HATFIELD — Lesley LeBarge’s Donald Trump signs kept getting stolen from his front yard.
After nine signs were pilfered from outside his Elm Street home, LeBarge came up with a solution: “Can’t put ’em up in the yard anymore, so I put them in the porch.”
Today, LeBarge displays two Trump signs from within the safe confines of his porch, including one that takes up three windows. There’s still one outside featuring a photo of Trump and another in the backyard that he illuminates at night. LeBarge figures any would-be thieves would be deterred by being in the spotlight.
“I love signs,” he said. “I love people knowing what I’m doing.”
And in this presidential campaign season, what LeBarge has been doing is loudly and proudly supporting the candidacy of sometimes-brash billionaire businessman Trump — an unpopular opinion in the Valley, perhaps evidenced by the chronic sign thefts.
But despite its liberal reputation, western Massachusetts is home to plenty of Trump loyalists, who are sticking with their candidate despite a massive dip in poll numbers following the political conventions.
In Hampshire County, Hatfield had among the strongest turnout for Trump during the Massachusetts presidential primary, when over 12 percent of all town voters chose him. Compare that to Amherst, where less than 2 percent voted for Trump. Some 11 percent of Easthampton voters chose Trump.
Those interviewed by the Gazette gave varied reasons for why Trump is the best choice for commander-in-chief, but many offered a common refrain: He’s not a politician, but a businessman who tells it like it is and will do anything to get the job done — the right way.
“Donald Trump, he’s a businessman, he has an outlook,” LeBarge said. “You and I are in business, you get Donald Trump to represent you — I say, see you later, alligator.”
In the Republican primary, LeBarge, 72, supported the candidacy of Dr. Ben Carson until the retired neurosurgeon started losing his footing. Then, he chose Trump.
“This guy Donald Trump came around — everybody thought it was a joke,” he said. “He isn’t.”
Among the reasons that LeBarge supports Trump is his stance on trade agreements, including Trump’s rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which President Barack Obama supports.
Negotiations for the TPP, which aims to reduce tariffs and promote freer trade among 12 Pacific Rim countries, were conducted with a high level of secrecy, which LeBarge says is an example of insider politics closed off to the average person. “Trade agreements should be done through the people,” he said.
And LeBarge said the Democratic insiders, such as Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, embody the worst of that exclusive political club. “I don’t trust the Democratic Party whatsoever,” he said. “I’m sick of the Clintons, I’m sick of the Democratic way.”
But that wasn’t always the case.
In his earlier adult life, LeBarge was a registered Democrat and a worker represented by a union.
“There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for the Democratic Party, for the union,” he said.
LeBarge had a dramatic change of heart in 1988 when he received a letter regarding the presidential campaign of former Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis.
“The union wants me to vote for Michael Dukakis for president of the United States,” he recalled. “I said to my wife, ‘Let’s go down to Hatfield Town Hall and register independent.’”
He voted that year for George H.W. Bush.
Dukakis, like Clinton, “was one of the players,” LeBarge said — a seasoned politician who was part of the problem, rather than someone who could bring about a solution.
“You ask anyone, he had more state troopers around him than supporters” when Dukakis was governor, LeBarge said. “He didn’t want to listen to your question — but he wanted to give a lot of answers.”
Noel Gomez said he likes Trump because he’s unlike Clinton or most Republican politicians, evidenced by his off-the-cuff demeanor.
“That’s the trick to his trade,” Gomez said. “He does controversial things, but he gets plastered across TV — that’s free.”
But is it ever too much? So far, no, Gomez says — even this week, when Trump’s response to Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the Muslim parents of an Army captain killed in Iraq, drew widespread ire from fellow Republicans and Democrats alike.
Khizr Khan, with his wife by his side, spoke out against Trump’s policies at the Democratic National Convention. In response, Trump pointed out Ghazala Khan’s silence.
“What he’s trying to pass along is Muslims, basically, don’t let their women talk,” Gomez, 76, of South Deerfield said.
Trump will “go as far as he thinks his supporters will go with him,” toeing that fine line between not politically correct and offensive, Gomez said.
And about that wall? “What’s wrong with building a wall?” Gomez asked.
He recalled the stories of his parents’ own treacherous immigration from Spain, when they were turned away from Ellis Island only to be sent to Cuba for six months before being granted entry to the United States, Gomez said. His mother’s sister died in the process.
“You’re going to tell me somebody is going to step over me, illegally, after what happened to my mother?” Gomez said.
Europe will eventually see the merits of closed borders, he said, because free passage of people makes it easier for ISIS terrorists to get in.
The way Gomez sees it, America is at a turning point. Spurred by eight years of Obama, who “says I have a pen and a phone and I’m going to go around the Constitution and I’m going to go around Congress,” he said the country must return to order and prosperity. Trump will generate jobs, achieve racial harmony, support the police, listen to the people and not overstep the bounds of the office, he said.
“There’s friction all over the place,” he said. “That’s how you take down a democracy.”
George Bitzas, 69, of Agawam, served as an alternate Trump delegate at the Republican National Convention.
Though he’s been politically active for decades, including nearly 30 years in Agawam town government, this year’s convention was his first ascension to the national stage.
“I want to see this country go into the right direction,” he said. “I vote for Democrats and Republicans for president. I vote for the candidate who I think is better.”
And that’s because he loves America — even more than his home country of Greece.
He immigrated here in the late-1970s, learned English and attended Westfield State College. He taught art in West Springfield schools until opting for a career change. Today he owns his own interior design firm.
He looks to what’s going on in Greece, hears about the strife of relatives and friends struggling to make ends meet with the country’s sour economy and the additional strain that thousands of refugees have put on it. “My heart aches,” he said.
The problem with Greece, he said, is its socialist government.
“When I was in Greece … we were very, very prosperous and good,” he said. “Now they have a more left-wing government, giving the people more and more.”
Bitzas sees the U.S. going down a similar path under the presidency of Obama. The solution, he said, is to ensure a fair system for everyone.
Trump “is a businessman,” Bitzas said. “He will run the country like a business, and that’s what we need.”
Trump’s business ethic is something that attracted Alexandria Moynihan in the 1980s, when Trump successfully renovated an ice rink in Central Park under budget after the city failed to get the project off the ground even after spending millions of dollars on it.
“It was fascinating, just absolutely fascinating,” she said.
Moynihan, 73, of Easthampton, comes from a family of businesspeople herself. She remembers her father going out on a limb and opening the Red Rock drive-in theater in Southampton, sometimes having to take out loans to make ends meet.
She opened a beauty salon in Northampton with her cousin when she was in her 20s and later was co-owner of package stores in Easthampton and Williamsburg.
“Entrepreneurs are risk-takers,” she said. “I grew up with that.”
And she said the rewards of that risk-taking are not seen favorably by Democratic politicians, including Elizabeth Warren’s promotion of the idea that no American can grow rich without the support of government services — roads, education and public safety protection.
Barack Obama incorporated the concept in his 2012 campaign, which led his political foes to emphasize a statement he made while explaining the point: “You didn’t build that.”
“That broke my heart,” Moynihan said. “The bottom line with business and partnership is relentless respect for each other and you just keep working.”
And that’s what Moynihan hopes Trump will bring to Washington in November.
Chris Lindahl can be reached at clindahl@gazettenet.com