Reclining in the front room of her bungalow in Jaywick, there was little doubt in the mind of Jean White as to who was to blame for the starring role which her community had suddenly found itself reluctantly playing on the frontline of the US midterm elections.

“He’s a cheeky sod that Trump, what does he have to go and pick on us for?” asked White, 78, after learning that the Essex village was being used in a campaign advert by Nick Stella, a Republican ally of the US president.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jaywick residents Peter White, 81, and his wife Jean White. Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian

“Only you can stop this from becoming reality!” warned the text on the Facebook advert over an image of a potholed street in Jaywick, the homes on either side as rundown as one might expect to find in a place that was ranked as the most deprived neighbourhood in England twice in the last decade.

However, as local people were quick to point out, the photo was taken some years ago, while a significant investment programme has seen fresh tarmac laid over once pockmarked roads and a general spruce-up to improve the look of the area on the outskirts of Clacton-on-Sea.

As for crime, while a microphone-carrying journalist accosted dogwalkers along Jaywick’s windswept seafront on Thursday, the only obvious sign was one of the broken lights on a bright green 1950s Cadillac struck the night before by a hit-and-run driver.

Play Video 1:21 'Hey, Trump fans ... don't use our Essex village in your ads!' – video

The car’s owner, a man wearing a baseball cap bearing the legend “Alcatraz Swimming Club,” shrugged his shoulders with weary resignation when informed of the Stella advert, which others described as a “slur”.

This is a community used to being forgotten, or treated almost as anthropological specimens, while the camera crews and reporters who descended on the area were a reminder of the last sudden focus that fell here when the constituency was the first to turn Ukip purple in 2014 after its Tory MP Douglas Carswell defected and sparked a byelection.

Originally built by the Fabian property developer Frank Stedman in 1928 as a holiday resort for Londoners, the decaying chalets of Jaywick became a hotbed of support for the then insurgent Eurosceptic party.

There was also a period of unwelcome attention after it was the setting for a British television series – Benefits by the Sea: Jaywick – an experience that has left a bitter taste in mouths here even today, as well as being blamed for hitting property prices.

“It wasn’t fair and it just doesn’t reflect what this place is like,” said Billie Donaldson, a recent arrival – like many others – from London to the area, where she and her partner, Eddie, had set up a small gift shop.

“This is a place where there’s a community spirit that’s tighter and stronger than anything I knew of in London. We had a fire last week here in an old person’s home and people were pulling together and rallying around to put it out.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The advert for Republican congressional candidate Dr Nick Stella showing Jaywick Sands to warn voters against supporting the Democrats Photograph: Dr Nick Stella/Facebook

As for the US campaign advert – which was accompanied by the slogan “Help President Trump keep America on track and thriving” – she was equally lacerating.

“Doesn’t he have enough trailer parks in America that he can go and use?”

Stella’s office has apologised, with a spokeswoman claiming that it was never the campaign’s intent to “smear the town in the photo” but to highlight an example of “a town overburdened by poor governance”. A local representative, Paul Honeywood of Tendring council, has challenged the congressional candidate to visit Jaywick “to learn about how we really get things done”.

Clacton’s MP, Giles Watling, has also invited Stella to come to Jaywick. He retweeted a claim that the area now has the fastest growing property prices in the country.

Were he to take up the invite, Stella might find his perceptions of the community challenged, not least at the level of some Jaywick residents’ US political knowledge. After their initial anger, Jean White and her husband, Peter, had moved to debating some of the dividing lines of US domestic policy. While deeply unimpressed by Stella’s advert, Peter White admitted to warming towards Trump’s business credentials, while pointing out failings on gun control.

For his wife, there was one US politician who was beyond reproach, however. “Obama, now he is someone who I miss.”