On Nov. 8, 2016, Jaedon Foreman, a freshman at the University of South Dakota studying business economics, reserved a special room on campus.
A 2016 graduate of Waverly-Shell Rock (Iowa) High School, he wanted to watch election coverage with a handful of friends.
For the most part, the men, all members of College Republicans, thought it was going to be a slam dunk for the Clinton camp.
Still, before the results started rolling in, they joshed that if the Republican nominee were to win, they would all go to Donald J. Trump’s inauguration.
“It’s going to be a long night,” Jaedon thought.
But by the end of that night, and later, on Jan. 6, when the votes of the electors were officially tallied at a joint session of the House and the Senate as the Constitution requires, Jaedon watched with a certain amount of consternation how his and his friends’ wishful thinking was quickly becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy.
“He ended up pulling it off,” he said of Trump’s garnering 304 electoral votes, after a shocking election night victory. “A lot of our jaws dropped. We had no idea he was going to win.”
Trump’s win cast the die for the guys.
Dipping into his savings account from his summer job at the Dix melon farm in Shell Rock, Jaedon paid for a ticket to Washington.
Then Sen. John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, promised tickets for the inauguration, so the friends were set.
Speaking to Waverly Newspapers in a Google Hangout interview on Wednesday, just hours before boarding the 6 a.m. plane from Des Moines, Iowa, to Washington on Thursday, Jaedon said he is excited about the opportunity to witness Trump’s inauguration firsthand.
His journey to the National Mall on Jan. 20 reflects those of many Republicans who were originally attracted to other candidates in the caucuses and primaries, but eventually fell in line with the party’s nominee.
Voting in the Iowa caucuses in February of 2016, Jaedon threw his support behind Marco Rubio, the Florida senator who has since won re-election.
“I just liked his story, his background,” Jaedon said. “His parents were a bartender and a maid, and they had worked hard for their son to be a U.S. senator.”
When Rubio fell through as a choice, Jaedon was in a state of inner conflict. He did want to support the party candidate, but he had concerns about Trump.
“It was a difficult choice,” he said. “It was the lesser of two evils, you were going to lose no matter who you voted for. It was easier to vote for him.”
Despite his reservations, Trump’s brand of patriotism appealed to him.
As the president of his high school student government in 2015, Jaedon successfully lobbied for and implemented a weekly Pledge of Allegiance ritual, and got area veterans to donate flags for every classroom, a project that was covered by this paper.
“We are lucky we live in a community with such supportive veterans,” he said, reiterating a sentiment he had emphasized in the earlier story.
On the campaign trail, Jaedon saw candidate Trump speak only once, at Fort Dodge, and was surprised.
“When I saw him in person, what really struck me was how different he was in person,” he recalled. “He was still loud and out there, but it was exciting to see the businessman Donald Trump.”
As he packs up for the Friday ceremony, Jaedon says he is looking forward to Trump delivering on his campaign promises like rolling back regulations, reforming immigration and repealing Obamacare.
He said he hopes good tenets of the Affordable Care Act, such as ensuring people with pre-existing conditions are not denied coverage and easing up the pressure on young adults by allowing them to stay on their parents’ insurance until the age of 26 — Jaedon himself is a beneficiary of that provision — are preserved. Others, like hiking insurance costs, he believes, should be changed.
Jaedon said this will be the first time he will attend a presidential inauguration, and he was no idea what to expect.
But it will not be his first trip to Washington.
He traveled there last year on behalf of the Iowa Department of Education to advocate for federal funding for extracurricular school programs.
While in the Washington this time, Jaedon will also visit extended family, Civil War sites and museums.
But the inauguration will undoubtedly leave a significant mark in the memory of the 19-year-old Waverly college student.
Of the 45th president he expects this:
“I want him to be an adequate representative of the people,” Jaedon said.
