CRAIG, Colorado – Ten words in faded red ink adorn the glass door of the federal building: “Please hold mail for duration of government shutdown.…
CRAIG, Colorado – Ten words in faded red ink adorn the glass door of the federal building: “Please hold mail for duration of government shutdown. Thank you.”
Here in this northern Colorado coal town, those 10 words, and the unplowed parking lot of that Bureau of Land Management facility, are among the few obvious signs that the nation’s federal government is partially closed, resulting in nearly 1 million American workers not getting their taxpayer-paid paychecks.
Many of Craig’s 9,000 residents are just fine with that.
In this low-slung Western town that still celebrates cowboys and cattle rustlers, Christmas and Christ, and where the smokestacks of coal-fired power plants bracket the broad valley, residents wonder aloud: Doesn’t the shutdown prove their long-held argument that the federal government is too big, too powerful and too expensive?
“It kind of makes me question what they do on a day-to-day basis,” says Paul James, 31, who runs the town’s sole medical marijuana dispensary. “If I don’t miss them, what were they doing?”
Sure, some folks are worried that their relatives in the military aren’t getting paid right now. Others are worried about access to federal loan guarantees or getting their tax refunds on time. More than a handful believe the shutdown makes the country look foolish. But generally, Craig’s residents are unfazed by the shutdown that’s approaching one month and showing no signs of ending. They point out that federal employees eventually will get their salaries even though some didn’t even work and that many of those non-essential workers are getting a lengthy vacation.
For many Craig residents, the shutdown remains mostly abstract: The federal government isn’t a big employer here, and people are mostly worried about how air-quality regulations are slowly squeezing the life out of the coal mines and power plants. That helps explain the popularity of GOP candidates, where voting for Republicans comes as naturally as breathing, regardless of how you feel about the president. This is a town where pickups and SUVs rule the roads and renewable energy is often scorned as unreliable and unproven.
Here, the shutdown is an initial victory in President Donald Trump’s fight to shake up and pare down federal bureaucracy. Trump drew more than 80 percent of the votes in the 2016 election in this county, and for his supporters, every day the federal government isn’t interfering in their daily lives is a win.
“Just remember, Trump has never been a politician,” says Chris Nichols, a city councilman whose shirt with a faded monogrammed “M” reminds people that he used to own several McDonald’s franchises. “And maybe that’s what’s firing up his base.”
The partial shutdown has hobbled environmental enforcement, slowed permits for power lines to serve the Wyoming wind farms that compete with coal, and means there’s less daily oversight from the land management bureau, which manages coal leasing on public lands. Decades of frustration with their treatment by the federal government has left Craig’s residents suspicious of regulators trying to tell them what kinds of cars to drive, what to feed their kids and how they should make a living.
“I don’t feel like they’re here for us,” says Tammy Burch, 41, whose husband and father-in-law work at the nearby Twentymile coal mine.
Like many Craig residents, Burch is a native. Her Healing Lights spa on Breeze Street serves people she has known all her life. And like many here, Burch says she still feels personally targeted by the policies of former President Barack Obama. USA TODAY first began visiting Craig during the run-up to the 2016 presidential campaign, to take the pulse of the coal mining town whose fate was widely seen as hanging in the balance.
