Let’s not go all Pollyanna, unicorns and rainbows here. Truth is, the tension was thick when Sandra Robbie set up her Harris-Walz merch booth on the very same corner where Steve Lawrence sets up his Trump-Vance booth.
She had one table. He had two.
But, that very first morning in July, Lawrence and his Trump stuff weren’t there when Robbie and her Harris stuff arrived. So she set up dead center on the corner of 17th and Newport in North Tustin, right across from the farm stand — flying an American flag, a rainbow flag and a Harris-Walz flag, an array of T-shirts, hats, yard signs and Harris-Walz buttons displayed on the table.
Lawrence was taken aback when he arrived a bit later. “It was awkward,” Lawrence said. There wasn’t enough room on either side of Robbie to fit Lawrence’s two Trump tables together. And moving a booth after all that gear is set up and flags are aflutter is no easy feat.
So, Lawrence did the logical thing: Set up one Trump table to Robbie’s left and another Trump table to Robbie’s right, sandwiching her between red Make America Great Again hats and Blue Lives Matter flags like a veggie burger between slices of white bread, if you’ll forgive me.
“‘I guess we’re going to be neighbors,’” he recalled telling her.
It didn’t take terribly long for the iciness to wear off. Between customers and honking horns and F-bombs hurled from passing cars, they chatted. He used to live in Huntington Beach, now lives in Corona. Learned a lot about merch from his son’s L.A.-area business, Chariots, specializing in classic car-related gear. Robbie, meanwhile, lived just a few blocks away and is something of a social justice warrior. In 2002, she wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary, “Mendez v. Westminster: For All the Children,” celebrating the little-known Orange County case that made California the first state to end school segregation — seven years before the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education.
“Steve is a very good listener,” Robbie said.
They talk a little about election stuff. The bad manners of passers-by who give them the middle finger. And movies. Robbie wants Lawrence to watch the new Will Ferrell/Harper Steele road trip documentary, delving into how Steele’s gender transformation affects their long-term friendship. She thinks it can help open minds and hearts.
“We both ask — please be nice. Thank you,” says a hand-written sign between the two booths.
Customers stop their cars and peruse the goods. In Lawrence’s booth, “America’s Most Wanted” T-shirts emblazoned with Trump’s booking photo, a gazillion red MAGA hats, a Trump pocket watch ($31 before taxes). There’s a promotion: four hats or T-shirts for $50, and six for $60. Behind Lawrence’s head: “Free Trump: It’s not a prosecution, it’s a persecution,” a poster says.
There are no Harris watches at Robbie’s booth, but everything’s on sale there as well: $10 each for Harris-Walz flags and hats and colorful T-shirts (the camouflage hat, channeling Walz’s midwestern hunting vibe, makes a definite statement). “If I wasn’t doing this, I’d be home biting my nails,” she said. “It’s so important to be seen.”
We gave them a little test to probe the depth of their differences. Chocolate or vanilla? He prefers chocolate; she likes vanilla. Dogs or cats? He likes dogs; she loves them both. Summer or winter? Summer, they both agree. Will you accept the election results as free and fair, whatever the outcome? Yes, they both agree.
While folks can buy campaign merch from the campaigns themselves, these are independent operators. Capitalism, baby. Lawrence doesn’t recall merch being such a big deal in elections past — you never saw Nixon’s or Reagan’s mugs on T-shirts or flags, right? Sure, there were “I Like Ike” buttons — I personally had a button with Bob Dole’s face blooming from a sunflower from covering the 1996 convention, and a Hillary Clinton votive candle from 2016 — but these gigantic flags flying from the back of hyper-muscular pickup trucks?
There’s no persuasion or conversation attendant to such partisan displays — just plain in-your-face-ness, an eagerness to pick a fight, I note.
“There’s more hate in today’s world. More hate in politics,” Lawrence said. “So many people wear their beliefs on their sleeves.”
Lawrence tells them to wear it loud and wear it proud. An analysis of the history of campaign merch by Olivier Knox found that, at George Washington’s inauguration, someone sold buttons that read “Long Live The President G.W.” Political messages have appeared on everything from thimbles (when women got the right to vote in 1920) to condoms (during the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s). And Trump wasn’t the first candidate to make merch with a mug shot. Former Texas governor Rick Perry did the same in 2014, Knox wrote.
There’s some very crass, offensive and misogynistic campaign merch out there, but it’s not out on either table in North Tustin. After the July 13 Trump assassination attempt, Robbie stood down for a few days, feeling unsafe and unsure what would happen. But she’s a regular presence now at the Tustin corner and in Yorba Linda as well, where she sets up beside another Trump booth. She’s made friends with the purveyor’s 5-year-old home-schooled daughter, has shared coffee and cinnamon rolls, helped drag the Trump booth out of traffic after a strong wind blew it into Yorba Linda Boulevard.
“We have been able to maintain civility,” she said.
A customer duly noted the same. “Coexisting!” he said cheerfully.
Yes — but not everyone is quite up to the task. Let’s not forget the guy who stood across the street from Lawrence’s Trump booth recently, holding a giant sign that said, “Weird.” A car full of teenage boys — Trump supporters — pulled up and argued with him. They threw a 32-ounce cup of soda out the window, soaked the man, and sped away.
The man hasn’t been back, Lawrence said.
“A lot of people say, ‘Thanks for getting along,’” Lawrence said. “That’s what America is. Can’t we all get along?”
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