Michael Kruse is a senior staff writer for Politico.

INDIAN TRAIL, N.C.—The other day, under a bright blue sky, a woman in a red shirt and a red hat stood outside the Hemby Bridge Volunteer Fire Department and distributed pamphlets touting Republican candidates to arriving early voters. “May I share some information with you?” retired teacher Ginny Shaffer asked again and again. She was having no trouble finding takers. One woman just gave her a smile and a thumbs-up.

A national narrative has jelled in the months hurtling toward these critical midterms that educated, middle- to upper-middle-class, suburban white women unsettled by President Donald Trump could be the most important factor if Democrats win back control of the House of Representative come November 6. But that, Shaffer told me, isn’t what she’s seeing here at all.


“They come to the red,” she said.

I came here to North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District and in particular to its suburban areas of southeastern Charlotte—where Mecklenburg County bleeds into Union County—not just to talk to as many women as possible but to try to talk to a specific sort of woman. I was looking for a woman who voted for Trump in 2016 but now is angered or offended or disgruntled or just plain dispirited enough to flip. I wanted to talk to a Trump defector. Based on what I had read I figured it wouldn’t be too hard.

This district, which stretches east some 120 miles along the South Carolina border all the way to Fayetteville, has voted Republican for the U.S. House since 1962. Trump won the 9th by 12 points. So did Mitt Romney four years earlier. But growth in these parts has helped create a microcosm of purple North Carolina and of the nation as a whole. “It is,” said Michael Bitzer, a political scientist at Catawba College in nearby Salisbury, “turning into the classic 2018 suburban battleground.”

Women, say strategists and consultants, are key. And the choice here this year is stark. The Democrat, Dan McCready, is a 34-year-old Marine Corps veteran who went to Duke University and Harvard Business School and started a solar farm company, and now is running as a moderate who preaches the importance of bipartisanship. The Republican, Mark Harris, is a 52-year-old, Appalachian State- and Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary-educated pastor who ousted incumbent Robert Pittenger in this year’s GOP primary, believes wives should “submit” to their husbands and wonders whether a career is “the healthiest pursuit” for a woman, and is running on a pro-life, anti-gun-control platform that also includes repealing the Affordable Care Act and building Trump’s border wall.

Surveys, though, say the 9th is nothing if not a toss-up—it’s a big reason Trump is scheduled to arrive Friday night for a rally at Charlotte’s Bojangles Coliseum—and some crosstabs suggest the gender gap is shrinking. A 16-point McCready edge over the summer at this point sits at half that. The race overall? “It’s neck and neck,” Raleigh-based pollster Donald Bryson said.

The outcome likely will be determined in no small part by votes of women in this corridor—from the NEW HOMES and NOW SELLING banners blowing in the breeze to the Tesla and Land Rover dealerships and on to where the tops of Charlotte’s skyscrapers start to come into view above the tops of the trees—and both campaigns understand the primacy of this piece of the electorate. Second lady Karen Pence earlier this month headlined a “Women for Harris” bus tour. McCready, meanwhile, continues to try to hammer Harris with his own sermons. Both appeals are having their intended effect. Over the course of the better part of a week here, I found many Republican women ultra-energized to support Harris, as well as many Democrats and independents equally roused by McCready. From the latter group, though, I heard often about women who were ready to “leave their tribe,” women who had voted for Trump and now were ready to vote for McCready, a dramatic act of electoral punishment. “For this district to be swinging,” a Democratic operative told me, “it is all about those women.”

Trump won the 9th district by 12 points. Four years before, so did Mitt Romney. But growth in these parts has helped create a microcosm of purple North Carolina and of the nation as a whole. | Bryan Regan for Politico Magazine

Eager for that reason to actually meet some of them, I enlisted the assistance of a few of the more connected and vociferous of the McCready supporters I had met. They assured me these women existed—but that they wanted to keep quiet about this conversion. “Several friends are doing it … on the down low,” one of them told me. Another said she knows a Republican woman who “really wants [McCready] to win” but was getting “push-back from some in her circle” and simply didn’t “want to subject herself to more.” In the end, I talked to just one such woman—and she didn’t want me to use her name. And what I heard from this woman, who works in the health care industry and lives in an upper-end neighborhood in south Charlotte and has college-age daughters, was not gung-ho in her support but rather some mixture of fatigue, resignation and even anguish.

Two years ago, she told me, she was more against Hillary Clinton than she was for Trump. She likes what Trump’s done with the economy and his stance on immigration but loathes the way he behaves. She flips back and forth between CNN and MSNBC and Fox News and isn’t sure whom or what to trust. She likes McCready. She respects his military service and appreciates that he’s more moderate and not “a fiery liberal.” But she worries. What if her vote is the vote that swings this district? And what if this is the district that swings the House? That result, she fears, would lead to a stalling of what she thinks are the good parts of the president’s agenda, and also, she suspects, would intensify the exhausting and exasperating partisanship she sees in Washington.

“It’s very deflating and overwhelming,” she sighed.

I believed her. I could hear it in her voice.

Left: Democratic nominee Dan McCready; Right: Republican Mark Harris. | AP

It’s possible women like her, this largely silent and hiding middle, will make all the difference next month—in the 9th and in competitive districts around the country. Given the skittishness I encountered, though, as well as the extent of the angst that I heard from this woman in the nearly 40 minutes we spoke, the exact opposite seems possible, too.

“How many of you are there?” I asked.

“There are probably more of me than you realize,” she said.



***

The McCready campaign for obvious reasons was interested in having me meet Republican women who have become ardent supporters of the Democrat in this race.

No. 1 on the list: Beth Monaghan. She’s 58 and a retired CPA and former business owner and ran this year for a seat in the state Senate—as a Republican. Now she’s raring to vote for McCready.

“I think he’ll bring a calm, measured approach to solving problems,” she told me when we talked at a Panera Bread.

“And I think his values very naturally align—I’ve never discussed this with him—but I really think his values might naturally more align with the way that women problem-solve,” she added, “the feminine way to make a difference, which is coming from a place of integrity and compassion and commitment and collaboration.”

But Monaghan is like a lot of McCready-supporting Republican women I talked to. She didn’t vote for Trump in the first place. She was skeptical from the start in the summer of 2015 and began to dismiss the possibility of supporting him when he insulted Carly Fiorina that fall. “He’s not respectful,” she said.

Beth Monaghan is a former Republican candidate for North Carolina state Senate. Now she’s involved with a group called “Republicans for Dan.” | Bryan Regan for Politico Magazine

Monaghan voted for John Kasich in the GOP primary. She voted for Clinton in the general election.

Anne Schleusner, 48, did the same. She’s a mother of two teenage sons and a member of a group called Republicans for Dan. At this point, though, she’s actually a registered independent. Trump was the last straw.

“He is everything I don’t want my children to be. He’s untrustworthy. He’s mean-spirited,” she told me at a local bagel shop. “I can’t imagine a worse role model.”

Schleusner has been increasingly alarmed and appalled by his presidency.

“It is worse than I thought it would be,” she said. But the worst thing? “We’ve become conditioned to it. What would have appeared horrifying two years ago, you’re, like, ‘Oh, so he’s in a Twitter fight with a porn star, and I know how she’s going to describe his penis.’ That is insane that we’re talking about a president that way.”

This disgust with Trump—plus Harris’ comments about women—paved the way for the fervor for McCready felt by Monaghan and Schleusner and others like them.

“I don’t want to be hysterical, but I cannot abide the current president,” said attorney Caroline Sink, a registered independent and self-described moderate who for decades has voted for and supported both Democrats and Republicans. She’s now a co-chair of Women for Dan. “I think he’s a bully. I think he’s dishonest. I think he’s a shyster.”

These women find Harris similarly unacceptable. “For me, Mark Harris has lost his stature as a man of faith because he says he fully supports the Trump agenda and fully supports Trump,” said Chris Teat, 72, also an independent, also active with Women for Dan, and a former youth minister. “The fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, self-control. None of those things are seen in our president.”

But they’re not just against Trump and Harris. They’re also very much for McCready. “I’ve never been this engaged in any election,” Sink told me.

For all these reasons, for these women, the choice this year couldn’t be clearer. “I don’t know of a woman,” Monaghan said, “who is a Harris supporter.”

That may be. But the fact is she’s surrounded by them.

Moving south down Providence Road, past BMW-dotted driveways, gleaming-new shopping centers and thickets of dueling Harris and McCready yard signs, I talked to woman after woman who supported Trump in 2016 and not only still supports him but now supports him even more—and can’t wait to vote for Harris to show it.

For Linda Jones, the wife of an attorney, a mother of two grown children and a member of the Charlotte evangelical megachurch called Calvary, the attraction to Trump was immediate.

“Instant. The minute I saw him come down the escalator,” she told me at a Starbucks. “I like alpha males.” In the mind of Jones, Trump is the opposite of Barack Obama, whom she called “the poster child for a beta male.”

“And I don’t care what feminists—I don’t care what articles are written—women like a strong man,” she continued. “Women want a sense of security. And I don’t care who they are. I don’t care how crazy feminist they might be. It’s innate in women that we want to feel secure. And he gives women that sense of everything’s going to be OK—I’m going to take care of everything.”

For Linda Jones, the attraction to Trump was immediate. “Instant. The minute I saw him come down the escalator,” she told me at a Starbucks. “I like alpha males.” Barack Obama, she said, is “the posterchild for a beta male.” | Bryan Regan for Politico Magazine

With Trump in the White House, she told me, she feels physically lighter. “I feel like I’ve lost 20 pounds with Trump—the fears, the anxieties, the Oh God, what is he gonna do next with Obama? Just disappeared.”

Trump’s comments about women don’t bother these women.

Jones, for instance, said she respected Fiorina.

“Did it bother you when he said what he said about her face?” I asked.

“It wasn’t very polite, but no,” she said.

Why?

“I like people who say what they think.”

And the litany of similar comments, up to and including calling Stormy Daniels “Horseface” in a tweet?

“I like his openness,” Jones said.

“Is he rough around the edges sometimes?” said Barbara Dement, the only woman on the town council in Matthews. “Does he say and tweet some things sometimes that I’m, like, ‘Oh, really? Don’t do that!’ Of course. But at the same time, I kind of appreciate people who are what they are.”

Even the women who support him who are somewhat bothered by these comments aren’t bothered enough to stop supporting him.

“If he were my neighbor, if he were my customer, if he were a rep of an insurance company that would call on me to want my business, I’m not sure we’d have a relationship,” said Mary Chapman, 60, who recently retired after owning an insurance company and met with me at a Panera. “And yet, when you’re the president of the United States, it’s about more than your neighbor, or your customer, or your rep. It’s about the things he stands for and the things that he is getting done that have to do with the growth of the country.”

And these women definitely aren’t bothered by Harris’ comments about women. They think they were taken out of context—I heard that over and over—and it’s also because at base they don’t all totally disagree with the comments.

“I do think that women and mothers have a very different role in the home,” said Dement, 59, who retired as a vice president for the life insurance company AXA Equitable.

“The Bible talks about the roles of the family,” Unionville’s Anne Arp told me. “The man is placed as the head of the family and the woman is the helper. I do not believe the woman is subservient, but somebody has to lead.” She’s married to state Representative Dean Arp. “I do believe he’s the leader of our family,” she said, “so I defer to his judgment.”

In addition, these women expressed revulsion at what they saw as frightening leftist rancor during Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation process.

Ginny Shaffer stands next to a wall of signs for Republican candidates in North Carolina. Shaffer is a retired teacher who is not only voting for Mark Harris but volunteering for him. | Bryan Regan for Politico Magazine

“I think he was so mistreated, Kavanaugh,” Arp said. “I just felt like it was terrible, the way he was done. As the mother of a son, as the wife of a man—if only an accusation is all it takes, we’re in a dangerous place.”

“What it does,” said Darci Horne, a business consultant, “is strengthen my resolve to make sure that others that are undecided about Mark or about other local races are voting Republican because of the divisiveness and the vitriol of the Democrat Party in today’s society. The fact that what would happen if they are allowed to be in power … I don’t want to know what’s going to happen to my religious liberties, the freedoms that I currently possess, and currently hold dear, if people like Mark Harris are not elected.”

The energy on the right has ramped up in the wake of the hearings. “I think it could spur more people to vote Republican,” Horne said.

That’s the sense Charlotte-area GOP strategist Larry Shaheen has gotten. “I was of the opinion we were headed for a disastrous result in November—until the Kavanaugh hearings,” he told me.

It’s been Jones’ experience as well. “I see even more women becoming Republican and getting involved,” she said. She’s been volunteering at polling places for 40 years. When we met at the Starbucks, she already had worked two days at an early voting venue. “And I have never seen so many young women with small children want the Republican voter guide,” she said.

As for Trump-McCready voters?

“I haven’t seen one,” Jones said.

“I’ve not met that person,” Chapman told me.



***

The process by which I finally ended up talking to the anguished member of the silent middle started the way a lot of things in Charlotte have started over the years. With Hugh McColl.

Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte is home to the NFL's Carolina Panthers. | Bryan Regan for Politico Magazine

The former chairman and CEO of Bank of America has endorsed McCready. “Here’s a young man who’s been a Marine officer,” McColl told me. “He’s a member of my church, he’s got four kids, he’s a straight arrow, Harvard MBA—whole nine yards. He’s like a dream candidate.” In the course of our conversation, McColl said he recently had spoken to a group called Moderate Chic, a collection of accomplished, Type-A businesswomen in the area—almost all of whom, he said, seemed to be supporting McCready.

The executive director of Moderate Chic is a woman named Mary Conlon. “I have never experienced a frenzy around a midterm like what’s going on here,” she told me when I reached her. “Women have gotten energized and motivated and organized the last two years like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

And all the women in her group were voting for McCready?

“I would bet my house on it,” she said.

Conlon is the one who told me about her friend who voted for Trump. She passed along my phone number. I didn’t hear from the woman for days. But Conlon had described her with just enough detail that I was able to identify her. I called her office and left her a message. She called me back.

“I don’t want my name out there,” she said.

I agreed to not name her.

She told me about her mixed thoughts about Trump, about her frustrations with the news coverage of his administration, about her utter exasperation with what she considers the extremist politics on both sides that are ripping the country apart, about her desire for more moderates, about how that’s what she sees in McCready, about her daughters and how she doesn’t want them to have to put up with sexism and harassment at the office or anywhere else, and about the very real weight that she feels as a swing voter in a swing district in 2018.

And then she told me she actually hasn’t made her decision yet.

She won’t vote for Harris—she’s clear on that much—because of what she sees as his “antiquated” views about women.

“I would rather not vote at all,” she said.

A sign announces a polling location for Mecklenburg County voters. | Bryan Regan for Politico Magazine

Which she has considered.

“But I can’t not vote,” she said. “You don’t want to give up. This country’s too great and too important.”

So … McCready?

“If I vote for him,” she said, “what’s that going to mean in the bigger picture—if he gets elected? And that’s where I struggle.”

Still, she told me, that’s what she’s “leaning toward.”

She said she would make up her mind on Election Day.

“Probably that morning.”