The reverence for Donald Trump in and around Somerset County Precinct 08-002 is everywhere — on yard signs, bumper stickers and flags waving from porches, storefronts and boat rigging.

Trump love is so pervasive in the rural precinct that it feels like an oversight that Janet Ford is not displaying the presidential candidate’s splashy campaign material inside her cozy restaurant. Called “From Scratch,” the eatery caters to local watermen and farmers in a county ranking last in the state in median household income.

Rest assured, the Republican

restaurant co-owner and chef said, she most certainly backs the GOP nominee — just like almost everyone else in the southern Maryland precinct anchored by the Chesapeake Bay community of Crisfield. It’s just that Ford doesn’t want diners to have to digest politics with their omelets and homemade pies.

“I do try to keep it out of my business. I have family members and friends that are Democrats,” Ford said. “Everybody in our area knows I am a diehard Republican. We’re a huge Republican area and very huge Donald Trump supporters.”In Crisfield — as much as anywhere in Maryland — being Republican means being with Trump.

In Crisfield — as much as anywhere in Maryland — being Republican means being with Trump.

A Baltimore Sun analysis of election returns from recent years found Somerset Precinct 08-002 — tucked into the state’s southeastern corner — is arguably the Trumpiest. The rural precinct is home to 302 registered Republicans and 75 registered Democrats. Politically relevant Crisfield is known for the J. Millard Tawes Crab and Clambake, which annually draws Maryland politicians of both stripes from across the state.

While statewide Maryland politics are dominated by Democrats, the figures show the grip Trump maintains on his strongholds even as former two-term governor Larry Hogan — the state’s most popular Republican who is now running for the U.S. Senate — remains an outspoken political critic and adversary of the former president.

The numbers also reflect a hardening of political loyalties in recent years as many of Maryland’s bluest counties have become bluer and the reddest counties redder. Democrats control Baltimore City and the large Washington suburbs of Montgomery and Prince George’s counties. Republicans dominate the Western Maryland counties of Allegany, Garrett and Washington, and most of the Eastern Shore, including Somerset County.

Trump may have lost his 2020 reelection bid to Democratic President Joe Biden, but the Republican beat Biden by nearly 15 percentage points in Somerset, increasing his margin from 2016 by 2.6 percentage points — the largest increase out of only three jurisdictions to do so.

In the presidential primary last May, the rural precinct that includes the From Scratch restaurant cast 77 votes for Trump and five for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.

That wasn’t Trump’s best precinct — a precinct in Essex gave him 81 votes and Haley zero, the highest among precincts with more than 50 total votes. Essex is part of a Baltimore County area that fit neatly into Trump’s 2016 message of trying to revive parts of the country left behind in a post-industrial economy. Bethlehem Steel, General Motors and other large plants employed tens of thousands of residents in the area decades ago.

But the Somerset County precinct showed its Trump loyalty in other ways. It voted — 49% to 43% — against Hogan, a prominent Trump critic, in his U.S. Senate primary against Robin Ficker, a self-funded, ardent Trump supporter and former state delegate who has run unsuccessfully for many state and federal offices. Ficker won 196 of Maryland’s nearly 2,000 precincts this year.

“Trump has become an extraordinarily influential figure in the party such that his opinion of others matters more than we probably would have seen in the past,” said Flavio Hickel, an assistant political science professor at Washington College on the Eastern Shore.

Because Haley dropped out of the race two months before Maryland’s primary, voting for her would have merely been a Trump protest vote, “and there was no appetite for that in these counties,” Hickel said.

Overall, 15 of Somerset’s 23 precincts backed Trump but not Hogan, who served two four-year terms as governor, ending in January 2023, and in 2018 became the first Republican to be reelected Maryland governor since Theodore McKeldin in 1954. These 15 precincts are out of 192 total where this occurred in Maryland.

The Essex precinct backed Hogan by 54% to 45%. Statewide, the popular former governor captured 64% of the primary vote while Ficker got 28%.

Hogan is facing Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks in the November election. The seat is open because of the retirement of Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin after this year.

Hogan has long counseled the GOP to move away from Trump, calling him divisive. Somerset County hasn’t budged.

Hogan has sometimes contrasted Trump’s style with that of former Republican President Ronald Reagan, suggesting Reagan’s more tempered approach was preferable for the nation because he wasn’t focused on scoring partisan points. In the 2020 presidential election, Hogan said he cast a symbolic write-in vote for Reagan, who died in 2004, rather than voting for Trump. In May, Trump became the first U.S. president convicted of felony crimes when a jury found him guilty of falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment to a porn star.

Hogan has said in campaign messaging this year that he would not be beholden to either political party. Because Democrats have twice as many registered voters as Republicans in Maryland, he would need the backing of a sizable number of Democratic and unaffiliated voters to win.

In Somerset, many Republicans believed Hogan was too quick to shut down schools and businesses during the pandemic in 2020. Hogan said he acted responsibly to protect public health and safety.

“I would not vote for him for dogcatcher of Somerset County,” said Ford, who believes Hogan’s pandemic policies hurt small businesses, including her own. Her popular restaurant has a country kitchen ambience and an outside sign reading: “Nothin’ like homestyle cookin’ ”

She said she likes Trump because “he says what he means and he doesn’t sugarcoat it. He doesn’t care if he hurts your feelings.”

Census figures consistently show Somerset ranking last among Maryland counties in median household income at about $52,000.

Republican state Del. Charles Otto, who lives on his corn and soybean farm in Somerset, near Wicomico Creek, believes Trump can help.

“He’s appealing to working people,” Otto said. “He’s a fighter.”