CLYDE, Ohio — For roughly the amount of time Donald Trump has been in office, Doug Boyer has been working on a restoration project of his own.
The 55-year-old knew what he was getting into when he bought the dilapidated Victorian on West Buckeye Street in Clyde. He understood that it would cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars to give the circa-1895 stunner new life as a restaurant, hotel, and gallery for local artists.
So he spent several years restoring ornate woodwork and glass, installing six bathrooms and a commercial kitchen, and outfitting the 3,800-square-foot structure with all the safety and accessibility features required to bring it up to code.
But it hasn’t been enough. He says he still has odds and ends to fix, and the pandemic has increased the amount of time it takes to get those odds and ends past government red tape. His restaurant? Still a pipe dream.
Since Mr. Boyer can’t legally operate as a business, he doesn’t. If someone wants ice cream or coffee, he gives it to them for a suggested donation. He will also give it to them for free.
His connection to the community, and all those coffees and cones on the house, are what’s kept him going during the long, unbearable months of the pandemic, when his business plans were stuck in bureaucratic limbo.
“That’s how God has gotten us through this whole thing. We literally just — we have no idea how we’re surviving day to day,” he said. “It’s been the most incredible experience waiting on the state to facilitate our need to open as a business.”
There was a bright spot recently, Mr. Boyer said, when his business was being considered as a possible stop for President Trump on his trip Thursday to Clyde’s beating industrial heart, the Whirlpool plant.
For whatever reason, it didn’t work out, but Mr. Boyer said the President is still invited to stop by.
“If President Trump wants to get a feel for Clyde, Ohio, he should walk in here, because there are magnificent homes here and there are very few of us who have actually recognized that and started restoring them,” said Mr. Boyer, whose muted blue house commands the street.
Not that Mr. Boyer voted for Mr. Trump. Or Hillary Clinton. Or anyone actually on the ballot in 2016’s general election. A frustrated conservative who doesn’t consider himself to be a Democrat or Republican, he wrote in John Kasich, the Republican and then-Ohio governor who challenged Mr. Trump in the primary.
Like others who didn’t see their values and aspirations for the country reflected in either 2016 candidate, Mr. Boyer, a retired chief warrant officer for the Ohio National Guard, found the choice between Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton wrenching.
“I was on my way to work when my wife and I voted, and I stood in there in the poll and I actually shed a tear,” he said. “I literally looked at America and I thought, ‘America has moved into a place where we’re getting exactly what we’ve become in the last three elections.... We’ve just became more involved in the fight than we were in the solution.”
Nothing about Mr. Boyer’s past political choices will make much sense to the people who study these types of trends. Bill Clinton. George W. Bush. Barack Obama. Mitt Romney. John Kasich.
He takes a bit from both parties. He opposes abortion rights, doesn’t trust the government, supports police reform, and doesn’t understand what’s so controversial about universal health care coverage.
“My wife works for the state. I was in the military. We obviously for many, many years had health coverage, and I would look at people that don’t have anything and think, ‘Why can’t they just get my health coverage?’ Where’s our empathy and our common sense realizing there’s a difference between giving them a Porsche, giving them a cell phone, and giving them access to get a couple of Tylenol?”
Clyde, a city of 6,300, is located in Sandusky County, a place that flips back and forth between parties in presidential elections. The equivalent of half the city is employed at Whirlpool, which makes up a significant portion of its tax base.
The county voted for Mr. Trump in 2016, and even the people who won’t vote for him don’t necessarily foresee a different outcome this year.
“It’ll be a big deal to the people of Clyde feeling like Trump loved them enough to come in and say, ‘Hey, I created 200 jobs,’” Mr. Boyer said. “No, Whirlpool created 200 jobs. Donald Trump did not create 200 jobs.”
People in Clyde are community-oriented and likely to vote with their church, union, family — whichever group “captures them,” he said.
“I think this is a community that gets captured by whatever group they associate with the most.”
Mr. Boyer isn’t sure what group or candidate will capture him in 2020. It’s not Donald Trump. It’s also not necessarily Joe Biden, at least not without knowing his running mate. Where does that leave an undecided voter three months from the election?
“I am fearful of a country that judges their worth, in the White House at least, based on the Dow number and how Wall Street’s doing, and doesn’t come out here to roll up their sleeves and find out — how’s Clyde, Ohio?”
First Published August 6, 2020, 12:28 a.m.
