The local faces of Trump's army

In South Jersey, Dan Quigley let his two grade-school sons stay up late to watch Donald Trump give his victory speech on Super Tuesday.

"They know everything about him," Quigley, an executive at a Northeast Philadelphia rubber company, said of sons Michael, 12, and Danny, 13.

In Center City, two lawyers with very different political views have settled on Trump. Defense attorney Gary Server, an independent-minded Democrat, riles colleagues at the Criminal Justice Center when he talks of Trump for president. Corporate lawyer Matthew Silver, a conservative Republican, proudly gave $250 to Trump's campaign.

"He speaks like Americans speak," Server said. "Americans curse. They're uncouth. They speak their mind, and Trump does that, too. I'm tired of politicians portraying us as prim and proper and civil."

In Easton, Pa., the past chairman of the Lehigh Valley Tea Party abandoned Sen. Ted Cruz in favor of Trump months ago.

"Ideologically, I agree a lot more with Ted Cruz," Ronnie DelBacco said. "But the time for arguing ideology and policy is long passed. We need someone to kick the Dems in the teeth."

Surveying dozens of Trump supporters from Pennsylvania and South Jersey, it's clear that the candidate's message has been received and accepted by many here, despite his having no statewide ground game, no fund-raising effort, and no recent visits to the region.

As Trump has risen from political sideshow to front-runner for the Republican nomination, Franklin and Marshall College pollster Terry Madonna said, his early supporters have remained firm in "their frustration with the party establishment and their frustration with government overall."

Attacks on the real estate mogul and reality TV star appear to embolden those who find comfort in the upheaval he pledges to bring to Washington.

Local supporters said the New York businessman's often outrageous rhetoric is a front for an outsider candidate trying to upend decades of entrenched politics. Some defended his boisterous language as "winning the day's news cycle."

Randall Miller, a political scientist at St. Joseph's University, said Trump's success so far may have come as a shock even to the candidate.

"He might be as surprised as anyone. He has tapped into deep wells of anger and frustration and resentment," Miller said. "And he knows how to play to the audience."

Supporters say Trump's passion for change outweighs his shortcomings, although his bombast does leave some a bit wary.

"He's representative of everything inside of them that's been angry for a long time," said Tom Trotter III, a retired truck driver from Bucks County. "They may not agree with everything he says. The scary part of this is always the possibility that he could be a dictator."

The primaries in Pennsylvania on April 26 and New Jersey on June 7 will be among the last in the country.

Trump's official campaign has yet to begin a ground game here, but small independent groups are organizing on Facebook and setting up websites.

Tom Carroll, a former Montgomery County prosecutor who now lives in Bethlehem, is a tea party conservative and a member of Pennsylvanians for Trump.

"So much of the message in print and on television is that people supporting Trump are uninformed, uneducated people full of hate," Carroll said. "I convey the message that me and all the people I'm associated with are professionals."

Trump, whose campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment, has bragged that his campaign is mostly self-financed, much of that through personal loans.

"All of the other candidates are in my email box and he's the only one that hasn't sent me emails," said Silver, one of only 44 donors from Southeastern Pennsylvania who contributed to Trump in the period that ended Jan. 30.

Compared with other presidential candidates' local fund-raising totals, Trump's $20,978 haul is minuscule.

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton raised $1.7 million through Jan. 30. Trump's two chief rivals, Sen. Marco Rubio and Cruz, received $504,000 and $233,000, respectively, according to Federal Election Commission reports.

Jackie Hindman said she had never donated to a candidate before giving Trump $250 in January. Why now?

"He's for small business and bringing production and manufacturing back here, which in turn would boost our sales," said Hindman, who works with Quigley at the rubber company her grandfather founded in 1935. "This world needs to be run like a business."

Two days after Trump won seven of 11 states on Super Tuesday, the Republican establishment pulled out the big guns. The party's two previous presidential nominees, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Arizona Sen. John McCain, slammed Trump as "a fraud" and "dangerous" to national security.

But those types of attacks from political elites mean very little to Trump supporters like Dale Whittenberger. The retired Bucks County businessman who now spends his winters in Florida watching Phillies spring training games said he hoped the Republican National Committee would wake up and back the man who is leading among those who have already voted.

"They should try to get behind him," Whittenberger said. Instead, "they are going to try to destroy him."

Whittenberger said he was finding fellow Trump fans in surprising places. He was talking about Trump at the dentist recently, and a 25-year-old dental assistant overheard him.

"She high-fived me. I said to myself, 'Man, that's surprising,' " Whittenberger said.

DelBacco, the Lehigh Valley Tea Party leader, said Trump's appeal may be growing as conservatives begin to question whether Cruz or Rubio could beat Clinton or Sen. Bernie Sanders in November.

"I think Ted Cruz is too decent of a man to fight the way we need to unseat the Democrats," he said.

As the fields for the Republican and Democratic nominations shrink, debates on social media grow more intense.

A Philly.com Facebook post Wednesday garnered more than 500 comments, most debating the merits of Trump's candidacy.

"Friends who like Trump" has been a trending search on Facebook in recent weeks - along with its counterpart, "Delete Friends who like Trump."

Madonna, the Franklin and Marshall pollster, said Trump's base isn't going anywhere.

"How many times have we said he can't survive what he just said?" Madonna said. "We have been wrong about Trump from the start. Every one of us thought that something he said about McCain not being a war hero, or Carly Fiorina's face, or about shooting someone in Times Square. You can't go back through American history and find another election cycle quite like this."

BMcCrone@philly.com

@BrianXMcCrone