One afternoon in early July, Marvin Peavy, a voluble self-made real estate mogul from Georgia, was standing on the fourth-floor deck of his beach house in the Florida Panhandle, the one that nearly everyone seems to call the Trump house.
He was beaming like a man who had just won a pie-eating contest. This was his summer to bask in victory.
Before him, spreading to the horizon, were the sparkling azure gradations of the Gulf of Mexico. Below him, vacationers puttered along the busy two-lane highway in golf carts and S.U.V.s. Many honked and hooted their appreciation for the giant pro-Trump banners that have long adorned Mr. Peavy's home -- ones that officials in Walton County, Fla., spent years trying to force him to remove.
One banner hanging that day described the president as "Daddy Trump" and wished everyone a happy Father's Day. Another declared, "Welcome to the Gulf of America." A third saluted American independence, with the tagline "Trump 2028."
In a few minutes, Mr. Peavy, 65, would drop a new banner. He promised it would be something spicy. "You know what? We have the First Amendment right," he said, a mischievous smile spreading on his face. "People can do whatever they want to do."
In 2021, county code-enforcement officials determined that his banners had violated rules designed to ward off any hint of beach-town tackiness on Scenic Highway 30A, a stretch of vacationland that has taken to calling itself "the Hamptons of the South."
Mr. Peavy, defiant, left his banners up. The ensuing legal fight earned him numerous appearances on Fox News, where he presented himself as a free-speech warrior and victim of bureaucratic pettiness. By early this year, the $50 daily fines against him had accumulated to more than $60,000.
But a mere county code proved to be no match for a defining fact of the Trump age: that a brash flouting of the rules of good taste is part of the rebel appeal of Trumpism itself. Even in a place where genteel charm is a main draw.
Eventually, the Republican-controlled Walton County commission decided to quit fighting Mr. Peavy after his lawyers argued that the county sign ordinance was unconstitutional. In March, the county and the limited liability corporation controlled by Mr. Peavy entered into a settlement agreement. A judge determined that no fines should be assessed and ordered the county to pay Mr. Peavy $42,000 to cover his legal fees.
That generated even more attention for the Trump house and the man who owned it.
On a recent afternoon, a vacationer named John Merritt jumped out of his golf cart to snap a few photos of the banners. A lawyer and a Trump fan from Murfreesboro, Tenn., Mr. Merritt, 58, said he did not have so much as a bumper sticker extolling the president. But he appreciated Mr. Peavy’s boldness. He said it demonstrated that Trumpism was no longer something to keep quiet about.
“I think more people now are encouraged to show, very openly, their support for Trump,” Mr. Merritt said.
In the summer months, the beach communities up and down 30A are crowded with the type of polished, moneyed Southerners who can otherwise be found in the region’s law firms, Pilates classes, Christian academies and fraternity and sorority houses.
They tend to arrive on 30A in giant, late-model S.U.V.s. They eat $32 fresh grouper sandwiches and shop for Lily Pulitzer ensembles at the Barefoot Princess boutique in Alys Beach, a beachside enclave of whitewashed, quasi-Moorish buildings.
For many, the social nucleus is Seaside, the carefully planned development down the highway from Mr. Peavy’s house. It has pastel houses with picket fences, a town green and pedestrian-friendly streets. Time magazine once said the town “could be the most astounding design achievement of its era.”
Versions of the Seaside aesthetic spread to other communities along 30A. Buildings have height limits, and the county’s “scenic corridor overlay” rules include other limitations on signs and landscaping -- part of an effort, as the law puts it, to “protect and enhance the county’s attraction to tourists, enhance civic pride” and “protect economic values of affected properties.”
Many well-heeled visitors to 30A are Trump fans, but they rarely let their Trump flags fly -- literally or figuratively -- while at the beach. Unwritten rules of etiquette seem to advise against it. Among men, a ball cap advertising a golf club or upscale rod and reel is far more common than a “Make American Great Again” hat. For women, a flowy maxi dress is a more acceptable après-swim choice than a “God, guns and Trump” T-shirt.
Mr. Peavy does not mind being a little more exuberant than his neighbors. He said that he was convinced that the Democratic Party is “basically now communism and socialism,” and that he wholeheartedly believes the lie that that the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump.
Raised in a small Georgia town by parents who were public school educators, Mr. Peavy managed a number of Hardee’s restaurants for years but turned to real estate about 25 years ago after watching an infomercial about flipping houses. He now runs a company based in Macon, Ga., that owns 2,300 apartments.
But he still thinks of himself as a working-class guy who earned his money the hard way. His conservatism, he said, emerged naturally -- a result of “when you take your ass to work every day, and you start paying taxes.”
He bought his vacation home on Highway 30A in 2020. Public records show that Walton County opened a case against him in July 2021 when he hung a banner from the house that read, “Trump won.”
Someone complained, and the county sent a worker to check it out. “Met on site with the PO, who said that he is a patriot,” the county code compliance officer reported that September, using an abbreviation for property owner, “and he feels the banner is protected under free speech.”
By the following month, Mr. Peavy seemed to have grasped that his story would appeal to right-wing media outlets. “Thought you might want to see what you started,” he wrote to the officer. “I’ll speak this week on Fox News.”
Around that time, he hung a second banner from his home: “Let’s Go Brandon,” it declared, a code for a vulgar attack against former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
This March, after the county commissioners gave up their fight, Mr. Peavy addressed them at their monthly meeting. “I got a mouth on me,” he warned.
He boasted that his effort to keep his banners up had gone viral on major social media platforms. People around the country, he said, loved what he had done. A number of Trump-world luminaries -- Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, former Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, the former football star Herschel Walker -- had visited his house.
Mr. Trump himself had even called to thank him, Mr. Peavy added.
“I’m glad that your rights have been restored and apologize for any problems that we caused,” said Donna Johns, the commission’s chairwoman.
Some locals were not happy with the outcome, either for political reasons or because they do not like to see the flaunting of the rules that have helped ensure that 30A did not become another Panama City Beach, with its exuberant commercial jumble of mini-golf places, high-rise condos and T-shirt shops.
“When I saw those signs go up, I didn’t really care what was on them,” said Dave Rauschkolb, the owner of Bud and Alley’s, a restaurant in Seaside. “This was for me a direct violation of our scenic corridor signage rules.”
Mr. Peavy changes out his banners with some regularity. The more complicated ones, he said, cost about $2,700 to make. This month, he said that he expected his latest banner to annoy “every liberal and every fancy woman” on 30A.
Fighting against a whipping wind, he and a friend unfurled the new banner just before dinnertime. It showed Mr. Trump’s scowling face -- his mug shot from when he was charged two years ago with election interference in Georgia. “I don’t give a,” it said. Then it showed a rat leading a donkey by a rope.
Mr. Peavy posted the big reveal in a TikTok video. As of Saturday, it had been viewed more than 349,000 times.
“The man. The myth,” one viewer wrote. “The 30A legend.”