Ken Shupe responded to a woman who was stranded on an interstate in North Carolina on Monday. Shupe is a tow truck driver; the woman had been involved in a wreck, according to reports.
“Every business dealing in recent history that I’ve had with a socialist-minded person, I haven’t got paid,” Shupe told the station.
He added: “Every time I’ve dealt with these people in recent history, I get ‘Berned.’
“With an ‘e,’ not a ‘u.’ ”
So Shupe refused to tow her.
“He said ‘I can’t tow you, you’re a Bernie supporter,’ ” the woman, Cassandra McWade, told The Post on Thursday. “And I was like, ‘Wait, are you serious?’ ”
He was.
Fox Carolina reported: “When he saw ‘a bunch of Bernie Sanders stuff’ he said he told the woman, ‘very politely,’ ” that he could not “tow her car because she was ‘obviously a socialist’ and advised her to ‘call the government’ for a tow.”
Attempts to reach Shupe by The Washington Post were unsuccessful Thursday morning.
McWade — who said she had a Sanders yard sign visible in her car, as well as a bumper sticker — said she was “totally in shock” as she watched Shupe pull away.
“I was completely flabbergasted,” she said.
“Something came over me, I think the Lord came to me, and he just said get in the truck and leave,” Shupe told an ABC affiliate. “And when I got in my truck, you know, I was so proud, because I felt like I finally drew a line in the sand and stood up for what I believed.”
According to Fox Carolina, Shupe identified himself as a conservative Christian who supports Donald Trump. McWade, however, told The Post that she felt he didn’t “exactly exemplify his belief.”
“You don't have to agree on anything just to be kind to one another,” she said.
Shupe told the ABC station that he’d had “some horrible experiences in the last six months with towing cars for this mindset individuals,” in which, he said, he hasn't received payment for services.
“They want to argue about a $50 tow bill, and it turns into just a drama and a fuss,” he said, according to WLOS. “And I said, you know, I’m not going to associate with them, and I’m not going to do any business with them.”
This is not the first time a statement of political support has seeped into a business deal this election.
In March, a Colorado landlord advertised a vacant apartment, but indicated in the listing that he wouldn't rent to Trump voters.
“I don’t know what to do anymore about what’s going on in this country,” the landlord, Mark Holmes, told the Daily Sentinel, a newspaper in Grand Junction. “It’s just a mess.”
The Daily Sentinel reported that at least one caller left a voicemail for Holmes, saying that his policy violated anti-discriminatory federal housing regulations.
A spokesman for the Department of Housing and Urban Development told the newspaper that wasn’t the case.
“That has nothing to do with the Fair Housing Act,” HUD spokesman Jerry Brown told the Daily Sentinel.
This post has been updated.
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