On the night of Nov. 5, Teresa Sasse and her husband, Scott, had dinner in front of the TV as they settled in to watch the election returns. They stayed up well past midnight, retiring only after it was clear Donald Trump had been elected president for a second time.
There was no champagne, or popping of corks. The couple didn’t even have dessert.
But Sasse was elated, and relieved.
The 64-year-old owner of a small Oregon business, Puddin’ River Chocolates, had thought — fleetingly — about leaving the country if Kamala Harris were elected. But after discussing it with her husband, Sasse decided that whatever happened in the presidential race, they would get by.
Her husband, who runs a one-man landscaping firm, had passed along a bit of wisdom from his grandfather, about how the president is just a lone individual and life is what you make it.
“I thought, well, you adapt,” Sasse said. “You recover.”
Now, with Trump headed back to the White House, Sasse is brimming with optimism. She’s hoping her small confectionery business will thrive, her tax burden will ease and healthcare may become more affordable, allowing her to extend the benefit to her handful of employees. And, perhaps above all, Sasse hopes she’ll no longer have to worry so much about the crushing weight of inflation.
“I felt great,” she said of the sensation when she realized Trump was destined for a second term.
Views of the 47th president, from the ground up
Love him or hate him — most folks seem to do one or the other — Trump promises a highly consequential and potent presidency. His far-reaching, avowedly disruptive proposals seem destined to have a major impact not just in the short term, but possibly well beyond.
Over the next two years, between now and the 2026 midterm election, I plan to travel the country and offer a periodic look at Trump’s 2.0 presidency. Not at his attempts to wreak personal vengeance, reconstitute Washington root and branch, or engineer a lasting partisan realignment. (Other columns may deal with those elements.)
But rather as a force, for good or ill, affecting the lives and livelihoods of countless Americans.
I first met Sasse in mid-October, when she attended a roundtable discussion hosted by Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a freshman Republican seeking reelection to the House in one of the most competitive congressional races in the country. (She ended up losing narrowly to her Democratic opponent, and has been chosen by Trump to head the Labor Department, to Sasse’s delight.)
Sasse was among a small group of business owners and law enforcement officials from around the Portland area who gathered in a sectioned-off portion of a banquet hall in Oregon City, as a steady rain slicked the streets outside. For more than an hour, they told horror stories of how first the pandemic, then a period of rising crime and increased homelessness chased away customers and imperiled their livelihoods.
When her turn came, Sasse lamented the soaring cost of producing her European-style chocolates, which ship nationwide. She didn’t blame President Biden for the skyrocketing price of cacao, the main ingredient she imports by the ton. But she has never paid more, Sasse said, for eggs, butter, cream and other key ingredients — and she laid the blame squarely at the feet of the president.
Teresa Sasse, second from left, on a visit to Ecuador with her team from Puddin’ River Chocolates. She hopes healthcare will become more affordable under the president-elect so she can provide it as an employee benefit.
(Teresa Sasse)
Sasse said the pinch of rising prices and growing payroll expenses were so bad that she wasn’t certain her business would survive if Trump failed to take back the White House.
Recently we caught up by phone as Sasse, just back from a Rotary Club meeting, was packaging eight-piece boxes of assorted truffles.
A native Californian and graduate of Sacramento State, Sasse settled in Canby, Ore., a small Willamette Valley town south of Portland, about three decades ago. After a brief career as a paralegal and several years in the deli and catering business, she opened her chocolate shop in 2002.
Puddin’ River Chocolates, south of Portland in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.
(Google Maps)
Discussing politics is one thing. Sasse grew positively rhapsodic when the talk turned to chocolate.
“Oh my gosh, it’s endless what you can do,” she said, her words flying like a happy burst of confetti. “I’ve never considered myself an artist at all. I can’t draw a picture to save your soul. But with chocolate, you can just about do anything you can think of, or dream of, as long as you know how to temper it. … It’s passion. It’s magical. It’s a ‘wow’ factor. It’s just one of the most awesome things I’ve ever done.”
Her feelings toward Trump aren’t nearly as exultant. “I don’t always enjoy some of the things he says,” Sasse allowed.
But the bottom line is her bottom line.
“I think he’s a smart man. He’s a businessman,” Sasse said. “I think he did a good job in the four years that he was president. You know, I don’t care about his personal garbage, or whatever that is. That doesn’t affect me. What affects me is how he’s going to run this government and this country, and I feel that he loves this country and he has passion for it and wants it — and wants us — to succeed.”
Sasse voted for Trump in 2016 and again in 2020, and was highly unlikely to turn away from him this presidential election. Still, she said Harris gave her no reason to reconsider her support for the former president.
Sasse imports cacao by the ton for her chocolates, and its cost has soared along with price of domestic ingredients such as eggs and dairy products.
(Teresa Sasse)
“Nothing. Nothing she did convinced me that we were going to be OK” — or that Sasse would stop having to struggle to keep her business afloat, she said of the Democrat. “I think prices would have just kept going up.”
One part of Harris’ platform particularly rankled Sasse. Hoping to boost small businesses, the vice president called for expanding the tax incentive for startup expenses from $5,000 to $50,000.
“How about [those] that are already started,” Sasse asked rhetorically, “that never got a penny to keep us going or help us?”
She quickly ticked through her hopes for the next four years.
She’d like to see Trump straighten out the country’s dysfunctional immigration system. Stem the flow of jobs heading overseas. Peace abroad and more tranquility at home would also be nice, she said.
But mostly, Sasse focused on what Trump could do for small-business owners like herself.
“We need somebody to listen to us,” she said. “We’re the backbone of America, but we’re getting squished out. … It’s a tough spot to be in right now.”
There’s nothing sweet about that.
