In March, days after Mitt Romney excoriated Donald Trump as a danger to the republic, his niece said she would support the Manhattan mogul if he became the nominee.

She’s not the only woman in her family aboard the Trump train.


Ronna Romney McDaniel, Michigan’s Republican Party chairwoman, said her mother (once married to Mitt’s brother), two aunts and other female relatives (all on her mother’s side) are also supporters, she says, because of his business background and focus on jobs and the economy. “In my family, it’s actually the women who are for Trump,” she said.

Over the years, Trump has publicly measured the worth of women by their physical appearance. Of GOP rival Carly Fiorina, he said: “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?” He humiliated a former Miss Universe contestant, sending a film crew to watch her work out and called her “Miss Piggy.” He suggested tough questioning by Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly was a symptom of menstruation. After a March meeting with The Washington Post editorial board, he remarked to a female editor, “I really hope I answered your question,” then paused and said, “Beautiful.” He was also accused of rape by his first wife during divorce proceedings (she later recanted).

Now, 70 percent of American women view him unfavorably, according to a Gallup poll released in April that underscored an advantage for Hillary Clinton headed into the general election. Nonetheless, in November, millions of American women are expected to vote for the New York tycoon.

Politico interviewed more than two dozen women who support Trump — elected Republican officials and political activists — and while many wouldn’t condone his more controversial comments, almost all saw a Trump different from the one presented on television screens nationwide.

Many of the women pointed to Trump’s successful and popular children as the measure of his character. Some said the presumptive nominee reminded them of their own fathers or husbands, and others said they saw Trump in themselves. Several rejected the notion that gender should have anything to do with the way they choose a president.

Ronna Romney McDaniel, Michigan’s Republican party chairwoman, pictured at the March 3 GOP debate in Detroit, met Trump after her uncle lost the 2012 presidential race. “He could not have been more gracious and nice to me and my family in talking about his support of Mitt at the time,” she said. | AP Photo

Supporters who have interacted with Trump behind closed doors describe him as “kindhearted,” a “gentleman,” and, more than once, a good listener. To a woman, these vocal and high-profile female supporters describe a man who bears little resemblance to the brash, combative and dismissive Republican who now stands as the GOP’s presumptive nominee.

“I have known politicians for over 35 years and I have never had a more kindhearted one look me straight in the eye and talk to me about the United States of America,” said Sue Lynch, former president of the National Federation of Republican Women who originally supported Scott Walker’s presidential bid. In April, she met Trump, snapped a photo with him, and took his measure after a campaign stop in her hometown of La Crosse, Wisconsin. “I was overwhelmed by the kindness of that gentleman,” she said.

THE LEADERS WHO EMBRACE TRUMP

There are degrees of support among the women who have backed Trump. Some, including many of the elected officials, have offered cautious endorsements, professing a commitment to support their party’s presidential nominee even as they distance themselves from some of his more controversial statements.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee falls into this camp. She cast Trump as better qualified than Hillary Clinton but would not defend his comments about women. “There are things that he’s said that I wish he had not said,” Blackburn told Politico. “My hope is that he will change his tone and demeanor a bit.”

She suggested women are used to being talked about in demeaning ways. “Most women are like me,” she said. “Through your careers and through the decades you know you’re going to be condescended to when you’re working in a man’s world or you’re going to hear things that you don’t like or that are going to be said but you don’t let that define you. You don’t let it deter you, you don’t let it get in the way of you achieving your goals. You just sort of push on.”

Rep. Renee Ellmers of North Carolina also rallied to Donald Trump’s side in recent weeks, winning his first congressional endorsement and a last-minute robocall meant to help her get through a tough primary vote. (It didn’t save her; she lost.) “I don’t agree with some of the comments that he’s made over time but I don’t think that’s really what the issue is,” she said, pointing instead to her belief that Trump would be an effective executive in office.

Former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer also doesn’t condone all of Trump’s comments about women, but she described Trump as a “gentleman” who went out of his way to fetch her a Diet Coke during a meeting on one of his private planes. “He’s such a regular guy, he makes you feel so comfortable when you’re with him,” she said. “The best thing is that he’s such a great listener. He’s a great listener. He doesn’t scoff at anybody’s comments or ideas.”

Romney McDaniel met Trump at an Oakland County Lincoln Dinner reception after her uncle lost the 2012 presidential race. “He could not have been more gracious and nice to me and my family in talking about his support of Mitt at the time,” said Romney McDaniel, who snapped a photo at the May 2013 event, with Trump flashing a thumbs-up. She said her children adore that photo.

“My kids love Donald,” she said before quickly correcting herself. “I don’t know whether I would say ‘love’ since they love me. They like Mr. Trump a lot,” she said. A daughter of one of her staffers even dressed up as Trump for Halloween.

THE PRIVATE TRUMP

Rowanne Brewer Lane hadn’t spoken to her ex-boyfriend Donald Trump since 1991 when the story of her first meeting with the mogul became the central anecdote of a much-discussed New York Times article last month about his relationship with women. Lane, who said she plans to vote for Trump, did not dispute the facts of the Times’ account — Trump asked a much-younger Lane to change into a bikini minutes after meeting her at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach — but took issue with what she saw as the negative light the Times’ piece cast on the episode and set off a media firestorm by talking to Fox News and other outlets to condemn the piece.

The next night, Lane said she answered an unexpected phone call. “He said, ‘Rowanne?’ And I said, ‘This is?’ And he said, ‘Donald. How are you?’ And I said, ‘Oh, hi Donald.’ And he said, ‘I wanted to call and see how you were doing. … I wanted to call you personally and thank you for being so supportive and for being brave enough to stand up to The New York Times … I think you’re fantastic, I think you’re brave, I think you’re [a] quality woman, everyone is asking about you, if you’re ever up here, please stop up and see us.”

The call lasted 10 minutes.

Lane reflected on their three-month relationship in the winter of 1990-91 and remembered a version of Trump not dissimilar from the one Gov. Brewer described.

“He can be very, very normal behind closed doors. Very normal,” said Lane, who recalled staying in to eat Thai food and watch ice skating as her favorite date. “He wore normal clothes when he wasn’t out in public. He didn’t wear like a Hugh Hefner-type robe. He wore sweatpants and jeans or whatever, so he was just normal. … He was very inquisitive and listened well.”

But Trump was not a man of normal aspirations, and Lane also remembered him displaying the type of soaring ambition that many women say draws them to him. In early December 1990, Lane was preparing to leave New York for a modeling shoot in Miami, strolling through the lobby of Trump Tower and window-shopping with her boyfriend, when she complimented him on the empire he had built.

“He said, ‘Yeah, I can get some stuff done’ and smiled,” Lane recalled. “I said, ‘I think you’re a great businessman,’ and he said, ‘Do you think I’d make a good president?’ I think it was a joke at the time but it might have been in the back of his head.”

"He's a sharp-dressed man, he's successful, he's handsome," said 41-year-old Tania Vojvodic, founder of Team Trump 2016, a grassroots volunteer network that has coordinated with the campaign on phone-banking and door-knocking efforts around the county. | Courtesy Tania Vojvodic

Other women who now support Trump have gotten in-person glimpses of him only in passing, but had similar takeaways.

Stephani Scruggs served as the director of field operations for Trump’s Florida primary campaign and met the candidate backstage at a January rally in Pensacola that she helped organize. “He just is a warm and engaging person, genuinely interested in what’s going on. He was the exact opposite of the way he’s portrayed often by the media,” she said. “People want to portray him as a ‘You’re fired’ guy, but he’s just actually very considerate and very kind and very engaging.”

Scruggs, like many of the other women interviewed about their support of Trump, chose to view the businessman’s character through the prism of his children. “His kids are great, smart, accomplished individuals,” she said. “As a woman, you can look at a man like that and judge him by how he’s raised his children and how his kids have turned out. And his kids have turned out phenomenally. That speaks volumes about a man.”

DEFENDING TRUMP

While many of his supporters chose to support Trump despite his public comments about women, others saw no need to distance themselves from his statements or restrict themselves to touting the virtues of his children. For them, Trump’s relationship with women is not problematic. One supporter even laughed out loud when the topic of Trump’s attacks on women came up.

Becca Reese, 57, of Columbia, South Carolina, owns a metal manufacturing company and is a Trump campaign volunteer who says she has met the candidate a handful of times. When it comes to Trump’s barbed attacks on prominent women, Reese could not agree more. “What he said about Rosie O’Donnell is perfectly true,” she said, adding, “Megyn Kelly is a bitch and she will either keep her job and continue on or she will lose her job over this campaign.”

Lori Klein is a fundraising consultant for nonprofits and former Arizona state senator who helped put together Trump’s first megarally in Phoenix last July. Now she’s serving as an alternate Trump delegate to the Republican National Convention in July. She said Trump’s marriages to three “strong and intelligent” women are a sign of his respect for women generally, and that his coarse comments do not bother her.

“He may be a little rough, but he’s a New Yorker. I was born in New Jersey, so I understand the New York mannerisms,” Klein said. “If you go to New York, you expect to be abused.”

And at the far end of the spectrum of Trump support, there are the campaign volunteers and organizers who have been avid fans for decades and care little about the tycoon’s public statements about women.

“He’s a sharp-dressed man; he’s successful; he’s handsome,” said 41-year-old Tania Vojvodic, founder of Team Trump 2016, a grass-roots volunteer network that has coordinated with the campaign on phone-banking and door-knocking efforts around the country.

In her teenage years in southeast Texas, Vojvodic hung a poster of the builder and pageant owner on a bedroom wall. “He was the prime idea in front of us, in the limelight that young girls saw and said, ‘That’s the kind of man I want to marry.’”

She came to view the businessman as “a distant father figure” and role model, and decided that she should become “Trump, in a woman’s body.”

“I love Mr. Trump,” she said. “I love him deeply.”

Dan Spinelli contributed to this report.

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