Sometimes clichés fail to capture reality. St. Helena Parish, located a 90-minute drive from New Orleans, LA, looks like a rural postcard.
Except that this small community in the heart of Louisiana’s Bible Belt , where the majority of the nearly 11,000 residents (52.07% according to the latest U.S. Bureau Census) is Black, is a blue island in a deep red state. Since 1976, this community has voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic candidate in the presidential election.
But last November, this tradition ended.
There was a virtual tie between Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, who came out on top with 49.59% of the votes cast, compared to 48.81% for the President-elect. In 2020, Trump lost by more than 10% to Joe Biden, and by nearly 15% to Hillary Clinton four years earlier. The voter turnout was 5,745 in 2024 and 6,158 in 2020.
The strong turnaround for Donald Trump on November 5 is the epitome of the country’s shift to the right and explains why he won the popular vote for the first time in three attempts.
How did a small rural Democratic stronghold almost become Republican territory in just four years? What did the Democrats and Harris miss? Has it turned red for good, or was it just a one-time thing because of who was at the top of the Democratic ticket?
The future of the country’s right-wing shift will undoubtedly be decided in communities like St. Helena Parish. This is why I decided to spend the week before Trump’s inauguration there, to capture the voices of those working-class people who have finally succumbed to the sirens of the MAGA movement after eight years of resistance.
Along the road that leads to Montpelier, the second town of St. Helena Parish, you immerse yourself in the rural world. Most of the trees still have their leaves. Green is the dominant color. There is almost no trace of the winter that sweeps the north of the country on this sunny day in January. Large stretches of land follow one another on both sides of the road. From time to time, a house appears in front of which a pickup truck is most often parked. Mailboxes and trash bins here and there indicate homes. Sometimes, cows graze in a large field. From time to time, there is a horse that feeds. In what serves as downtown, a Dollar General store reigns. It is the main local attraction, if not the only attraction.
It is about 1:00 pm local time. A few cars occupy the parking lot. A “NOW HIRING!” sign is posted in large letters above the entrance of the office. On one side there is a First Guaranty Bank building and on the other a Baptist church. A gas station is being built. (It will open in February if everything goes as planned, the mayor Kenneth Giardina says.)
Everything seems to be moving in slow motion. Inside the Dollar General store, three employees are busy with different tasks. A woman is putting the bottles of water back in order in the fridge. A man, who appears to be the manager, is going back and forth between the front and the back of the store, moving some items. A young Black man, Todd, with glasses and a hoodie, walks from the cash register to the aisles. He welcomes you and regularly asks you if you are ready to check out. He is 20 years old. He was born here and has never left the area, even though he dreams of moving to Oregon, but his father shattered his hopes when he told him that the people there are “racist.” Todd, who chose not to give his last name, wanted to join the Marines but he never sent in his application. His plan B is to work here at Dollar General and hope to save enough to pay for college later. For him, Harris’ weak showing here was not a surprise as the culture war has divided the parish. He says that Harris misread the mood of the people of his parish for whom, according to him, transgender rights and immigration were the key issues.
“She was about trying to protect women but here many people don’t like the new laws and all that,” Todd, who voted for the Vice President, said. “It’s the transgender thing. I support them but I think at the end of the day that there are only two genders, male and female.”
Darell Hoover, 56, a cattleman, smiles when asked what Harris missed.
“They [democrats] believed in the transgender wacko, woke stuff," said Hoover, a father of two adult kids, told me during our conversation in front of the Town Hall which is also the fire station. He was sitting in his impressive Ram pickup truck. "They thought that everybody else thought the same way they did, but we don’t.”
“We just sit back and say nothing. We work, we do our job. You listen to it, but you’re not going to get up and go to marches and protest. You sit back with your family, your kids, and you watch. You’re like, man, that’s not what we’re here for, a guy playing girls’ sports or a guy going into the girls’ bathroom. No, we’re not for that, but we’re not the kind of people that’s going to get up and cause a big scene. Nah, that’s not me. I can’t vote for that stuff. And that’s what happened.”
Hoover, who is Christian, said it took him time to warm up to Trump: “He’s kind of an old womanizing Democrat from years back. But he really helped the religious rights,” he said, adding: “He’s gonna stop some of the transgender bull crap. He’s gonna secure the border. I have no trouble with the people coming, but do it legally. That’s my biggest thing. Millions of people’s done it the legal way. Everybody needs to do it the legal way.”
Like many here, Hoover’s anti-immigration stance was fueled by reports about the benefits provided in blue states to the waves of illegal immigrants who arrived in the U.S. since 2022.
“If they would pay taxes and work, but if they coming and we giving them food stamps, give them this, give them that, that’s not good. It makes no sense to me at all,” he said.
In this farmland, houses are modest. Some look abandoned. The churches are among the most opulent buildings. The billboards reading “Jesus Is the Answer” are almost everywhere, as if to remind you, if you have forgotten, of the importance of religion in this part of the country.
Most of the people I met in St. Helena Parish were either born here or a few miles away. There are hardly any people moving in. The population has been steadily decreasing. The median household income is $50,193, well below the national average of $78,538. The unemployment rate was 5.3 percent in November, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, higher than the 4.2 percent nationwide. The crime rate is very low.
There were no fast-food restaurants. I did not see a bar.
For Jacob Rodriguez, 28, and Kurt Williams who is in his sixties, the Democrats and their candidate, Kamala Harris, were completely off the mark on immigration, an issue that encompasses, according to them, what America’s values are about.
“It was a privilege to become an American citizen, not what they’re doing with these people,” Williams said, talking about illegal immigrants.
“Obviously, I have concerns. I have concerns about the border,” Rodriguez, a veteran who was deployed to Afghanistan and Syria, echoed.
“Just like my friend, a guy the other day, you know, I think five years ago, he owed $130,000. I think it was because he became an architect and an engineer, whatever. And so, I remember he’d say, I don’t know how I’m gonna make it, because, he said, I’m paying $600 a month. Married, got children, want to build a house, and I’m paying my student loan. So, what does that do? What does that do to those that you want to give it for free? And then, here are working people, honest people, that are doing it the way everyone should be doing. And so, I think that’s what brought this whole explosion about.”
They both voted for Trump this time. I met them at the Bear Creek Western Store, one of the few stores in the neighborhood. Kurt works there, while Jacob was shopping for a cowboy hat, a jacket and maybe a pair of boots.
“I like leaders. If I’m gonna follow somebody, I want a leader, not someone who is scared to say what they want to say,” Williams said, while Rodriguez thought that Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, a veteran himself, is the kind of politician who will do what he says.
"Kamala Harris was not a leader,” Williams said.
Here, people you meet like to tell a story to explain why at least 250 of them switched from the Democrats to the Republicans last November. It goes like this: a young Black man became a Republican after receiving a warm welcome at a conservative rally, while he had been chastised at a Democratic rally where he was hoping he would find his “political” home.
More than two months after Harris’s poor performance, Mayor Kenneth Giardina, a registered Democrat, seemed to finally have an answer about what went wrong.
“The woman, people were kind of scared of her, you know,” he told me, referring to Harris. “People were kind of scared of the lady.”
A fifteen-minute drive from Montpelier is Greensburg, the parish’s big town. All government services are located in a narrow perimeter, which constitutes the city center. The post office and the Town Hall are two minutes away by car.
At Hawk’s Nesting Café, a small Black-run business that offers chicken, fries, burgers and southern favorites at low prices, there was no soul searching, as for patrons and employees, Harris was not appealing to many Black men in the parish.
“Some bros just didn’t vote,” said a male employee who was taking orders.
He could not stop expressing his disbelief by shaking his head. “They stayed on the couch, man. If you want to know why she failed, ask them why they stayed on the couch.”
“Maybe they didn’t want to vote for a woman. Obama won here handily,” I suggested.
“Nah, nah,” he objected. “She was not good, bro. Obama was another animal, man.”
“We ain’t macho, bro,” shouted a customer who had just caught our discussion.
He was there with two other “bros.” They said that they didn’t vote, proving the point the employee was making. They placed their orders and then started questioning me about my accent and where I came from.
The message seemed clear: they were done talking about Kamala Harris. They didn’t want to talk about “the lady.”
“They just don’t care,” whispered Jerome who works at the Courthouse. He asked me to follow him outside because he said he couldn’t contain his rage against some bros.
“Man, it’s over,” he uttered.
Many political analysts have cited the economy as a key reason why Kamala Harris lost the election. But in this small rural community, transgender rights and immigration seemed to dominate what resonated mostly with the traditional Democratic voters who either voted for Donald Trump or chose to stay at home. These issues, deeply tied to personal values, may have overshadowed the broader national debate, highlighting a complex shift in voter priorities in some communities.
The question is, are the Democrats listening?
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Luc Olinga's work on Medium.