Editor's Note: Fechter is a correspondent for the VTDigger Underground Workshop, a platform for student journalism. 

 

VTDigger Editor’s Note: Vermonters cast 112,704 votes for Donald Trump and 248,412 votes for Phil Scott last November. The people behind these numbers often have little in common with each other or with traditional political labels. The interviews in this series explore just a few of the wide-ranging perspectives and attitudes among Vermonters who identify as conservative or Republican. They do not represent the views of Vermont’s Republican Party, the student journalists who conducted the interviews, or VTDigger — each of these Vermonters speaks only for themselves. Interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

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A few months ago, Rodney Rainville went with his wife and daughter to a store.

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Walking in, they noticed that the store clerk was laughing with a customer. They thought nothing of it, until the store clerk’s demeanor suddenly changed. 

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The only difference? A man of color had walked in. The store clerk’s happiness disappeared, staring at the man and growing quiet. 

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Rodney was incredulous. His wife said: 

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“Did that man just change all of a sudden when that Black man walked in?” 

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Rodney nodded, he had noticed it as well.

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“It was obvious,” he said, upset about the apparent change in attitude toward this man.

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“You could see that he treated him differently, so yeah, racism is alive and well,“ he said. ”I don’t know what anybody could do about it, but you see it firsthand. … The store clerk was pretty short with him.”

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Rodney Rainville is an independent, but farther right than the Democratic majority in Vermont. He attributes his affiliation as an independent in a widely Democratic state partially to his position owning a logging and trucking business in Bethel, Vermont. This work has been a part of his family since the first Rainville immigrated to Vermont. He says his family has worked in this business “as far back as the king and queen eras.”  

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“I don’t know if I act differently because I own my own business,” he said,”or [if] I own my business because I act differently.” 

Who do you think most influenced your political point of view in your family?

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It’s kind of funny. My dad was a registered Democrat but always voted Republican. But the Democrats were different when he was growing up, I think … and I think the Democrats changed after a while and he didn’t change with them.

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When you were growing up, did you ever get the sense that that’s how you were going to be growing up? As a role model almost?

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I think so, my father was involved — you know I’m on the school board, right? 

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No, I didn’t know that.

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Yeah, I’m on the school board, and it’s kind of funny. My father was on the school board in the 1960s, and he was part of the school board when they merged schools from Columbia, New Hampshire, into Colebrook, New Hampshire, and then, how many years later? 50 years later, I’m on the school board where we’re merging Bethel and Royalton together.

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And I didn’t really plan out, “Oh, I’m going to be on the school board because my dad was”; it just seemed to happen that way.

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Can you describe a specific time you were impacted by politics or government policies? 

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Act 250 probably affects my work as much as anything. Sometimes I get frustrated, because I can’t do the things I want to do.  It seems like policies affect everybody every day, one way or the other, because I have bought land and done a little bit of land developing, and Act 250 is something I could see needs work.

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What is Act 250?

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It’s about the development of property in Vermont. It restricts how big of a lot you have, anything that you do to develop land has to be approved, and it has to go through Act 250, and you have to go through the Act 250 coordinator. And they’re actually pretty good to work with, it’s just, you know, you can’t just do it. You know, these kind of restrictions are somewhat limiting to an owner of an independently owned company.  

It’s like you don’t even own the land. Everyone else controls it.

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Do you think that conservatives, independents and Republicans, are a political minority in Bethel’s community?

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Yeah, I’d say Republicans are 40%. I’d say that there are a lot of Republicans in Vermont, that it’s less than half, and it does seem to be controlled by Democrats. It used to be just the opposite, probably 60 years ago, and then it just kind of changed, it flip-flopped.

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I’d say Republicans are less than half for sure.

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What do you think about the war in Afghanistan?

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It’s better now than it has been in years, the Middle East wars. I wish we could stay out of it; it doesn’t look like we can. I’d like to see our troops come home, that’s for sure, but I think we have to have a presence over there, because you know that [since] basically 9/11 — we were kind of staying out of the Middle East and they just kind of dragged us into it, and we’ve been right in the middle of it ever since. 

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America does seem to be the police department for the entire world sometimes. We have to kind of protect other people’s human rights, you know, from too much radical government.  I think we’re doing a pretty good job over there. Things have been pretty calm.  

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That’s one of those things the Trump administration seems to be doing right. I mean, really, I haven’t heard anything out of North Korea or the Middle East; they’ve been pretty quiet.

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Do you agree with the Black Lives Matter movement?

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I agree with Black Lives Matter.  At first I was like, “Oh, no, all lives matter,” which is true, I mean obviously. But I think my daughter influences my political views sometimes, because she actually showed me a great video.  

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There was this person who said, “Well, my house is on fire; I need the fire department at my house.” And the other person is like, “Well, all houses matter.”  Well, yeah, but the house that’s on fire matters more. I think that video changed my view on Black Lives Matter.