'My Dad Is a Republican Politician, I Stopped Talking to Him'

I was born in Florida, but my dad was in the military, so I grew up moving around a lot. I went to three different high-schools, in three countries and by the time I'd graduated, I had lived in ten different places.

My family was really tight knit when I was growing up. Every time we moved to a new state or country we were all each other had, so we had to be pretty close. My two younger siblings were always my main support network.

My dad was always very vocal about current affairs and fell to the right of the political spectrum. He majored in political science at college and always said he wanted to run for office one day. Like many kids, I was fed his viewpoints and opinions during my childhood, so for a while I thought I was a Republican too.

Changing my political views was a very slow process, but living in Europe definitely had a huge impact on me. My higher education took place in Germany and the Netherlands, which are generally more liberal countries than the United States, and I could see my opinions were often considered as extremely right wing by my peers.

As I continued to witness different political systems, my beliefs gradually began to shift. For example, issues like health care can be an extremely contentious back home, but when I was living in Europe I thought: Oh, they have socialized medicine here and the streets aren't on fire, so it's probably not the end of the world.

But I think my attitude really started to change when I was around 18. I went off to college and started meeting new people, who shared their own stories and viewpoints with me. I began to experience the world on my own for the first time.

In 2016, my dad retired from the military and decided to run for Sandoval County Board of County Commissioners. At the time, I still had a healthy relationship with him and was open to his way of thinking, so I moved back to the U.S. to help him run his campaign.

I didn't really tell my dad about my changing attitudes while I was running his campaign. I knew with a certain degree of conviction that I was no longer a Republican, but I was still learning about left-wing politics and wasn't entirely sure where I stood.

During this period, we would attend various Republican events, where some guests would rant about building a wall or say derogatory things about Latin American immigrants.

While I was living in the Netherlands, I did some volunteer work with a Syrian refugee group. I knew they were just normal people escaping a war zone. So, hearing some of the rhetoric around immigration just started to seem ridiculous to me.

In my opinion, after my dad won the election, his views became increasingly right wing. I found it hard to broach certain topics with him, like abortion, because I found his opinion too difficult to hear. In the years after 2016, our relationship definitely got worse. My parents divorced, which added a whole other layer of complications to our relationship, but my dad and I would also get into heated disagreements about politics often.

Regularly, I felt as though my dad did not want to hear my views on certain issues, even if I was factually correct. It was interesting to me, because I knew he had such an interest in politics, but it felt like he was being woefully ignorant to my arguments.

I stopped having a relationship with my dad in November 2020, soon after COVID-19 had ensued in the United States. We had very different views on the issue, but we didn't really speak about it much until Thanksgiving.

My dad was making decisions about his response to COVID which I felt were putting my loved ones at risk. I was very angry at him and took to social media to vent my frustrations; I thought his attitude towards the virus was dangerous.

After he saw what I had written online, my dad was furious and blocked me on social media. The only way I could communicate with him was through email, but by Christmas we had stopped speaking altogether.

I wanted to repair that relationship and I hoped he'd understand the gravity of the situation; that I didn't feel I'd bashed him on social media without reason.

The next time we talked was a few months later, around Spring of 2021, when he called to tell me he'd be running for Governor of New Mexico. There were a few other personal calls after that, we both kind of tried talking, but to me, it was clear that it wasn't going to work. The last time I saw him in person was over two years ago, on Labor Day of 2020.

Now, I'm registered to vote as a Democrat. But even so, I think that the average party member of the Democrats is relatively right wing compared to leftists in Europe. So I would normally just say that I fall on the left of the political spectrum.

I miss my dad all the time, but I don't know how to mend that bridge. Of course, it's frustrating. I've been accused online of using the rift with my dad for my fifteen minutes of fame, but that's absolutely not the case. I would much rather have a relationship with my dad than feel I have to use my online platform to talk about this.

It's a very conflicting feeling, I don't want to sit there and bad mouth my dad, but on the other hand, I have my values and what I think is best for society. Because my father is an elected official, I think it changes things. He's in a position to implement his viewpoints, as opposed to the average person, who may hold conservative views, but doesn't necessarily have the ability to make laws or policies to fit their worldview.

Maddie Block, 25, is a marketing manager and creative non-fiction writer who lives in Boston. You can follow her on Twitter at @mblock507 or Instagram at @maddie._block.

All views expressed in this article are the author's own.

As told to Monica Greep.