In Trump country, even some furloughed federal workers are backing the president’s wall demands, and keeping Republican senators in line as the shutdown stretches on.
PARKERSBURG, W. Va. — On Day 20 of the partial government shutdown last week, a small band of federal workers, shivering in 25-degree weather, staged a rally to send what their organizer, Eric Engle, said was a message to Senator Shelley Moore Capito: “We need to end this shutdown. If it takes overriding the president, that’s what it takes.”
But here in the heart of Trump country, that message is decidedly muffled, even in Parkersburg, where the federal government is one of the two largest employers. So strong is support for President Trump, who remains dug in on his demand for $5.7 billion to build a border wall, that even some furloughed workers insist Ms. Capito must stick with him.
“We need the wall,” Jessica Lemasters, 29, an accountant on furlough from the Treasury Department, said over lunch at the Corner Cafe, a few blocks from the rally. “I don’t like being furloughed, but it happens.”
Those conflicting sentiments help explain why Senate Republicans like Ms. Capito remain in lock step with Mr. Trump, even as the longest government shutdown ever enters its fourth week and 800,000 federal workers miss their paychecks. The 24th day of the shutdown slipped by with no progress toward a resolution, and while polls show that a majority of Americans blame Mr. Trump and Republicans and do not support a border wall, Republicans are reading a different line in the polling: Support for the wall is growing and hardening among Republican voters.
“I am concerned for my people,” said Gregory D. Blaney, an aerospace engineer who runs a NASA facility in Fairmont, W. Va., and is working without pay. But, he added, “I’m willing to endure some impact if it means border security.”
Mr. Trump’s verbal gyrations on the wall and the shutdown have left Senate Republicans bewildered — and twisting wildly themselves. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a close ally of the president who is also running for re-election in 2020, has gone from trying to negotiate a bipartisan compromise to advocating a presidential emergency declaration to calling on Mr. Trump to temporarily reopen the government while continuing negotiations on the wall.
On Monday, Mr. Trump bluntly responded to that last one: “I did reject it.”
Early last week, Ms. Capito, a freshman up for re-election next year, seemed to be wavering when she suggested she might be able to “live with” negotiating border security after reopening the government — the Democrats’ position.
But after Mr. Trump addressed the nation from the Oval Office and traveled to the border, she walked back those remarks, telling a local television station, “I think President Trump is going to stand strong, and I’m going to stand strong with him.”
So far, only three Senate Republicans — Cory Gardner of Colorado, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — have decisively broken with Mr.
