Once a Romney enclave, this New Hampshire town is turning into ‘Trump country’

Some visitors might politely mistake Gary’s Barber Shop for a Donald Trump-themed merchandise store. “Make America Great Again” hats hang from the ceiling. Signs and posters cover the walls. A huge, 20-foot-long Trump banner hangs from the exterior facade, larger even than the sign advertising the barber shop itself.

Inside, owner Gary Brockney offers both haircuts and political humor. “Someone once asked me, ‘Do you allow liberals in here?’” Brockney says, over the muted hum of his clippers. “I said, ‘At their own risk.’”

Here in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, a quiet vacation town dubbed the “oldest summer resort in America,” such deep-rooted political views are nothing new. The town took center stage in the summer of 2012, when then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney — who owns a home on Lake Winnipesaukee — drew flocks of Secret Service agents and political tourists to town, during his annual summer vacation there.

But in the decade-plus since 2012, the town has changed. Housing prices have skyrocketed, forcing many longtime residents to downsize or move out. The advent of pandemic-era remote work led to an influx of new residents, many of them upper-middle-class. And amid a shifting Republican Party, many of the town’s conservatives, once Romney supporters, now view Trump much more favorably — and have soured on their neighbor.

“This is Trump country,” Brockney said. “I don’t know anyone around here that admits they know Romney.”

Romney still owns a lake house in the area, as does one of his sons. The vacation town, nestled on the side of the lake and surrounded by green mountains, continues to be a favorite getaway spot for celebrities from Jimmy Fallon to Bill Marriott. The charming downtown features rows of shops and restaurants, mixed with Colonial- and Victorian-style homes. The town’s permanent population is 6,000; in summer, it balloons to three times that size.

But in January 2024, just days before the New Hampshire primary election, the town is devoid of much political activity. The lake is frozen over, and the streets are mostly empty. No Republican candidate has campaigned in the city since Nikki Haley hosted a town hall here in November. Trump last appeared in October; Ron DeSantis, on the Fourth of July.

“This is a seasonal town,” said Raya Nepomuceno, an employee at a local clothing store. “There’s not a lot going on during winter.”

Perhaps no year was as busy as 2012, when Romney — then the presumptive Republican nominee for president — descended on the town for his annual summer vacation. Romney brought his campaign aides along, discussing potential picks for the vice president slot. Romney’s family marched in the Fourth of July parade, and Romney delivered a speech at its conclusion. Journalists rented boats to get a lakeside glimpse of the Romney family compound, photographing Romney on his boat or his dock.

Tourists flooded the area, offering a preview of what could have happened to the quiet town should Romney have won the presidency and this be his getaway spot.

“There was a lot of discussion about that,” said Cindy Patten, owner of Black’s Paper and Gift Shop in Wolfeboro. “We caught a glimpse of it: the Secret Service, the tourists, the attention.”

Even after the 2012 election, Romney continued to vacation in Wolfeboro, and in 2015, it again became a political epicenter: Romney hosted Chris Christie and Marco Rubio, two 2016 hopefuls, who marched in the town parade and jockeyed for Romney’s support.

All along, Romney was considered both a spectacle and a local. “It was like, ‘Oh, there goes Mitt,’” said Jan, a local store manager. (She declined to give her last name.) “He just felt like one of us.”

“You might not like his politics, but you can’t not like the man,” one town resident told the Los Angeles Times in 2012.

But then Trump rose to prominence. In some ways, Wolfeboro became a microcosm of the class divide that tore apart the Republican Party. Interviews with a dozen Wolfeboro residents revealed a tension between the year-round residents and the part-time vacationers; several acknowledged the importance of tourism for the local economy, but blamed wealthy part-time residents for raising housing costs as they buy up properties.

With the onset of the pandemic, an influx of working professionals with the ability to work remotely moved into the town, residents said, further exacerbating the “us-versus-them” tensions.

At Gary’s Barber Shop, Wolfeboro residents spoke of the town’s shifting demographics and the country’s problems in the same language. Wolfeboro, one man said, was being “taken over” by “people who don’t think like us”; later, the man — a janitor at the local high school — said the school, just like the country at large, is being “infiltrated” by “woke agendas.”

Trump fanned these sentiments in his rise to prominence. Wolfeboro residents responded in kind. Trump won the 2016 Republican primary in Wolfeboro by double-digits, and he went on to win the general election there in both 2016 and 2020. When Trump hosted a rally at Kingswood Regional High School in Wolfeboro in October, a line of thousands of attendees wrapped around the school, some arriving as early as 7 a.m.

What about Romney? To some in town, he’s become a black sheep — for no other reason than standing his ground against Trump, who Romney says represents a “failure of character.”

Brockney has cut hair for some of Romney’s grandsons, and in 2012, they hosted a cookout for the Secret Service and Coast Guard officers sent to protect Romney — “lobster, corn, the whole New England tradition.”

But now, they have a different view of him. “Most of the town really liked him,” Lucy Brockney, Gary’s wife, said. “Then he turned on America.”

I asked what she meant. “He turned on Trump,” she said.