Beacon Journal | 09/19/2004 | Amish country is Bush/Cheney's
Amish country is Bush/Cheney's
Most support president, despite war stance, although many do not vote
By David Giffels
SUGARCREEK - Editor's note: In this election season, David Giffels is presenting snapshots and voices from around Ohio, a key swing state in the presidential election.
Today: Politics among the Amish.
An old-order Mennonite was asked about his politics.
``I don't vote,'' he answered, ``but I pray Republican.''
This joke is told to me by a 71-year-old Amish bookkeeper who doesn't strike me as the type to crack jokes. I don't mean this unkindly. In fact, the stony demeanor of Monroe Beachy is probably more a reflection on me than on him. I have stepped out of a metropolitan newspaper photographer's late-model Mazda minivan and walked into Beachy's office in Sugarcreek to ask him questions. He, like most Amish and Mennonites, probably expects that those questions will come from ignorance. (His office, after all, is on a tourist-heavy street lined with Amish-themed shops, most of which the Amish would not dream of entering.)
In this case, he's right. I honestly don't know if the Amish vote for president. And, based on what I do know about the Amish, I could see their politics leaning either direction. The Amish are profoundly pacifist, and George W. Bush is a war president. Yet they are also profoundly conservative, and John Kerry is not.
I suspect Beachy, a bearded man with thin white hair parted down the middle and slate-gray shirt sleeves rolled to the elbow, is willing to endure my questions because the alternative is that I will get it all wrong. He has a right to feel that way. The tourists who pass by his office window most often misunderstand his way of life.
``My feeling,'' he says, ``is most Amish don't vote. This boils down to Scripture -- there are two separate kingdoms here; we believe in the spiritual kingdom. The separation of church and state which is what our people have believed since our founding in 1525. We do not expect to have the government tell the church what to do and so the church should not be telling the government what to do, either.''
That doesn't mean they don't follow the process. Beachy reads newspapers and subscribes to Newsweek; in a discussion of Bill Clinton, he uses the nickname ``Slick Willie.'' Years ago, Beachy voted on local issues, but became disillusioned after a school levy was voted down and the Amish, whose children do not attend public school, were blamed. Beachy says the resentment was misplaced, but it was enough to drive him away from the voting booth forever.
Just before I get up to leave, I ask Beachy, hypothetically, which presidential candidate he might be more inclined to, uh, pray for. He laughs very loudly and very genuinely, then answers kind of profoundly, ``Our prayers are more directed that God will lead to a man he can use.''
There is probably no way to quantify the Amish vote. Ohio, where every vote is being courted with unprecedented vigor, is home to the largest Amish and Mennonite community in the country, an estimated 54,000. And Beachy's joke has a powerful ring of truth -- the Amish who do vote are, by all accounts, overwhelmingly Republican. But the question is how many of them are willing to punch a ballot card (much less interact with a computerized voting machine.)
Although no one I speak to in Holmes and Tuscarawas counties knows of any campaigning directed at the Amish and Mennonite communities, there have been reports of efforts to register more voters here and elsewhere. The media have left no Ohio stone unturned, and I'm told that I'm not the first reporter to come here asking about the Amish vote.
President Bush met with a group of Amish in Pennsylvania's Lancaster County in July, although any effort to sway the Amish voting bloc seems unnecessary. Holmes County, which includes Ohio's largest concentration of Amish, registered the second-highest vote for Bush in the state last time around, with 73.9 percent in his favor.
Voices of support
The Amish are generally regarded as a closed society. This is misleading. I have spent the past several weeks traveling Ohio, essentially prying into people's lives. Whether I have been in a punk-rock bar in Cincinnati or the hills of Appalachia, the process has underscored that every society, initially, is closed to outsiders. In this regard, the Amish are like any other community; some like to talk and some don't.
Even those who decline formal interviews tell me of their support for Bush's presidency. You won't find the flash of yard signs and T-shirts here; political conservatism is more like quiet background music.
From Sugarcreek in Tuscarawas County, I travel up a county road to Mount Hope in neighboring Holmes County's Salt Creek Township.
The first thing I see in the parking lot of Country View Woodworking is a pair of passenger vans with Bush/Cheney stickers on the bumpers. The vans deliver Amish workers to this bustling furniture shop owned by an Amishman named Roy Miller.
Miller not only agrees to talk with me, but also launches into a wide-ranging and well-informed discussion of national politics.
Miller is old-order Amish. There is no electricity in his house. He rides in a black buggy. The 44-year-old father of four wears the beard with no mustache, the broad-brimmed hat and the pointedly plain work clothes. Like many Amish, he allows modern technology where it is necessary in the workplace. There are telephones and electric lights in the office; most of the 35 workers (all Amish but one) are chauffeured in the ``English''-owned vans parked outside.
Miller votes, and he offers his opinion without hesitation.
``I love Bush,'' he says. ``I've dreamt about him. The man intrigues me. I'm not going to say he's the best president we've had, but he's the best man we've had. He makes decisions; he sticks to his guns.''
There is no Bush/Cheney bumper sticker on the back of Miller's buggy, but that seems within the realm of possibility. Miller wrote the president a letter, inviting him to make a campaign stop at his business. And he rode in a van to a rally in Kirtland.
As an openly political animal, Miller would like to push his fellow Amish to be more politically active, but ``I'll leave it up to every individual.''
The usual estimate is that fewer than 10 percent of the Amish vote, but Miller believes the turnout will be much higher this November.
``We don't get too visible,'' he says. ``But I did a little research and I would guess between 30 (percent) and 40 percent will vote for president.''
Some, to preserve privacy, will vote by absentee ballot. And Miller predicts that almost all will vote for Bush: ``I would say, of all the Amish people I know, I know three Amish Democrats.''
But what about the war, I ask. Doesn't that create a moral conflict?
Miller says that, while he doesn't support the war, he does support the troops, and he respects the president's decisiveness. And the war is counterbalanced in his mind by Bush's stance against abortion and gay marriage, and by his support of independent businessmen like himself. But his respect goes beyond platform topics.
``I think he's a guy like you and me. He's just genuine,'' Miller says.
I spend well more than an hour with Roy Miller, sitting in his office, then walking through his workshop. Long enough to realize that I am interviewing a businessman just as much as I am interviewing an Amishman; that Miller's role as a father is as much a part of him as his religious conviction. This makes things less simple, but it also makes things more true.
I climb back into the Mazda minivan wondering how in the world anyone could hope to pin down Ohio. The more I learn, the less willing I am to draw conclusions. If there's this much variation within a seemingly uniform community, what to make of a state that will change yet again at the next highway exit?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
