Like most in the boisterous crowd that filled the arena at Kamala Harris’ rally during her Charlotte stop last week, Hecht was inspired by the Democratic candidate for president, especially by her debate with Donald Trump a few days earlier.

“I’m so proud of her,” she said of Harris. “She’s dynamic, educated and so poised.”

But Hecht, a retired registered nurse who now lives in a senior facility in Matthews, North Carolina brought a warning born of her own World War II experience, when she was shuttled to Belgium from Austria, eventually making it to safety in the United States. Fellow Jews in wartime Europe were not so lucky. She herself had a close call, something she is reminded of every time she brushes her hand across her beautiful face and feels scars from surgery to repair damage inflicted by fragments of a German bomb.

She held my own hand and looked into my eyes, as she issued a warning: “You want to know why I’m here? I want democracy to continue.” She heard echoes, she said, in Trump’s demonization of minorities and immigrants, his pledge to prosecute and jail political opponents and refusal to accept election results unless he wins. The people around Trump scare her.

“I learned the hard way, and I don’t want this country to go through that.”

While her journey might have set her apart from most who stood in line for hours, and then waited a few more, there was a sense of urgency and anxiety that tainted the upbeat mood.

Can you blame them when Trump and running mate JD Vance (who once wondered if Trump could be “America’s Hitler”) tell Democrats to end any criticism in the wake of a gunman seen near Trump’s golf course, but refuse to end heated, baseless and racist rumors about Haitians legally residing and working in the city of Springfield in Ohio. It’s the state Vance is supposed to represent, though if you asked if he considers those particular residents his constituents, I’m not sure he would understand the question.

Their words, amplified on conservative, conspiracy-minded sites, are stoking chaos and unrest, with extremists, no doubt feeling a kinship, joining in.

In contrast, Harris, in a conversation with National Association of Black Journalists’ reporters this week, said that while she and her family felt protected, she worried for other Americans. “Not everybody has Secret Service, and there are far too many people in our country right now who are not feeling safe,” she said.

Those might include some constituents of Ohio Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski, who is urging folks to write down the addresses of homes with Harris signs in the yard. He would certainly seem more at home in a time when the government was there to intimidate and bully rather than serve and protect everyone.

Zuchowski is just following the lead of Trump, who is placing blame for the country’s ills on immigrants, the Black and brown ones, that is. Two of the former president’s three wives — both immigrants — escape his opprobrium.

I wonder why.

When Donald Trump Jr. suggests that Haitian immigrants are less intelligent as a group, with low IQs, he is dipping into dangerous and debunked race science that has been used as justification for heinous acts throughout history.

It’s no wonder many Harris supporters share Ruth Hecht’s fears.

Her son Martin Hecht, 62, who had traveled from the Portland, Oregon, area to help his mom celebrate her birthday, said he was very excited that Harris could be the first female president of the United States. But he realistically knows and is worried that a second Trump administration is possible. “I can’t imagine why so many people are supporting Trump,” he said.

The phrase “this is the most important election of our lifetime” has been repeated so often, it’s become cliché. Yet everyone I spoke with at the Charlotte rally believed it this time. Most also thought North Carolina, the state that has tantalized Democratic presidential candidates since Barack Obama narrowly won here in 2008, was winnable for Harris in 2024.

From Harris at the top of the ticket to down-ballot Democratic candidates (many of whom shared a few words before the vice president’s speech), there was optimism, but also the hard truth that success will take work, campaigning and increased voter turnout, often quite sketchy when it comes to Democrats in the state.

No DJ blasting Frankie Beverly and Maze or mini-set from Charlotte native and Grammy winner Anthony Hamilton could quite make the crowd forget that a lot can happen before November, despite polls that show Harris with a slight, within-the-margin-of-error lead in North Carolina.

Republicans are worried, which may be one reason they are trying things like an Republican National Committee lawsuit to prevent University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill students from using digital ID to vote or an effort to purge voter rolls of more than 200,000 names.

Even someone who carries the name that’s the vibe of the Harris-Walz ticket’s “New Way Forward” said she is cautious. Joy Del Gaizo of New London, N.C., said she felt a “responsibility to the future of my kids and grandkids.” She has four of each.

Del Gaizo, a retired information technology consultant, recalled how she cried after Trump was elected in 2016, and vowed to do everything — from calling prospective voters to going door-to-door in her Republican-leaning neighborhood — this election season.

“I would not want to live in a country that is a dictatorship,” she said, remembering Trump’s promise he won’t be a dictator, “except for day one.”

And when Harris took the stage, the crowd chanted “not going back,” fueled by a desire to elect the Harris-Walz ticket, and to make sure the Trump exposed at the debate and over the past nine years never gets another chance to return rage and retribution to the White House, and take millions of voters down the same path.