80% of union members I know vote Republican, and guns are the #1 reason why, because they complain about guns more than anything else. Crawford County is like any other rural county: They scream about race, abortion, trans people, etc., but they're paranoid on a whole other level about guns. (2/)
I’ve never come across that statistic about union members. I also don’t know many rural Democrats that aren’t also gun owners.
My 97-year-old father is a classic archetype of that. My Dad grew up poor in the Ozarks and his family had nothing until the New Deal. Dad went to WWII and later cast his first vote for Harry Truman. My Dad owns guns. He's racist and vaguely anti-Semitic. But he refuses to vote Republican even now.
This is my lifelong experience with union members across multiple states. It just keeps getting worse. From my experience, rural MO Democrats are little different than Republicans, except that the Dems have a far better understanding of the world. (1/)
I knew Frank Barnitz when he was my state rep and later my state senator. Hell of a nice guy. He's pro-gun, pro-life, and pro-mining. First of all, because he truly believed in those things. But if he didn't run that way, he would have been toast. We had Ken Fiebelman before that. Exact same way.