farms that Konchek believes would destroy New England fisheries and his lifestyle.
“The hundreds of miles they’re going to put in the ocean here, in the Gulf of Maine, we wouldn’t be able to fish it,” Konchek mentioned. “So, I would be out of a job.”
Trump shall be president the following time Konchek leaves port. He desires fast proof guarantees made shall be guarantees saved.
“Keep the whole windmill promise,” is Konchek’s first check. “What other promises? He talked about the border control. Obviously, I think this time around if he builds the wall, it won’t be stopped and he can probably complete it.”
We met up with Konchek at Provincetown Harbor after a while exploring Trump’s blue-collar attraction in one of many deepest blue locations on any presidential map: Boston.
Vice President Kamala Harris gained 77% of the Boston vote. But town gives a crucial laboratory as Democrat attempt to be taught from their 2024 drubbing.
Trump’s share of the Boston vote climbed from 15% in 2020 to twenty% in 2024, and he gained two precincts within the metropolis’s gritty Dorchester part.
Dorchester is my house and the place my love of politics took root: I used to be a younger, curious witness to kitchen desk and VFW corridor conversations, usually feisty, about Vietnam, Watergate, pressured busing within the public faculties, racial tensions. The place the place union guys like my father contemplated whether or not Kennedy Democrats may swap to Reagan Democrats.
Lopez the Florist moved from Roxbury to Dorchester in 1962, one 12 months earlier than I used to be born. Don Lopez inherited the enterprise from his father and is now handing it off to his sons.
“This neighborhood is pretty blue, pretty Democrat,” Lopez mentioned. His subsequent phrase would normally finish any doubt about native politics: “Massachusetts.”
However Lopez the Florist is in one of many precincts Trump gained.
“I wouldn’t have believed that,” Lopez mentioned once we instructed him the native outcomes.
He’s reluctant to debate his personal vote for worry of injuring the enterprise. However flip the dialog from names on the poll to points on his thoughts and his leanings are clear.
“We have the border,” Lopez mentioned when requested the problems that mattered most to his 2024 vote. “They’re spending money in Washington like it is going out of style. … The country needs to go in another direction.”
The Ireland Pub is a block away, a Dorchester icon and blue-collar magnet. John Stenson’s dad purchased the place 60 years in the past.
“First of all, Irish, many of them,” is how Stenson describes the regulars. “Secondly, blue-collar workers. Union officials. Union workers. Your everyday people who make up a neighborhood.”
Stenson was behind the bar in 1983 when Ronald Reagan stopped in to tip a pint. And once more 9 years later when Invoice Clinton popped in as a part of his effort to promote himself as a special sort of Democrat — which means much less liberal.
That Trump gained two Dorchester precincts was no shock to Stenson; the Ireland is in one among them and strolling distance from the opposite.
“I’m here every day and I hear the conversation,” he mentioned in a lunchtime interview on the pub.
What was it?
“Immigration and cost of living at the top,” he mentioned.
Stenson’s intestine of how the Ireland regulars voted:
“In favor of Trump. Probably 60-40.”
A lot of the bar’s patrons are Democrats, Stenson mentioned, however keen to go exterior the field “if they feel like there is a man that represents them, especially the way they feel about major issues. … They saw that with Reagan, and I think they saw it again with Trump.”
It’s cops and firefighters, plumbers and electricians who encompass the Ireland bar for conversations mixing politics with the ups and downs of the Patriots, Purple Sox, Celtics and Bruins.
These residents are eternally loyal, even when grumpy, about their groups. However, Stenson mentioned, they’re principally Democrats at coronary heart who will follow Trump provided that he retains his phrase.
“Between what they are paying at the grocery store and how they feel about what he’s done with the border in six months,” Stenson mentioned. “That will give you your opinion.”
Konchek has the identical check — plus the wind farms.
However he’s skeptical any president can rapidly tame inflation. He’s additionally a registered Republican and maybe extra affected person with Trump than are Democrats who voted GOP as a result of they noticed Harris as too liberal or out of contact with their blue-collar lives.
Not that he at all times agrees with Trump. Hardly.
His factors of disagreement with Trump embody a caustic tone that may offend Konchek, and his spouse much more.
“He doesn’t think before he talks sometimes,” Konchek mentioned in a dialog on the strict fishing deck.
He additionally needs Trump would go away abortion and different reproductive rights choices to girls. And Konchek needs Trump would cease denying the local weather disaster he sees each day when trying to find lobsters, scallops, cod and extra.
The final half is a crucial distinction: Konchek lives the altering local weather each day. There are extra quotas and restrictions, extra extreme climate; some acquainted fish are tougher to seek out as waters heat, and a few species are popping up a lot farther north than in years previous.
So, he disagrees with Trump and people who cry “hoax.” But additionally takes challenge with Democrats and regulators who, in his view, impose new guidelines and concepts — just like the wind farms — with out eager about or searching for enter from those that work the water.
“The Green New Deal is the worst deal I have ever heard of,” Konchek mentioned.
Our day at sea is a promise we made to Konchek once we first met — to see the work and the waters he says the politicians don’t perceive. Journeys can last as long as 12 days, with a crew of three plus a authorities observer sharing a spartan, cramped dwelling cabin.
The enormous nets are dropped 100 fathoms, or 600 ft, to the ocean flooring. Each 4 to 5 hours, together with in a single day, they’re cranked again to the floor and the catch is spilled out on the deck to be sorted.
What the principles or widespread sense say you shouldn’t maintain — fish too small, lobsters wealthy with eggs, two mako sharks on this haul — will get tossed again to their house. What you’ll be able to maintain will get sorted into buckets after which both the lobster tanks or the ice-filled fish maintain under deck. As the times go, the layered stacks of cod, haddock, pink snapper, flounder and extra develop greater.
It was 23 levels — that’s minus 5 Celsius — once we left Provincetown Harbor at 5 a.m. All the pieces on the deck is icy. You’re fortunate this time of 12 months if it will get above freezing.
“It’s an honest living,” is how Konchek describes it, shrugging off the grueling circumstances. “It’s in my blood. It’s me. I can’t see myself doing anything else.”
Initially Revealed: January 19, 2025 at 7:49 AM PST
