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Trump's (Mostly Anonymous) Park Slope Backers Welcome 'Breath of Fresh Air'

By Leslie Albrecht | January 20, 2017 2:07pm | Updated on January 23, 2017 8:35am
 A Trump sign displayed in Park Slope on Inauguration Day 2017.
A Trump sign displayed in Park Slope on Inauguration Day 2017.
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DNAinfo/Leslie Albrecht

PARK SLOPE — While most of Park Slope has been bracing for four years of a president they didn't support and will actively fight against, 74-year-old Alayne Cox is looking forward with anticipation.

"I'm excited at what I'm watching," Cox told DNAinfo from her Park Slope home on Friday, moments before watching Donald Trump be sworn in as the 45th president.

As one of just 1,637 Trump supporters in the neighborhood (where 91.5 percent of voters (29,961) backed Hillary Clinton), Cox said she has been glued to her TV set watching inauguration events.

"To me, this is a breath of fresh air," Cox said.

►RELATED: How Every New York City Neighborhood Voted In The 2016 Presidential Election

Many of her neighbors marked Inauguration Day by attending protest concerts or preparing to go to the women's march in Washington, D.C., but Cox eagerly checked Facebook for posts by one of her fellow parishioners from Holy Name of Jesus Church, who was attending the inauguration to support Trump.

Cox said she doesn't feel isolated as one of the neighborhood's few Trump backers. She has a strong community at her church, where she's a lay minister and celebrates Mass daily, she said.

The retired nurse technician and union delegate said she voted for Trump because she hopes he'll advance her pro-life beliefs.

"I wasn't upset when my candidate didn’t win for the last eight years, I simply accepted it," said the one-time Democrat, who’s lived in Park Slope for 50 years. “I’m looking forward to where this will lead."

But Cox was one of the few Trump voters in Democrat-leaning Park Slope willing to discuss her support publicly. DNAinfo New York contacted more than a dozen of the 25 people listed as having donated money to the Trump campaign who listed their home ZIP code as Park Slope.

Most either declined to talk or didn't respond to interview requests.

Those who did talk asked that their names not be used because they didn't want to advertise their political leanings to their neighbors.

One Trump voter, a 48-year-old dad, said he's used to his neighbors assuming that everyone is on the same page politically.

"You hear people talk in the streets because they think everybody else is under the same mentality, the same party, the same vote," said the voter, who lives a block from Mayor Bill de Blasio's Park Slope house.

"A lot of people freely talk about Trump this, Trump that, Hillary that, not realizing that the person next to them has the opposing view," he added. "I just listen, keep it to myself, and move on."

In the days after the election, when "He Is Not My President" signs appeared in the neighborhood, another local Trump voter said he was "disappointed that people were so upset."

"I feel kind of sorry for people who are closed-minded, because after an election is a time when people ought to be celebrating our freedom and free elections," said the 65-year-old, who described himself as an Ivy League grad who repairs computers.

One of the Trump voters said he "just laughs" when he reads news stories about Trump supporters being mostly white, uneducated, rural residents, he said. A computer consultant who runs his own business, he says most of the pro-Trump locals he knows are college-educated entrepreneurs like himself.

Did he put a Trump sign in front of his house? "Dear God, no," he chuckled, especially after he heard someone threw a rock at a Gowanus house with a Trump sign.

The married father of two says he voted for Trump because he liked that he wasn't a politician and talked the way guys talk when they're hanging out at the garage, he said.

He wants the next president to "once and for all take care of our Second Amendment and allow every citizen in the country to say ‘I have the right to defend myself’ no matter what city they live in."

Though his views are at odds with most of his neighbors, he doesn't feel like a fish out of water, he said. He was born and raised in the neighborhood, and sees the influx of wealthy liberals in recent years as just another passing trend, he said.

Does he have a message for his neighbors? "In the words of John Lennon," he said, "'Give peace a chance.'"

RELATED: How Park Slopers Can Take Action Politically