Most women and men agree that Donald Trump’s comments in a 2005 video are “sleazy,” if not indicative of broader issues surrounding sexual assault.
But at least for a handful of New Hampshire female voters, the latest 2016 election controversy isn’t swaying them from a Trump presidency.
“I am voting Donald Trump only because I can’t stand Hillary,” said Linda Kotusky, a 56-year-old Canterbury resident and registered independent. Waiting for her turn at Arch Threading and Spa on Monday, she added that Trump’s bragging about making advances on a married woman and kissing and groping others without consent was “repulsive,” though not exactly earth-shattering.
“I don’t think it probably came as a huge surprise to anyone, knowing what we know about Donald Trump,” Kotusky said.
Five commenters – all women – on the “New Hampshire for Donald Trump” Facebook page over the weekend posted that they continued to support their candidate.
Beth Varney of Alton wrote, “I do not care what Trump said 11 years ago when he was talking privately with another man, having locker room talk about women that they were interested in, men will be men and women are worse sometimes.”
Whether Friday’s video leak will have wider repercussions on Election Day is still unknown, but polls show that Trump has lost some ground over the weekend. Real Clear Politics shows that between Friday, the day the video was released, and Sunday, the day of the debate, Trump lost a half-point and Clinton gained a point, pushing her to a 46 to 39.3 percent lead.
An ABC survey conducted Saturday and Sunday showed that after the tape’s release, 53 percent of respondents said they were less likely to cast a ballot for Trump, and 46 percent said lewd comments make no difference in their decision. Two percent said they were more likely to vote for Trump.
The survey did not specify respondents’ previous political leanings.
In New Hampshire, U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte is currently the only top Republican who has announced she will no longer vote for Trump.
As for female voters like Kotusky and her two daughters who were at Steeplegate Mall on Monday, their views on Trump haven’t changed much. They said the lewd comments that surfaced over the weekend were just the latest episode in an election year focused on personalities.
“He certainly has said and done that sort of thing – I’m not saying it should be swept under the rug,” Kotusky said. She didn’t feel like this was the first time the issue has came up for the country’s highest elected office, though, and cited Presidents John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton.
“This is not new, it’s just that Donald is so loud,” Kotusky said. And at this point, she added, “I think we’re losing sight of what we are looking to as a leader of our country.”
She said she found Sunday’s debate “tragic” after ample time was devoted to Trump answering for the tape, as well as his retaliatory attacks on Clinton and his remarks on her husband’s alleged sexual misconduct.
“It was more like a cat fight,” Kotusky said, adding that she’s not as much voting for Trump as she is casting a ballot against Clinton.
In the meantime, Kotusky is watching some of her five daughters struggle to find jobs and pay off student loans.
“I want a bright future for my kids, and it’s kind of scary,” she said.
Kotusky’s 26-year-old daughter Laura sat next to her Monday. They said that Laura and her boyfriend have tried to buy a home together, but are unable to get a mortgage due to their combined student loans.
Laura, who went to school for design but works as a massage therapist, said business has been slow lately.
“That very much requires people to come to me, but when the economy is so poor, people don’t have the money,” she said.
The latest U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report shows that unemployment has held steady at 5 percent for the past year. An average of 178,000 jobs have been added per month during 2016, down from 229,000 per month in 2015.
At this point, Laura, a registered independent like her mother, said she’s leaning toward voting for Trump even after the leak of the 2005 video.
“He doesn’t pretend not to be who he is,” she said. “Should he have said it? Absolutely not. But he does tend to speak without thinking.”
Laura added that Trump seems to be strong but also unpredictable, and she’s not sure how she feels about that.
“I can’t say it will be good,” she said.
Laura’s younger sister Amelia, 19, an independent, said she feels like she’s expected to choose the better of two evils during her first election as a registered voter.
“I don’t like the way it’s so much back and forth fighting,” she said. “It’s just kind of embarrassing other countries can see this stuff.”
Amelia added that she interacts with the 2016 election mostly on Twitter, and her main takeaway from the weekend’s Trump news was summed up in a tweet by comedy writer Rob Fee:
“How are so many people JUST NOW offended by Trump? It’s like getting to the 7th Harry Potter book & realizing Voldemort might be a bad guy.”
“The way he speaks to people, that’s what I’m afraid of,” Amelia said. “We’ve known this from the beginning – obviously sexual assault is a serious issue. When it’s an issue with a presidential candidate, I think that’s a huge issue.”
That said, Amelia said she hasn’t been supporting either main party candidate for some time now, and has been thinking about voting for a third-party candidate. And she’s just drowning out anything else that comes to the surface before the election.
“I’m not really paying attention to it anymore,” Amelia said.
(Elodie Reed can be reached at 369-3306, ereed@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @elodie_reed.)