LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: We're in Hungary this week to learn why the American right admires this small Central European country's leader. The prime minister here, Viktor Orban, is a divisive figure on the world stage and at home, and that divide grows more apparent as you start to travel from the city out into the countryside. In Budapest, Zsuzsanna Kiss-Gal was rushing to an appointment in a jacket that said, don't give up the fight.
ZSUZSANNA KISS-GAL: I live here in a certain kind of escapism I'm doing every day, like, every single day. Like, when I'm riding a bike, I feel like I'm in Amsterdam, so that's how I make myself comfortable in this country.
FADEL: She's an architect. And right now, she says there's no place in society - whether it's kids, school, health care - where you don't feel politics creeping in. She's conservative in some ways, but she says she worries about one person, Prime Minister Viktor Orban, being so central to the right-wing Fidesz party.
KISS-GAL: It's one person who is in the very much of a focus of this whole political agenda. It's very frightening when a person is taking over so much space.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAR DOOR CLOSING)
FADEL: But the farther you drive outside of the city, the more support you find for Orban.
Hello.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Hi. Nice to meet you.
FADEL: Just a couple hours away, we visit a village of about 350 people, all from the Roma minority here.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Welcome to Falu Magyar (ph).
FADEL: Zoltan Csima (ph) is here with a medical van from the Hungarian Charity Service of the Order of Malta. It connects people with doctors over video calls. He runs the community center hosting this mobile clinic. The center also draws residents with a daycare and free food.
ZOLTAN CSIMA: There's no post office in town. There's one kindergarten, yes, but no school, no doctors.
FADEL: An electrical line runs down the one road through town, where some people don't have running water. When we arrive, a man is in crisis.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: There's an extra ambulance coming now.
FADEL: OK.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Because there's someone who came, and it turned out that he had a heart attack.
(CROSSTALK)
FADEL: He came with his lunchbox to get food.
CSIMA: And he said he doesn't feel good. And he said that he'd like an EKG because everybody knows we have this truck here.
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FADEL: After a long wait, paramedics arrive in an ambulance and take him away.
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CSIMA: It's a good thing that they're here, actually, today because if this truck wouldn't be here, maybe he would have waited more.
FADEL: He did survive the heart attack. Nearby, Erzsebet Orosz (ph) works part-time at the community center. She hands out food, does laundry for people in the machine at the center since basically no one has one. She's 40 now, and she gripes a lot about the youth.
ERZSEBET OROSZ: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: "When you look at young people, 60% are going in the wrong direction."
OROSZ: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: "Children go to school. They don't study. There's some stealing, smoking, drugs."
FADEL: Then the conversation turns to politics.
And are people happy with the government here?
OROSZ: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: "Yes, it's a Fidesz supportive village, 99% votes for Fidesz."
OROSZ: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: I always support Fidesz. I always voted for Viktor Orban. There's the fence to not let the migrants in - and also the drug law, especially, that's now being passed.
FADEL: She says she likes his newly declared war on drugs and his anti-immigration stance. Now, it's true. About a decade ago, there was a mass migration that saw hundreds of thousands of people pass through Hungary for other parts of Europe. What did stick was the demonizing rhetoric from the party and allied media for years, and it's kept voters like Erzsebet firmly behind Orban.
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FADEL: Down the road, Helena Kollar (ph) invites us in to see the newborn horse in the shed behind her home.
HELENA KOLLAR: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: So this will be for the horses.
FADEL: Her daughter trails her everywhere she goes in the ramshackle garden. Her husband works at a meat factory, but most people around here struggle to find work.
KOLLAR: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: There's the public work, basically, that the state offers. There's no jobs. So they're, like, you know, sweeping the streets and cleaning the tunnels.
FADEL: She's referring to a government program under Orban that's brought jobs to Roma communities like this one that face discrimination, poverty and lack of access to public services. Those jobs, though, pay well below the minimum wage.
And before that program, were there less jobs?
KOLLAR: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: If not for this program, there would be no jobs.
FADEL: Programs like this one have won him support from voters in poor and rural areas, including the vast majority of Roma voters. They're the largest minority group in Hungary and make up roughly 8% of the population. But Helena isn't exactly an avid fan.
KOLLAR: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: I think they're all the same. And I don't really follow what's going on now.
FADEL: Do you like Victor Obon?
KOLLAR: Husband?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: No. But you have to vote for somebody. The other one wasn't better either.
FADEL: So every four years, Helena casts her vote for Orban.
Have you felt like the government has helped the area?
KOLLAR: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: No. So we haven't received help from the government - we, generally, around here. And I don't think we will.
FADEL: She'd like a better life, better job opportunities for her community. But the public work program that brought a few jobs here is more than what they had before. We walk and chat from the garden into the house...
KOLLAR: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: This is the kitchen.
FADEL: ...Where a wood-burning stove heats the place in the winter and she opens windows to deal with the heat in the summers. Here, what happens in Parliament, all the way in Budapest feels far away. But Orban is facing a test to his power, after 15 consecutive years as prime minister, from an opposition candidate, Peter Magyar, who broke from Orban's own party to run against him. He's capturing the attention of a lot of people in the country who've turned away from the prime minister and are hoping Magyar will be an opponent who can finally win at the ballot box.
What do you think about the opposition guy?
KOLLAR: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: On TV, you always hear that his bad, he's against the Hungarians. Who knows what's the actual truth? They're talking to the people who are gullible, who they can feed their own truth to.
FADEL: Right now, Helena probably will do what she's done before when parliamentary elections come around next year - vote for Orban. He is who she knows.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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