Tom Price, the now former Secretary of Health and Human Services, spent more than a million taxpayer dollars on private air travel—since just May—as Politico reported last week. “The taxpayers won’t pay a dime for my seat on those planes,” Price responded on Thursday. The former doctor argued his case on television that day, speaking of “official business” that was “within budget” and “approved by the normal processes.” Nonetheless, he resigned on Friday, after reportedly being berated by President Trump in the Oval Office for “about two hours.” Price previously represented Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District, which encompasses Atlanta’s northern suburbs. His behavior has led to widespread rebukes, including some from conservatives. Trish Regan, a Fox Business Network* anchor, said last week that Price “is the swamp” personified. (She also called him “sketchy.”)

Price’s congressional seat was filled by Karen Handel, a Republican who won a widely followed and deeply funded special election, in June. Handel did not respond immediately to a request for comment. Jon Ossoff, the thirty-year-old Democrat and investigative-film executive whom Handel beat, sent me an e-mail. “Unethical government starts at the top, with the Trump family’s nepotism and lies and conflicts of interest,” Ossoff wrote, sounding a bit less cautious than he’d been as a candidate. “But Tom Price’s legacy isn’t his travel budget. He’s violated the principles of the Hippocratic Oath by sabotaging insurance markets and jacking up premiums to serve partisan ends, putting lives at risk and bankrupting people.” (As Politico noted on Friday, under Price “HHS shortened the Obamacare enrollment period, reduced marketing and outreach, slashed enrollment assistance, cut HealthCare.gov’s online hours—and used Twitter, news releases and YouTube videos to discredit the law.”)

Many of the people who previously voted for Price see things a bit differently. Over the weekend, I talked to several of his former constituents and neighbors in Georgia, all of whom voted for him at least once, to see what they thought of their ex-congressman now. “I think he was off to a great start as H.H.S. Secretary,” Phil Kent, a sixty-five-year-old public-relations executive, said. “My view is that he got some terrible advice on the prices, expenses, and scheduling of these flights. And it caught up with him. And I think President Trump thought it was bad optics. Tom Price knew that, so he left.” Did this episode color Kent’s view of his former congressman? “I think that his reputation is very well intact. I’ve talked to a lot of people in the district and around Atlanta since Friday. Not just Republicans. While there was an unfortunate lapse of judgment, he’s coming home to a lot of people who still appreciate his decades of public service and medical service.”

Kent’s view was indeed echoed by others I spoke to. “I really would like to know more about the flights,” Catherine Busse, a fifty-year-old cloud-computing entrepreneur, told me. “If it’s him and a couple of staffers, I’m gonna feel one way. If it’s twenty-five people and more cost-effective, I’m gonna look at the flight issue another way.” Busse believes that Price’s inability to push Congress to end Obamacare was a bigger problem. “I think the failure to deliver on a repeal and replacement, that’s ultimately the catalyst,” she said. “I look at it largely as a business owner. We expect results.” (Politico, citing “administration officials, lobbyists and state and federal officials involved in the repeal effort,” reported on Friday that Price “was never a player on Obamacare repeal.”)

“He was obviously making good money,” Anthony-Scott Hobbs, who has been active in the local Republican Party for years, told me, referring to Price’s work as a doctor. “But he never, ever, ever came across that way. And I’ve known him seventeen years.” Hobbs owns a marketing-software company in Atlanta. “The majority of the time, he just wore khakis and a dress shirt. No Italian suits, you know? No fancy car.” Hobbs added, “I can tell you, he’s one of the most frugal, cost-minded, average guys out there. Before I truly pass judgment, I think there’s more to the story.” Asked what more there could be, Hobbs responded, “Did somebody say to him, ‘This is O.K., Tom’? Were the flights authorized, and then they weren’t?”

Bob Hagan, who is sixty-one, also suspects that the people around Price may bear some responsibility. “You know, I don’t know who is to blame,” Hagan, who owns a chain of nursing homes in Georgia, told me. “I don’t know all of the reasons behind it. But I guess he felt the need to do it. Maybe his cohorts, or his people, or the people around him, said, ‘You need to be back here, you need to be back there, at a certain time,’ and this was the only way to do it. I hate to pass judgment on it. I think he probably made some poor judgments, and I think it’s unfortunate because I don’t think there was any intent in his heart.” Hagan added, “He wants to do what’s right, not what’s being said about him. He wants to do what’s right and he has done what’s right, especially for the elderly.”

A note of dissent was sounded by John Keclik, a seventy-four-year-old retired engineer who has lived in the Sixth since 1978, when he emigrated from Czechoslovakia. “I voted for Tom Price every time there was an election,” Keclik told me. “I was impressed with his conservative thinking. I thought he would do a good job as Secretary of H.H.S. But I just don’t think any government official—besides President, Vice-President—have the right to spend money like that. A million dollars! We didn’t send people to Washington, D.C., to spend money like that. We sent them to drain the swamp.” Keclik added, “A few years ago, there was some talk on the news that Nancy Pelosi was flying back and forth to California, spending quite a bit of money also. Do you know anything about that?” When Pelosi was the Speaker of the House, she “had access to government aircraft and frequently took flights back and forth between Washington and California,” as Politico noted last week. In 2010, Price criticized Pelosi for “flying over our country in a luxury jet.”

Keclik went on, “I’m disappointed, let’s put it this way. I don’t know whether he has changed his thinking or his politics or whatever. I would have to think twice before voting for Tom Price again, if he ran again in my district. I’d rather see a different conservative.”

Phil Kent feels otherwise. “I would have no problem supporting him again locally,” he said. “He still maintains the trust that he had with us, the bond he had with us when he was congressman.” He added that he had some advice for Price. “I’d tell Tom, ‘Take some time off, regroup. The good news in politics, and in life, is you can reinvent yourself in this country. Who knows, there may be public service again down the road for you.’ ” Hobbs concurred. “I hope they keep some of his repeal-and-replace ideas in mind going forward,” he told me. “It’s a sad day in the United States to lose a brilliant guy like that.”

*A previous version of this post misidentified Regan as an anchor for Fox News.