Finding purpose in the Trump crusade: ‘This is bigger than big’

Shown through the window, Ralph Case makes a call at the Stark County for Trump Headquarters in Canton, Ohio. (Andrew Spear/For The Washington Post)

CANTON, Ohio — A week ago in Middle America, a father and son piled into an old red Pontiac and hit the road for a weekend outing.

“Dad, can I say, ‘The truth hurts?’ ” the 12-year-old asked.

“No, son, that’s my line!” the father said. “You can say, ‘Who are you voting for?’ ”

“Trump! Trump! Trump!” the son rehearsed in the back seat as his dad gunned it down a potholed highway in North Canton, Ohio, until they reached a Kmart parking lot where people were starting to rally around a huge American flag.

“Let’s do this thing!” the father said to the boy as they joined the crowd, and soon, another scene in the upending of the modern Republican Party was underway.

It was in so many ways the moment that 38-year-old Ralph Case had been waiting for, one building since June, when the single father with a one-truck renovation business was watching TV in his living room. A breaking news alert flashed on the screen, followed by the scene in a brassy lobby in New York City. “Rockin’ in the Free World” was blasting. A crowd was facing an escalator. And then, gliding down it, came the man Ralph recognized as the “great builder” and reality-show host Donald J. Trump, who was announcing his bid for president.

“Oh. My. God,” is what Ralph remembers thinking. As Trump spoke of an America that doesn’t “have any victories anymore,” he felt something stirring inside — “like something hit me in my gut.”

“I’m thinking, it’s time,” Ralph recalled. “Like, this is big. This is bigger than big.”

He began making the first of dozens of unreturned calls to Trump headquarters in New York. He used his own money to rent a defunct tanning salon and plastered its windows with Trump signs. Now it was just days before the critical March 15 GOP primary in Ohio, and here he was with his son at a Donald Trump for president rally, becoming someone he’d never imagined.

“That Ralph guy in Ohio,” was how the Trump campaign had begun referring to the freelancer from North Canton.

“I’m Ralph Case, chair of the Stark County Trump campaign,” was how Ralph had begun referring to himself.

Source by:https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/finding-purpose-in-the-trump-crusade-this-is-bigger-than-big/2016/03/13/9e8d4162-e7bb-11e5-bc08-3e03a5b41910_story.html