Facing rising sea levels, Jersey Shore voters worry about climate change but still love Trump

From Delaware — home state of former Vice President and Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden — north to New Jersey and the suburbs of New York and on to Vermont and New England, Democrats can count on heavy support in the 2020 election. And yet, as veteran USA TODAY Network columnist Mike Kelly and visual journalist Chris Pedota found, resilient pockets of Trump supporters persist amid this Democratic landscape. This is the second installment in a five-part series,"Red Islands in the Blue Sea.”

MANTOLOKING, New Jersey — From the window of his second-floor office in the middle of a narrow barrier island that stretches like a crooked witch’s finger along the Jersey Shore, Mayor Lawrence “Lance” White has a perfect view of the future.

A block to the west is Barnegat Bay — and the water.

Two blocks east is the Atlantic — and more water.

In between is White's town. The borough of Mantoloking is home to about 250 year-round residents and another 1,000 who show up each summer, many of them living in million-dollar homes. Or as White noted on a recent morning: “We’re a thin strip of sand between two large bodies of water.”

At zero elevation and no more than 400 yards wide and about two miles long, Mantoloking is one of the most vulnerable spots on this stretch of windblown islands that will be the first to be swamped when sea levels are expected to rise in the coming decades. If the worst predictions by climate scientists bear out, White’s town may vanish by the turn of the century.

First in the series: In Delaware, the land of Biden, evidence of strong Trump support

What’s strange about this part of the eastern seaboard is not that the residents have ignored the warnings of rising sea levels. Many have studied the issue extensively and some have even taken measures to raise up their homes on pilings. What's strange is that an overwhelming majority of them support a president and a political party that essentially reject all warnings of climate calamity.

Like White, nearly 70 percent of Mantoloking’s voters are Republicans, according to state voter registration records compiled recently by the USA TODAY NETWORK. In decidedly blue Democratic New Jersey, Ocean County, which is home to most of the state’s barrier island towns like Mantoloking, has become a Republican bastion. Only 30 Mantoloking residents are registered Democrats.

Only one of the county's 33 communities — the borough of Harvey Cedars on Long Beach Island — sided with Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. But that was by only 10 votes. And while 55 percent of New Jersey’s voters supported Clinton — giving her a 14-point margin of victory and the state’s 14 electoral votes — Ocean County’s voters handed Trump a 33-point victory.

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Admitting there is a paradox

As the 2020 election looms and an impeachment inquiry begins, the paradox of choosing to make their home along a stretch of vulnerable beach and yet supporting a political party that pooh-poohs even the most tempered warnings of climate change is not lost on many residents here. Among them is White, who voted for Trump in 2016 and plans to cast a ballot for him in next year’s election.

Many residents smile and even chuckle when they consider their willingness to support a president — and political party — that rejects the greatest threat to their personal welfare. But at the same time, they’ve made a concerted effort to separate the politics of climate change and what they concede is their choice to invest millions of dollars into homes on what is essentially a sand bar.

“Pick your hazard,” said Robert McIntyre, 74, a retired financial planner, who has lived in Mantoloking for nearly a quarter century and voted for Trump in 2016.

“I’m a complete believer in climate change,” McIntyre said one morning early this fall.

“I recognize the contradiction,” McIntyre said, acknowledging his of supporting Trump despite the president's efforts to dial back protections against climate change.

“But I don’t act on it,” said McIntyre, who, as the borough's emergency management director, would play a key role in helping to evacuate residents in a major storm.

A few blocks away from McIntyre’s home — which has a sign proclaiming “Don’t Give Up The Ship” over the front door — White swiveled in a chair in his office at borough hall and gazed out his window.

Outside, all seemed peaceful. A golden sun hung in a cloudless, azure sky. Across the street, tennis players, clad in white, swatted balls at the Mantoloking Yacht Club's Har-Tru courts. A mile offshore on the Atlantic, sunlight gleamed from the windows of a small fishing trawler.

It was the kind of day that could make even the most ardent climate change advocate forget about the potential for devastation that the Atlantic could bring to such a low-lying town.

That morning, White, tall and chatting easily in a self-assured baritone, arrived at his mayor’s office at Mantoloking Borough Hall seemingly ready for a casual, beach-town kind of day. He wore a blue blazer, white slacks, a white shirt and loafers with no socks.

At 69, White, a former Wall Street bond trader who now runs a prosperous real estate agency with his wife, Jane, said he is fully aware of the fearsome predictions of climate scientists — namely that sea levels are rising faster now along the Jersey Shore. In October, a report by Rutgers University for the New Jersey Climate Adaptation Alliance predicted at least a 2.3-foot rise in sea levels by 2100 and a worst-case scenario of up to 10 feet.

White knows the figures — and varying scientific predictions — all too well. But he also concedes that he is not exactly sure what to do about it.

"It seems obvious climate change is here," White said. "How quickly it’s going to happen, no one knows. And I’m hoping that the powers that be will finally make a decision that this needs to be addressed and try to figure out things that can be done.”

Like many longtime Jersey Shore residents, White, who purchased a home in Mantoloking in 1997 and moved permanently to the town in 2007, insists that he cherishes his beach life and does not want to move. And even if the predictions come true, White reasons that he probably won’t be alive to see his town get swamped.

“The scientists can say a foot in a year,” White said of rising sea levels. “It might be. It might not be. Who knows?”

He fell silent at the thought, then conceded: “You are taking a risk. All this is unknown.”

Sandy's shock and awe grows distant

What’s not hard to recall, however, is how vulnerable Mantoloking is.

Seven years ago, as superstorm Sandy made a hard left turn from the churning Atlantic and plowed into the Jersey Shore, Mantoloking was nearly washed away.

A 20-foot wall of Atlantic sea water bashed through a line of sand dunes that had been created by the U.S Army Corps of Engineers to protect Mantoloking’s already narrow beach. The swells yanked beachfront homes off their foundations — or simply pushed them down the block as if they were toys.

By the time Sandy’s winds died and its tides subsided, the Atlantic had cut three inlets across Mantoloking. Nearly 100 homes were destroyed — some of them sucked into the Atlantic and never seen again. Others were flooded with water and sand, their sofas, beds and refrigerators swept into Barnegat Bay.

Today, except for a few vacant lots here and there, a visitor would hardly know that Sandy had walloped Mantoloking so violently.

The town is in the midst of a building boom. On lots where middle-class families might have built a three-bedroom summer vacation bungalow in the 1960s, investors are now erecting 5,000-square-foot mega-mansions, some of which are valued at more than $5 million and look like candidates for photo spreads in Architectural Digest.

White and his wife evacuated in 2012, first to stay with friends near Morristown, then later to a series of temporary homes in nearby towns. Their home overlooking Barnegat Bay was flooded with nearly two feet of water. Three sailboats from the yacht club washed up in their yard.

The Whites did not return to their home until nearly two years later. Before moving in, however, they raised their home on pilings a dozen feet off the sand. The entire restoration, some of which was covered by insurance, ran to nearly $500,000, White said.

"The damage was horrific," White said. "We were one of the first in town to raise the house. We moved the building to the side, drove in timber piles, then dropped the house on it."

Along the Shore now, pilings for homes like the Whites seem as common as sun decks.

Gilbert Gaul, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who lives in Cherry Hill and surfs a variety of beaches on the Jersey Shore, spent portions of the last two decades studying the impact of the building boom along America’s beach communities.

In his most recent book published last month, “The Geography of Risk: Epic Storms, Rising Seas, and the Cost of America’s Coasts,” Gaul predicts that the nation could face as much as a $3 trillion loss of homes and other property, stretching from the Jersey Shore, around the Florida peninsula and across the low-lying strip of coastal Gulf Coast towns in Alabama, Louisiana and Texas.

“It’s insane. It’s lunacy,” said Gaul of the decision to allow so many homes to be built in low-lying barrier island towns like Mantoloking.

But part of the problem, he said, is politics.

Gaul discovered that in the 1950s, the federal government paid only 5 percent of the cost of rebuilding after hurricanes destroyed beach towns. Today, he said, the federal government pays 70 percent. And Trump has given no indication that he plans to reevaluate such grandiose payments or even monitor them more carefully as storms and ocean surges worsen.

“It is no accident that the federalization of disasters coincided with the explosive development at the coasts,” Gaul said.

On Oct. 29, on the seventh anniversary of superstorm Sandy, Gov. Phil Murphy ordered the state to form a special commission and begin a comprehensive study of how to protect itself from mega-storms and rising sea levels. That report is due next September.

“New Jersey is extremely vulnerable to the impacts of sea-level rise and global warming,” Murphy said.

Murphy’s executive order to create a coastal studies commission coincides with a new study from Rutgers University that offered worrisome predictions for future flooding across New Jersey, especially low-lying Shore towns. The report said between 62,000 and 86,000 homes and commercial properties — with a combined value of more than $60 billion — could be vulnerable to future damage from hurricanes along the Jersey Shore.

Another concern, the report said, is rising sea levels.

“The problem has gotten worse over the years,” the report said. “The number of properties at risk of flooding during the highest annual tide has more than doubled between 1980 and today.”

What was once a debate among environmentalists, however, has now become wrapped in partisan politics.

Trump’s own outspoken criticism of climate change is one factor. Another are efforts by conservative Republicans to offer counter arguments to scientific reports like those from Rutgers.

And then, there are the very personal decisions of people — some not so ordinary — in Jersey beach communities. Just last year, former Gov. Chris Christie purchased a four-bedroom vacation home, valued at $2.9 million in Bay Head, a barrier island community just north of Mantoloking.

Christie, who was criticized by environmentalists for appearing to court conservative Republicans during his ill-fated presidential campaign in 2016 by refusing to join a nine-state coalition to combat climate change, did not respond to a request to comment on why he would purchase a home in such a vulnerable spot.

The politics of climate change — and the fact that so many residents of vulnerable towns like Mantoloking are dyed-in-the-red Republicans — has taken on a new intensity during the Trump administration. What is difficult to understand for some is why more Republicans in beach towns have not pushed back against their party’s criticism — in some cases outright disdain — of climate change predictions.

Wallets over beach chairs

One reason, say some residents, is what they see as Trump's economic policies which have increased the value of their stock holdings.

"Unfortunately the president doesn’t behave presidential. I wish he would," said White, adding that such criticism if off-set by what he and others in Mantoloking see as economic growth.

"I was on Wall Street for 35 years," White said. "I’m a numbers person. If you want the truth, look at the numbers. I see low unemployment. I see small business growth. I love it. I think his policies are good for our country."

Climate change experts, while acknowledging that Trump's economic policies have helped many in the short term, point to deeper problems on the horizon. And therein lies the conundrum: How should the wealthy residents of towns like Mantoloking balance their immediate gains in wealth against the long-term risks that their homes could be destroyed by rising sea levels?

“The people who put Trump in office are the people he’s screwing to the wall,” said Stewart Farrell, the director and founder of the Stockton University Coastal Research Center in Port Republic, New Jersey. “Nobody seems to understand why these people vote against their own economic self interest.”

Farrell, who has studied rising sea levels for decades, predicts that Republican strongholds such as Mantoloking will be wiped off the map by 2100.

“The people in the 21st century are going to curse us,” he said.

That’s not the case with Judd Corbett who voted for Trump in 2016 and plans to support him in the 2020 election.

Corbett is 88 and has lived for decades in Mantoloking — along with other homes in Florida and in the Bahamas. He does not expect to see the 22nd century. But no matter. Corbett, a former journalist who became a stock broker, does not believe that sea levels will rise enough to swamp his town.

“I’m probably 100 percent against all that stuff,” Corbett said of rising sea levels. “Yes, the sea level can go up. But it is part of the way things are.”

Anyway, Corbett added, if his home is flooded, he’ll just turn on his pump.

“I get water in here whenever there is a storm and there are heavy winds and so forth,” he said. “It’s always been that way.”

'All you have to do is look at the facts'

Several miles north of Mantoloking, Stephen Reid, the Republican mayor of Point Pleasant Beach, said he does not understand why his party won’t take more of a lead in climate change.

“They’re just being stupid,” Reid said of his fellow Republicans who criticize climate change predictions. “All you have to do is look at all the facts.”

Reid voted for Trump in 2016. But he does not consider himself a Trump loyalist. His politics he said are far more moderate — more in line with such as former Republican governors like Thomas Kean and Christine Todd Whitman.

Reid meets regularly with other mayors of New Jersey’s barrier island towns. Their most frequent topic now, he said, is flooding on local streets from rising sea levels. Many barrier island towns now say that even a normal high tide leaves several inches of water on some streets.

“Climate change is real and it's happening now,” Reid said.

On another morning, White was again at his office at Mantoloking Borough Hall — this time worried about what he saw outside his window.

An Atlantic nor’easter was winding along the coast. A lead-gray canopy of clouds hung over his town. Rain splattered against the windows.

White put on a yellow rain jacket and headed for the beach.

Two blocks away, he climbed a zig-zag path to the top of a dune. He stopped and studied the washing machine churn in the Atlantic.

“I hope we don’t lose too much of the beach,” White muttered as the wind blew grains of sand along the beach.

White, his face wet now from the driving rain, gazed over his shoulder to a row of million-dollar mansions. Most were empty, their residents — all summer people — gone to warmer spots in Florida or elsewhere in the South.

The beach homes — and, indeed, the rest of Mantoloking — are now protected by a 22-foot-high dune, stretching for miles along the barrier islands. The dune was built after superstorm Sandy by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. And in front of the man-made sandy ridge, stretching to the water, was a new man-made beach.

Along the Jersey Shore, the Corps spent $95 million to widen beaches — a program described as "beach replenishment." For towns like Mantoloking, which had struggled with narrowing beaches in recent years, the wider beach was something of a godsend.

But now, with another storm bearing down, White wondered how long the man-made beach would last — and what might happen if the federal funds from the Corps ran out.

The wind kicked up. On the beach, a seagull hunkered into the sand.

White thought of his town and its future – and whether his political party and the man he supports in the White House will help. And then he thought of his hometown.

“So you’re asking if the island will be here in 50 years and I’m saying I sure hope so,” he said. “We all hope so."

Mike Kelly is a columnist for the USA TODAY NETWORK. For more of Kelly's work, please consider subscribing to the Asbury Park Press and the USA TODAY NETWORK.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Election 2020: Climate change on the Jersey Shore doesn't sway Trump voters