Photo: Fabien Deglise Le Devoir Since 2000, Harmony Township voters have consistently sided with the winner in the state's presidential and gubernatorial elections.
Fabien Deglise
Published at 12:00 am
- United States
On the Madison Road from Chicago lies a well-kept secret that, in these tense and violent political times in the United States, is probably worth revealing: Harmony Township.
Located on the outskirts of Janesville, Wisconsin, on the border of Illinois, the small community of 2,500 souls lives up to its name, with its electorate divided 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans, who have coexisted for years in a climate of peace, respect and quiet worthy of mention.
“They say that all the people of Harmony live in harmony,” says township clerk Lisa Tollefson, whom we met a few days ago in the local government offices, set amid the fertile farmland for which the area is known. “And it’s true. People grew up here, they went to school together. Everyone knows each other. Sometimes they talk politics, agreeing with each other’s political positions. And they never let it ruin their relationships.”
In the Starview Heights neighborhood, a constellation of bungalows follow one another under mature trees, all the way to the home of Valerie Grover, a young Democrat in her thirties whose neighbor Gordon has come to help her with a little water damage in her garage.
“We have polar opposite political views,” she says of him as he quietly heads back to his house across the street, reluctant to stake his political claim that day. “But we can talk about it and talk to each other because we are good neighbors. There are a lot of bridges that have been built between all of us here. It would be a shame to destroy them over politics. This is a very peaceful neighborhood, why add tension and division to it.” ?Jeff Klenz, a 68-year-old former police officer and chairman of the township, has just finished a videoconference meeting in the room where the council meets every week, in an atmosphere that is “always cordial,” he assures us. And he enjoys talking about his “very special” township.
“Politics is important, but in everyday life, we have a lot of other things to manage,” says the man behind his long white beard that gives him the look of a defrocked biker. “There’s the cost of groceries, work on the farm and the constraints of running your business. Of course, the choice of president or governor is on our minds. But that’s not the most important thing here.”
And he adds: “This is how we should do politics everywhere in the country. People seem to forget that we are all Americans, not just Democrats or Republicans. And even if you don’t like other people’s ideas, the main concern that we should all have is the good of the country as a whole and the well-being of its people.”
A canton that sees correctly
In Harmony, the electoral seasons follow one another and are similar, with, unlike other corners of the country, a total absence of signs planted on the land to display its political colors and share it, sometimes ostentatiously, with its neighbors. “It’s a question of respect,” assures Joe Kincade, owner of a small organic market garden located on the edge of enormous fields reserved for intensive corn and soybean agriculture. “We don't want to offend others with our political positions,” he assures, while saying he stays away from the political issues of the moment and prefers the company of his garlic, which is emerging from the ground.
And the consistency in political cycles in Harmony goes even further.
In the last 13 elections for presidents and governors in the state of Wisconsin, voters in Harmony Township have systematically voted for the winner, John Johnson, a public policy researcher at Marquette University, recalled last April on the X network. A “prescience” that is shared by Merrimac, a small village of 500 inhabitants located north of Madison.
With a demographic that is the same percentage of whites as the rest of the state (86%), slightly more citizens identifying as having multiple ethnicities in the last census (12%, compared to 2.2% statewide), but no black communities, Harmony went to Donald Trump by 36 votes in 2016. That year, the populist became the first Republican to win Wisconsin since Ronald Reagan, by 22,748 votes over his opponent, Hillary Clinton. And then, in 2020, it was Joe Biden who won the popular vote in the district, with 78 more votes than the Republican, including the 20,682 that brought the state back to the Democratic camp.
But the game of predictions for 2024 quickly enters uncertain territory.
“I was a Republican, but I’m going to vote Democrat,” assures Kent Shea, a retired firefighter, while installing bicycles in the back of his car, in preparation for an imminent vacation departure. “Donald Trump, he’s a criminal, he’s arrogant. For me, it’s a categorical no.”
A little further on, in the shade of a majestic tree that cools the patio of her house, Cathy Klenz, wife of the president of the canton, first denounces the anger and violence that prevail on the national political scene by saying that she does not understand all this hatred. But she assures that she will vote for a return of Donald Trump to the White House. “The price of my groceries has doubled in the last few years and I buy nothing more than what I need to make hamburgers. He will win the election in November. That's for sure. And we will be able to get back to our old life.”
In the shade of his garage, Robert Lund, a former worker at the GM Janesville auto assembly plant that brought the region (and local residents) a lot of glory before it closed in 2019, hesitates. “It was pretty Democratic at the plant, I still am a bit. But I find this election campaign really weird.”
“I’ll be running for Kamala Harris,” says Valerie Grover. “That’s who I’m campaigning for.” Inwardly, of course, and with respect for others.
Township Clerk Tim Tollefson, the township clerk’s husband, is sure of one thing: the election should go well, as in previous years, with a high turnout that usually hovers around 90%. “There’s a festive atmosphere here on election day. People are happy to be together, many of them haven’t seen each other in weeks. There’s no tension, no suspicion about the election process, like you see elsewhere in the country. No one talks politics while waiting to vote. They check in on each other and show pictures of their children and grandchildren instead.”
And he dares a prediction.
“Republican or Democrat? It’s going to be close. But I can tell you one thing already: the party that will win the election here, in Harmony, is the one that will receive the greatest number of votes,” he says with a smile.
This report was funded with support from the Transat International Journalism Fund-Le Devoir.