Sheboygan Walt
| 🐄 | |
| Era | The Seventies |
|---|---|
| Age | 60-66 |
| Home | Sheboygan County, WI |
| Demographic | rural, German Lutheran, dairy farmer |
| Lean | Strong Republican |
| Race | white |
Walt is a dairy farmer in Sheboygan County, Wisconsin, whose Lutheran faith and Republican vote both descend from his family's roots in Pomerania. He wants Washington to stay out of everything except the price of milk, and he represents the German Lutheran Midwest.
Who they stand for
The German Lutherans of Wisconsin, Iowa, the Dakotas and Nebraska are the oldest Republican bloc in the rural Midwest, and they are its most isolationist voters. Their counties resisted American entry into both world wars. They were the base of Senator Robert Taft's following, and they distrust the Vietnam War. Walt's decade is a farm decade. In 1971 Nixon raised milk price supports, a decision paid for by campaign money from the dairy co-operatives that was later investigated as part of the Watergate affair, and this kind of favour is what Walt's co-operative depends on. Agriculture secretary Earl Butz tells him to get big or get out of farming. The 1972 grain deal with the Soviet Union raises the cost of animal feed. Carter's 1980 grain embargo against the Soviet Union confirms to Walt that foreign policy is paid for by farmers. To him, the counterculture and the federal deficit are both forms of spending by people who do not work. He votes for Nixon, Ford and Reagan without wavering. Farmer-Labor Lars, the cast's other old farmer, blames the same high prices on the banks and the grain traders. Walt blames Washington instead.
Playing to them
Walt is a Republican voter that a president of either party can only lose ground with, never fully win. He responds to milk price supports, a balanced budget, and an isolationist foreign policy, and he does not accept that the first two of these conflict with each other. A president who tries to explain that contradiction to him loses his support faster than a president who simply keeps paying the subsidy. He will not forgive foreign aid, a new war, deficit spending, or anything associated with the counterculture, and he regards the United Nations as an ongoing insult to American sovereignty. A cut to the dairy programme, made in the name of thrift, is the one Republican policy that moves him against his own party, so Muncie Merle's demand for a balanced budget and Walt's dependence on his dairy co-operative's subsidy cannot both be satisfied. Winning him over on foreign policy costs the support of Sun City Dot and Southie Sean, who want communism actively fought rather than avoided. Winning him over at home costs nothing, because the farm subsidy is the one item of federal spending that Farmer-Labor Lars and Coalfield Roy do not resent him for receiving.
Where they live
The five states where Sheboygan Walt makes up the largest share of the electorate in the seventies:
- Wisconsin
- Iowa
- South Dakota
- North Dakota
- Nebraska