On a Thursday in May, a 77-year-old man, whom I’ll call L., answered the phone. L. said he lived at the end of a long driveway in the woods of Wisconsin. The voice on the other end of the call belonged to Adam Kruggel, a complete stranger whose home was 2,000 miles away in Northern California. Kruggel had signed up for a phone-banking shift with the grassroots group Citizen Action of Wisconsin, and L.’s was the next name on his list.
The call began on an awkward note. When Kruggel asked to speak with L., a name more common to women than men, the reply was curt: “You’re talking to him.” Kruggel began by asking L. about how he was holding up in the pandemic, how he was feeling, how his family was doing, and within a few minutes the two men had settled into an easy rapport, like former neighbors catching up for the first time in years.
When the talk turned to politics, L. described himself as conservative. He liked to hunt, valued the Second Amendment, and didn’t believe in “a bunch of liberal bullshit.” But he wasn’t a supporter of President Trump, either. “I’m so sick and tired of listening to Trump spout his mouth off like an idiot,” he said. “The whole batch of them in Washington are just like a bunch of kids, so I don’t know who the heck I would vote for.”
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