For years, Donald Trump has been dismissed as an uncouth outsider by the old-money elite and captains of industry who make up the establishment on Palm Beach island.
Even reviving the landmark Mar-a-Lago estate and turning it into a destination feature of the Florida coast brought nothing but bitter legal tussles over everything from beach access to flag poles and airplane flight paths.
Now, more than two years into his presidency, residents say the town is warming to the idea of having the “winter White House” nestled among the palm trees and voluminous bougainvillea of its narrow lanes and alleys.
Marie Davis, who served for more than 10 years as president of the Palm Beach Republican Club and knows anyone who is anyone, said there had been a marked shift in attitude.
“I think they are grateful for his policies. They don’t always like the way the message is delivered, but they like what he is doing for America and the rest of the world,” she said. “They give him more credit now than they may have done a few years ago.”
[Related: Feds subpoena Trump PAC, Mar-a-Lago for docs on suspected Chinese money]
A few years ago, Trump was still viewed as the brash arriviste, a new-money stain on a genteel world that revolved around a season of charity galas and croquet tournaments.
He bought Mar-a-Lago in 1985 for the knock-down price of $8 million and immediately found himself on a collision course with the town, which rejected his plan to subdivide the estate into individual properties.
Not only did he bring tabloid headlines and New York manners in his wake, he was an unwanted reminder of a changing world, according to Laurence Leamer, who lifted the lid on life here with his 2009 book Madness Under the Royal Palms: Love and Death Behind the Gates of Palm Beach, for which he was promptly ostracized.
“He represented vulgar new money, this new world,” he said. “He was the personification of new money in America and most of them didn’t have the wealth they had before — and for that alone he was threatening.”
The upheaval went further, he added, when Mar-a-Lago became a club shaking up a staid scene that had centered on the Bath and Tennis Club and the Everglades, where the members’ roll included names that conjured the building of America, such as Vanderbilt, Whitney, and du Pont.
[Also read: College freshman tricked Secret Service agents, sneaked into Mar-a-Lago to ‘see how far I could get’]
“Even the Everglades and the Bath and Tennis, which tend to elite status, to keep their memberships up they are admitting people now they wouldn’t have invited for dinner 20 years ago,” he said. “They are not the elite they were any more.”
A different elite calls the island home now. The president has trawled his neighbors for Cabinet members and senior officials. Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary, has a $23 million home about a mile from Mar-a-Lago. Ben Carson, secretary for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, lives in Palm Beach Gardens. Rudy Giuliani, the president’s lawyer, owned two condos in the area.
The result is an influx of journalists with the president on winter weekends, as well as road-clogging security agents, Washington politicos and TV anchors.
Larry Casey, a veteran political operative and businessman who has lived in Palm Beach for more than 20 years, said the result was a mixed blessing for residents.
“On the one hand, they like the attention; on the other, these are private people,” he said. “The town has always had an on-again, off-again relationship with Trump.”
[Read: Schumer: Ousted Secret Service chief ‘must’ testify about Mar-a-Lago security breach]
So when headlines blared that approximately two dozen charities were shunning Mar-a-Lago, moving their black tie galas elsewhere in 2017 amid blowback from donors, it was not long before some began returning. Quietly.
Locals said the nonprofit groups were often under pressure from boards of directors who lived elsewhere in the U.S. Attitudes in Palm Beach were different.
Lexye Aversa, a prominent event organizer, said she never had any doubt about where to hold her Christmas charity luncheon for A Safe Haven for Newborns, featuring the singer Franco Corso.
“For me what’s important is that it’s the property that best reflects the spirit of what I’m doing,” she said, describing an intimate world of Spanish tiles and Italian marble.
“It’s irrelevant to me the politics surrounding it and who owns it.”
