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Region's residents wake weary - some wary - to news of President-elect Trump

In South Philadelphia, Donald Trump was the talk of the Italian Market, vendors shouting his name across South Ninth Street as they stocked vegetable stands.

In South Philadelphia, Donald Trump was the talk of the Italian Market, vendors shouting his name across South Ninth Street as they stocked vegetable stands.

"I thought he had no chance," said Earl Joyner, 32, as he helped customers.

Across the river in South Jersey, some Trump fans enjoyed a celebratory hot breakfast at Ponzio's diner in Cherry Hill.

"I am pleasantly surprised," said Lucille Bertett, 72, who thought Hillary Clinton would win. Her husband, Anthony, 73, added, "If he does half of the things he said, I'll be happy."

In homes across the Philadelphia region, voters awoke Wednesday to greet a changed America - and reacted in different ways, weary and mostly wary, encouraged or worried for themselves and the people they love.

A common theme: shock.

"I'm devastated. I'm numb. I'm totally numb," said Clinton campaign volunteer Gary Watson, 70, a photographer who lives in Overbrook.

Watson stayed up late Tuesday, flipping the TV stations from CNN to NBC to MSNBC, thinking that surely the count was wrong.

The candidate who wants to build a wall at the Mexican border, who has routinely insulted minorities and women, was elected president? And the experts, the news and research organizations with their sophisticated polling, never saw it coming?

"He tapped into the nerves of people who were angry, people who wanted to shake up and throw a bomb into our government," Watson said.

Across the region, many immigrants - especially those without legal status - feared that Trump will make good on his campaign promises to unleash a beefed-up deportation force and rescind the Obama administration program that has shielded some from expulsion.

Many women were positively jarred by the election result.

"We put the ultimate bully, misogynist, racist, homophobe at the center of power of the whole world," said Carol Finkle, 74, who lives in Center City. "Shame on us."

The Philadelphia-based American Pastors Network knew what had happened: God worked a miracle. Trump's election was "pushback against the enemies of Christianity and freedom, such as Islam, globalism, and the establishment," president Sam Rohrer said.

Pennsylvania turned red for the first time since 1988, and change was plain in Philadelphia.

"It's unexplainable," said former Mayor Michael A. Nutter, who served as a Clinton surrogate, saying he never saw "that there are so many angry white people in Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania, and in the United States of America."

With more than 99 percent of the city vote counted, Clinton had 562,717 - about 26,000 less than Obama got in 2012. Meanwhile, Trump bettered Mitt Romney's performance, getting 105,784 votes compared with 96,467.

That's a shift of about 35,000 votes.

"I couldn't be happier," said Joseph DeFelice, chair of the Philadelphia Republican Party. "I'm shocked, like everybody. This is Brexit part two. I knew all along that people weren't telling the pollsters the truth. . . . We just did not see the energy for Hillary Clinton."

Mayor Kenney choked back tears at a previously scheduled ceremony honoring JEVS Human Services. He spoke for less than three minutes and left without taking questions from reporters.

Earlier at City Hall, Kenney told a large and somber crowd of cabinet members, staff, and City Council officials to be strong and work hard.

"Tomorrow will come, and the day after tomorrow will come, and we will still be a great country and we will work out what we need to work out," he said. "But we will never change who we are as a city. And the diversity I look at in this room, the diversity we have across this city, we are stronger together."

A stunned former Gov. Ed Rendell, asked how he was feeling, could only muster, "Not too good."

Trump deserves credit because he "developed a campaign theme on his own and it absolutely struck a nerve with American voters," Rendell said.

The reality of a Trump presidency, though, makes him anxious, giving rein to "a shoot-from-the-hip guy who doesn't think things through, who has no interest in policy, who is likely to react emotionally," Rendell said.

Almost everyone said they expected change, in their lives or work or the nation's governance.

"LGBT equality certainly will be stalled," said Malcolm Lazin, executive director of the Philadelphia-based Equality Forum, a leader in the gay civil rights movement.

He doesn't see same-sex marriage being repealed, but expects that prospects for federal laws to ban discrimination against gays will be stymied.

"What are our values as a nation?" Lazin asked. "Twenty million Americans will lose health care. Undocumented immigrants obviously now have to worry. . . . As an American, I hope he's up to the task, and what we have seen in the past is not what we get in the future."

At the University of Pennsylvania, which can count Trump as an alumnus, staffers sought to help students cope with the results - whether they were sad Clinton lost or suddenly feeling unwelcome because they favored Trump.

A professor postponed a midterm biology exam, because students "emotionally invested" in the election had stayed up late, and one group of students planned a "solidarity walk" Wednesday evening.

At Drexel University, freshman Maggie Mulhern, 18, wept.

"It's just scary," said the mechanical engineering major from Philadelphia. "He can say, 'I'm going to grab a girl by the [genitals] and that's accepted."

Her friend, a staggered Daniel McGarry, 18, a freshman nursing major from the city, put his hand on hers in comfort. "The fact that he is pretty much bigoted against everyone, it's a disgrace," he said. "The fact that America sided with him is also a disgrace."

At the Italian Market, Bill Garcia, 48, a Democrat and self-described hippie, said the divide in the popular vote showed how the nation is split down the middle. He worried that a Trump administration might undertake crusades against minorities, women, or gay people.

But he wasn't hopeless.

"We can lick our wounds and cry about it," he said. "But we just have to go on to the next day."

jgammage@phillynews.com

215-854-4906

@JeffGammage