Jobless white Democrats line up behind Trump

By Lian Bunny, Emily Mills and Jimmy Miller/News21

Newsweek.com
August 28, 2016
This article first appeared on the Center for Public Integrity site.
Trump signs in her backyard. Trump magnets on her refrigerator. Trump
buttons on her dining room table.
Kathy Miller is the Mahoning County chairwoman for Donald Trump.
While handing out Trump signs in June at a Republican headquarters just
south of Youngstown, Ohio, she was approached by a woman in her late 80s,
who said, I have never voted Republican in my life. Give me the biggest sign
youve got.
In economically struggling communities like Mahoning Countywhere most
steel mills have closedmany white working-class Democrats are voting for
Trump, registration records and 2016 presidential primary results show.
Theyre just all fed up, Miller said. It may be the economy for some. It may
be the school systems. It could be health care. It could be immigration,
education. It could be anything. Theyre just fed up with the direction of our
country. Mr. Trump showed up at the right time.
According to a November 2015 Public Religion Research Institute poll, 72
percent of Americans and 78 percent of white working-class Americans
believe the country still is in a recession.
A News21 analysis of the General Social Survey conducted by the National
Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago also found that in 2002,
the percentage of white Americans with hardly any confidence in the
executive branch of the federal government was just under 20 percent, the
lowest it had been between 2002 and 2014. By 2014, that number was
nearly 50 percent.
The disenfranchised voter who has lost their job as a result of policies
affecting the coal industry and other heavy manufacturing jobs are feeling
very frustrated with Washington, said Rex Repass, founder and CEO of
Repass, a national public opinion research and strategic consulting firm.
Even though many are historically Democratic counties, they have become
very red and very angry.

In Tennessee, after a clothing factory outsourced jobs and operations to

Mexico, a county that voted Democratic in the 2000 and 2004 presidential
elections went Republican in both 2008 and 2012.
In Mahoning County, Ohio, as its county seat Youngstown labors under the
loss of the steel industry, more than 6,000 voters have switched from
Democrat to Republican this year.
Similarly, frustration over closing steel mills and rising health care costs has
swayed nearly 5,400 voters to switch parties in Westmoreland County,
Pennsylvania.
And in one Kentucky county where residents frustrated with the demise of
the coal industry voted about 31 percent Republican in the 2000 presidential
election, they voted more than 72 percent Republican in 2012, even though
a majority of its voters remain registered Democrats.
Clay County, Tennessee, which borders Kentucky, used to be home to four
garment factories. Celina, the county seat, had two.
The largest of these factories was childrens clothing factory OshKosh, which
employed between 1,500 and 2,000 from the 1950s to the 1990s. In a
county with a population of between 7,000 and 8,000, everyone worked
there or knew someone who did.
Just about everybody who wanted a job, if theyd work, they had a job at
OshKosh, said Doug Young, director of the countys Three Star Initiative, a
program focused on improving the countys infrastructure to bring jobs to the
area.
The factory shut its doors in November 1996 and moved its operations to
Mexico, taking advantage of the cheap labor options the North American Free
Trade Agreement provided. The agreements purpose was to establish a freetrade zone in North America by lifting tariffs on a majority of goods the U.S.,
Mexico and Canada produce and trade with one another.
Almost overnight, unemployment spiked to nearly 30 percent as hundreds of
northern Tennessee residents lost jobs.
Racoe Inc., a military fabric cutting company, moved into the old OshKosh
factory in December 1997. Only six people now work in the 66,000-squarefoot building.
The county worked to recover from the loss, and logging is now a valued
industry in the heavily forested area. Log trucks pass through the small
downtown several times an hour.

Unemployment in Clay County, which is nearly 97 percent white, has petered

out to a little more than 5 percent in May 2016, just over the May national
average of 4.7 percent.
Yet the county still has a 24 percent poverty rate and historically Democratic
voters are switching to the Republican Party. In Marchs Republican primary,
Trump won Clay county 57.1 percent to Ted Cruzs 17.1 percent and had
more than double the votes of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Timothy Scott, the former Democratic chairman in Clay County, said older
people come to retire in Clay County because of nearby Dale Hollow Lake,
which attracts 3.2 million visitors to the county annually. Scott said more of
these retirees tend to vote Republican, but he still attributes much of Trumps
appeal to his rhetoric.
I think his popularity is [because] just everybody is mad, and he is saying
what they feel, he said. There will be a lot of Democrats voting for him.
While older generations have been moving into the community, Scott said
young people in the area are leaving because there arent jobs once they
graduate.
Young said Clay County voters feel ignored by politicians who they believe
arent doing anything to bring jobs back to the area. I really do think its this
attitude that we lost our jobs and nobodys really come to help us, Young
said.
In the Rust Belt of Ohio and Pennsylvania, steel was the dominant industry.
But as steel companies outsourced their labor to mills in China, voters also
grew frustrated with the job loss.
When the steel industry collapsed in the 1970s...this region was literally not
prepared for the shutdown of the steel mills, said Bertram de Souza, a
political columnist for the Vindicator newspaper in Youngstown.
Forty years after its steel mills closed, Youngstowns poverty rate is just over
40 percent.
The opportunities arent here, said Frankie Susany, 50, who grew up in the
Youngstown area and now works there as a small-business owner. What
used to be a thriving city in Youngstown is brown fields, abandoned mills,
abandoned buildings, abandoned factories.
Trumps Make America Great Again message resonates with Susany, who
said that when he grew up, young people who worked in the steel mills had
great lives. They drove new cars and had their own places to live right out of
high school.

Now, with that steel industry gone, Susany believes voters need to cast their
ballots with future generations in mind. Thats what this election is about,
he said. If we dont change it now, our grandchildren are never going to
know the America that [people my age] grew up in.
In the March 2008 primary, just under 14 percent of registered voters in
Mahoning Countywhere Youngstown is locatedvoted Republican. During
this years state primary in March, more than 48 percent of the countys
registered voters cast a Republican ballot, and poll workers had to print
additional Republican ballots. More than 6,000 voters then switched from
Democratic to Republican this year.
Leo Connelly Jr. is a Vietnam veteran and former salesman who voted for
Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 but switched to Republican this year to vote
for Trump in the primary. I was sold on the fact that Obama could turn this
country around, he said. We dont want to get fooled again.
In Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, which is 94 percent white with nearly
a 10 percent poverty rate, 5,400 voters switched to the Republican Party to
vote for Trump in the primary. The regions steel factories shut down in the
1980s, and residents remain bitter about the job loss, said Blair Adams, a
third-generation owner of K Castings Inc., a manufacturing plant.
The steel industry as a whole, the big foundries that pour the molten metal,
theyre gone, he said. All these people that are in this manufacturing area
are definitely shifting [parties] because they understand that their jobs are at
risk.
For generations in Kentuckys coalfields, including the town of Hindman,
families spent most of their lives working underground in the mines. As those
jobs disappear, Democrats are looking to options outside their party for
change and the chance for an improved economy.
Whats happened here [is] a catastrophe on top of a disaster, said Mimi
Pickering, a filmmaker with Appalshop, a media training center in nearby
Whitesburg. The last few years weve lost a great number of coal mining
jobs, but really the coal economy has been declining and the employment in
the industry has been declining since the 1950s.
As coal became more scarce and expensive to mine in eastern Kentucky, coal
companies moved to states such as Montana and Wyoming, where the work
is easier and cheaper. The companies also started to use advanced mining
technology, eliminating the need for a large number of miners.
Meanwhile, the government put environmental regulations into place,

encouraging states to switch from coal to natural gas as a power source.

Kentucky residents such as Ballard Combs, an 81-year-old former coal miner
from Knott County, see Obama as the face of these changes.
I loved the mines, said Combs, who worked underground most of his adult
life. Obama shut them all down.
Nearly 90 percent of registered voters in Knott County, which is 98 percent
white, are Democrats because its what their families have been for
generations.
But since 2008, the county has increasingly voted for the Republican
presidential candidate. Both Combs and his father were Democrats, but hes
voting for Trump.
Knott County Clerk Ken Gayheart said registered Democrats come into his
office daily to switch their registration to the GOP. When the coal companies
left, Gayheart said no industries moved in to fill the vacancy.
These old hills were never worth much, Gayheart said. We dont do
anything. We dont make anything here in Knott County.
Nearly 34 percent of the countys residents live below the poverty line. In
May, the unemployment rate was 10.5 percent.
Eastern Kentucky is in tough shape, but a lot of rural America is in a tough
time, said Tim Marema, vice president of the Center for Rural Strategies in
nearby Whitesburg. Something needs to change. Thats the point for the
residents on the Trump side.
Pervis Jacobs, 65, grew up in Hindman, Kentucky. Hes a lifelong Democrat,
but hes voting for Trump. I feel like I have no choice, said Jacobs. I just
dont like the Democrats policies anymore.
Many Trump supporters criticize increasing government regulations,
President Obamas health care law and immigration.
Nick Patterson, joint operating officer of Honest Abe Log Homes and
president of Barky Beaver Mulch in Clay County, Tennessee, said the
companies used to employ about 500 people and now employ 130.
I think one of the things thats so key in this political conversation over the
last couple years is our overhead per employee has increased drastically, he
said. It has come from federal regulations.
Patterson said Chinas economic situation has hurt his small business

because theres not enough domestic business. Over 50 percent of his

produced lumber will end up overseas.
Leslie Rossi, leader of a grassroots movement for Trump in Westmoreland
County, Pennsylvania, said she was initially drawn to Trump because he said
he would repeal Obamacare. Rossi, a landlord, painted one of her rental
houses red, white and blue to support the GOP candidate.
Obamacare didnt work, and its just been a burden, Rossi said. People still
dont have health care, and the people that did are paying more than theyve
ever paid. Its changed in such a worse direction.
Rossi also said she believes immigrants take benefits that Americans,
especially veterans, should be receiving. How can you bring an immigrant in
and give them free health care, and people that are American citizens that
fought for us, youre just not giving them the things they need? Rossi said.
Its sickening.
Lawfully present immigrants in the U.S. are able to purchase health care, but
undocumented immigrants are not eligible to purchase coverage unless they
apply on behalf of documented individuals, according to HealthCare.gov.
Veterans are eligible for coverage through the Veterans Health
Administration.
A News21 analysis found in 2014, just over 48 percent of white Americans
thought the number of immigrants should be reduced, according to data
from the General Social Survey. Only 13 percent of the same demographic
believe the number of immigrants should be increased.
The survey also found in 2014, nearly 29 percent of white Americans think
immigrants take jobs away, and roughly another 7 percent strongly agree.
Patterson said Trump is seen as a political outsider, especially to those who
have felt ignored by typical politicians.
When you get to the federal level, I think people do feel like they've not
been listened to because you've seen policies being handed down that have
not helped them, he said. I think some of the campaign promises that were
made on that have simply not been true. And I think that affects people.
Miller, the Mahoning County chairwoman for Trump, said Americans should
forget politicians. Trump appeals to her because hes a businessman, and
Trumps business background will create jobs and improve the economy.
We need someone who understands business, can get things done,
understands how the economy works [and] has employed people, she said.

I think thats my biggest beef with our regular politicians.... And I think Mr.
Trump, hes done it all.
Scott, the former Democratic chairman in Clay County, Tennessee, said
Republican candidates always talk about social issues such as immigration,
gun control and gay rights, but the discussion this year seems louder than in
past elections.
[Trumps] demeanor has brought a lot of these people out, said Scott, who
isnt voting for Trump. Hes made them vocal. He gives them courage.
Miller said his supporters are seeking a definitive change, one they believe
they will find in Trump.
I think the generation like mine, weve seen it all. Weve heard all the
promises and weve just decided were done, she said. We just want a
country that works. We want jobs. We want to protect our borders. We want
to have a life for our children.
Taylor Gilmore contributed to this report.
This report is part of a project on voting rights in America produced by the
Carnegie-Knight News21 program.