The Rust Belt gave Trump victory, now they want jobs in return

WASHINGTON — Only about 20 miles separate Randall Shelton and Cecile Taylor’s homes in Wayne County, Mich. It’s the gulf between their expectations for Donald Trump’s presidency that seems unbridgeable.

Shelton, 63, a disabled auto worker living in Allen Park, hopes Trump — an “angry white man” like him, he says — will create jobs and crack down on illegal immigration. Too much is given to people “who haven’t paid into the American pie,” he says.

Taylor, a college administrator from Canton, despairs over Trump’s election. She worries about what he’ll mean to race relations, to minority rights, to America’s place in the world.

“I’m desperately trying to find some light at the end of a tunnel we haven’t even started down,” said Taylor, 52. “I’ve never been more anxious in my life.”

Trump takes the oath of office Friday, a surprise winner of a shocking election. Tapping into voter anger and Democratic disaffection not seen since Ronald Reagan, the president-elect lost the popular ballot by nearly 3 million votes but still won due to a near-sweep in the industrial Rust Belt.

By flipping three states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — by a total of less than 80,000 votes, he won. That razor-thin margin, about six-tenths of a percent of the nearly 14 million votes cast in those states, wouldn’t even fill the Big House at the University of Michigan.

Those three states together hadn’t backed a Republican nominee since Reagan in 1984. But Trump’s victory wasn’t just about them: It was about Ohio and Iowa, which both had twice backed Barack Obama. It was about Indiana, which supported Obama in 2008 but now looks out of reach for Democrats. And it was about Kentucky, where Hillary Clinton’s husband, Bill, won twice in the '90s but which rejected her by 30 percentage points.

In Trump, said G. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., voters — especially white working-class ones — heard an economic and cultural clarion call they hadn’t heard since Reagan: Their losses could be reversed.

Trade deals could be torn up. Coal could be big again. Manufacturing could return.

“These are people whose lives have been transformed over the last couple of decades, hitting them in their families and where they live. They don’t have the skills, they can’t pick up and go,” Madonna said. “These are people who had no expectation that their lives could be better until Trump.”

They’re voters like 26-year-old Ryan Wylie of Detroit, who is unemployed and supported the Republican despite the grief he says friends gave him in a city where Trump lost 95% of the vote to Hillary Clinton. He sees Trump as a strong leader who will start “bringing jobs back and just taking care of business.”

In Brownsburg, Ind., Robin Maynard, a 53-year-old union worker at Carrier, argues Trump has already saved his job by convincing the company not to move 1,000 slots to Mexico. Indiana backed Obama in 2008 but chose Trump by 19% this time around.

In Luzerne County, Pa., Democratic county council member Eileen Sorokas — who volunteered for Obama, voted for him twice and even named a couple of ducks after him and the vice president — voted for Trump and is confident he’ll be a great president.

“He’ll handle himself pretty good,” said Sorokas, 69, who lives in a county where coal-mining jobs are gone and once-booming factories have long been shuttered. “I watched him on The Apprentice. … I think he’s a businessman and he’s going to do a good job. His livelihood is here.”

Hope ... and worry

For those living in this part of America, a Trump presidency means soaring hopes — and deep-seated worries. You can find either almost anywhere, if you look.

Sorn Sanh, a 38-year-old Republican bank manager in York County, Pa., voted for Clinton. A single mother of Cambodian heritage, Sanh’s teenage daughter helped organize a unity rally after students were seen at a neighboring vocational school carrying a Trump sign and chanting “white power.”

"I think we are going backwards,” she said, noting she believes “the whole reason they thought they could do that" was because of Trump's campaign rhetoric comparing Mexicans to rapists, criticizing Muslims as not doing enough to protect America and suggesting a ban on Muslims entering the country. “You talk about bullying, this is bullying," she said. “Kids are looking up to this.”

At the University of Michigan-Dearborn, in the heart of the one the largest Arab-American communities in the U.S., student body president Syeda Arbab, 21, whose family is Bangladeshi, said she’s already had one classmate who wears a hijab say someone on campus asked where her “badge” was to indicate she’s a Muslim.

“It’s going to be exhausting,” she predicts of the coming fight to protect rights.

And in Cincinnati, 22-year-old library assistant Beth Brown is worried about her brother, who is transgender. She fears Trump’s election, crass behavior, and his campaign’s ties to far-right conservatives could lead to increased intolerance after legal victories in recent years.

“He is worried about it,” Brown said. “There’s a lot of suppressed anger in the country, and I feel like it might encourage people to do what they previously wouldn’t have done.”

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He’s ‘going to do great things’

Perhaps no message tapped into the heartland quite like Trump’s slogan to “Make America Great Again.”

The job losses here are staggering: In the seven Rust Belt states examined by the USA TODAY Network, more than 700,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost since 2000. Nationally, it’s some 7 million manufacturing jobs since 1980.

And while unemployment is down steeply in the aftermath of the last recession and some manufacturing gains have been seen, wages have declined or stayed flat in current dollars.

It’s a situation Trump’s supporters believe he will change, despite global forces arrayed against him.

In Macomb County, Mich. — which Trump won by nearly 12 percentage points after Obama won it by four in 2012 — St. Clair Shores plumber John Scalzo, 52, predicted that by securing the borders and lowering taxes, reducing government and getting rid of programs he believes stifle initiative, Trump’s “going to do great things.”

“It’s very simple,” he said. “Let’s create a climate here in America where it’s more profitable for (business) to stay here than go overseas. We finally have someone who’s going to do that. Look at what he’s done already,” he added, noting both the Carrier deal and Ford Motor’s decision to reverse course on a $1.6 billion investment in Mexico following his election.

“I trust him,” said Terry Wright, a 59-year-old retired painter in Louisville, Ky., and self-described “rock ‘n’ roll biker” who lives in the city’s struggling Portland neighborhood. “I think he is going to make that change and he’s going to help everybody.”

Immigration crackdown a top issue

It’s not just working-class voters who see better days ahead. While Trump underperformed in many traditionally upscale Republican enclaves, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has risen 8% since the election.

In Troy, Mich., Jeffrey Scott, president of Allan Tool and Machine, says anything that spurs construction — like the lower tax rates proposed by Trump — will be a boost for his business.

Des Moines barber Craig Hunt, 39, didn’t vote, saying he wasn’t sold on either candidate, even though a lot of other African-American men supported Clinton. He is unconvinced any president has made much of a difference in his day-to-day life, but he remains cautiously optimistic about Trump.

“A lot of my peers in the business community … they were for Trump,” he said. He hopes Trump keeps his promises to create jobs and can also heal divisions.

Lori Schaefer-Weaton, 49, president of Agri-Industrial Plastics in Fairfield, Iowa, likes a lot of what the president-elect says. But she has concerns that Trump — who has baited world leaders and threatened debilitating tariffs — need to be consistent.

“He is a business person at heart. There are a lot of things that when he speaks you feel like he is speaking because he knows what he is talking about,” Schaefer-Weaton said.

“I don’t want to pick fights,” she added. “I need to know what my rules are for the next five years … not to the next tweet.”

There is also a strong undercurrent of hope among Trump voters for returning to a more prosperous — and less culturally and ethnically diverse — time. Many believe immigrants take jobs from citizens.

In western Wisconsin, which swung toward Trump after backing Obama in the last two elections, Richard Zastrow, a 54-year old truck driver and part-time farmer in Arcadia, says Trump got his vote not just for promising to keep automakers from building cars in Mexico. It’s his belief that Trump will be tougher on immigration, too. In 2000, 74 Hispanics lived in Arcadia. Today, it is home to nearly 1,000.

“We didn’t want all these people coming into the country,” said Zastrow, taking a break from tending his 100-odd head of beef cattle and before heading off to his night job hauling chickens. “We’ve got to be able to track them, know what’s here. We can’t just turn them loose. They’re just coming like flies.”

In Aspers, in south-central Pennsylvania, Jose Beltran is a 49-year-old farm crew supervisor and former migrant worker from Mexico who is employed in the U.S. year-round now on a work visa. He doesn’t have any fears of a Trump administration, or his talk of walls or anything else. But standing in 19-degree weather on a windswept hill, as he and a crew trim fruit trees for the next season, he asks, “Did you see any white guys on the way up? Who wants to do the job I do, working in winter?"

It depends on where you stand

One likely outcome of the Trump presidency is clear: the end of the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare.

Joseph Bryant, a 38-year-old tax adviser in affluent Fishers, Ind., north of Indianapolis, won’t miss it.

A married, gay libertarian who adopted his two children after their mother was murdered, Bryant says the ACA has been a nightmare. He can’t find therapists for his children, and since he began buying insurance through the exchange in 2014, his premiums have risen from $3,000 a year to $8,400 — even as his out of pocket expenses climbed to $7,000 last year. To make ends meet, the family has cut back on “frivolous” spending such as cable TV and eating out.

He has little hope for Trump as president, but at least with a Republican in office, he says he believes the ACA can be replaced with something better.

In tiny Montmorency County, Mich., county commissioner Albert LaFleche, 83, sees Obamacare far differently. A Democrat who voted for Clinton, he saw his county give nearly 70% of its vote to Trump, even though the ACA has cut the uninsured rate there from 24% to 8% — one of the largest declines in the state.

His adult daughter has several cancers and has insurance thanks to the ACA. “Everybody thinks they’re paying too much for it, but without it, my daughter — I don’t know where she’d be,” he said. “She couldn’t live because of the cost of the medicine.”

That’s just one example of how the Trump effect depends on where you stand.

Jeremie Clifford, 45, who lives in sparsely populated Morgan County, Ohio, southeast of Columbus, and manages an auto parts store in Monroe County, is a longtime Democrat. But he voted for Trump because his family can’t afford health care under the ACA, even with two incomes. For him, it’s cheaper to pay the penalty for not having insurance, he says.

But on other issues, like dealing with foreign policy and terrorism, he doubts Trump’s abilities. “Of course, that’s what his Cabinet is for,” Clifford said.

In Harrisburg, Pa., 38-year-old Maurice Cobb, an overhead crane operator and member of the United Steelworkers union, voted for Clinton. But he guessed 70% of the other members backed Trump, believing in the candidate’s promises to bring jobs back while protecting their gun rights.

Where will Rust Belt go next?

Some in the Rust Belt wonder what Trump’s election means next: Will it reinvigorate Democrats stunned by his victory? Or is the region on a path — like West Virginia, Kentucky and now, it appears, possibly Indiana — to being irrecoverable for the party?

Republicans already dominate state legislatures across most of the region, and only one of their governors, Pennsylvania’s Tom Wolf, is a Democrat.

At the University of Michigan’s Center for Political Studies, professor Michael Traugott says it’s still too early to tell whether Trump’s election signals lasting changes for the political makeup of the industrial Midwest. A lot may depend on whether the new president keeps “a reasonable number” of his promises to create good-paying manufacturing jobs in the region and follows through on issues his supporters see as threats, like immigration and terrorism.

“If he can’t do that, we have to see if we go back to regular party politics or if there are other alternatives,” Traugott said.

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But there’s no doubt Democrats are soul-searching ahead of 2018 and important gubernatorial and U.S. Senate elections across the region.

“Democrats generally missed the boat in understanding just how deep the dissatisfaction of working class, largely white, voters was,” said Tim Burke, Democratic Party chairman in Ohio’s Hamilton County. “You look around the entire Midwest at the sweep by Trump and it was, in the end, the loss of the white middle class.”

Rusty Redenbacher, a 46-year-old disc jockey for 93.9 The Beat in Indianapolis, voted for Clinton and openly worries about what Trump’s election means for race relations. But his hope is that those across the region and across the U.S. can take the election as a call to meet each other, in person, to learn what each is about.

“Twitter is cool. Facebook is cool. (But) people can get a little wicked and wild behind keyboards,” he said. “Come out and talk to people face-to-face, and we will work through this. We have survived bad things before and I think we will l survive this guy.”

How Trump won the Rust Belt 

Trump won the White House by flipping three key Rust Belt states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — that were expected to provide a Democratic firewall for Clinton. And Trump did better than expected across the industrial Midwest, outperforming polls even in states where Clinton was considered likely to win. Here’s a look at them:

INDIANA
Population: 6.6 million (2015 est.)
Electoral votes: 11

What happened: Despite a brief Democratic turn backing Obama in 2008, Indiana has been trending Republican for decades. Trump had been expected to win there easily, which he did and more: Whereas polls had him with a lead of about 11 percentage points on average, he won by 19. Republican Todd Young also beat former governor and senator Evan Bayh for a Senate seat. Maybe it didn’t hurt that Indiana Gov. Mike Pence was Trump’s running mate, but clearly, Trump tapped into disenfranchised Hoosiers, especially in rural and manufacturing areas. Of note, he blasted Carrier’s decision to close an Indianapolis plant and move jobs to Mexico — a decision the company has since reversed.

What’s next: Hoosiers will be watching Trump and Pence to see whether they can make good on promises to keep American jobs in the U.S. Politically speaking, in 2018, the seat of first-term Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly is up, and he’s likely to be a target.

IOWA
Population: 3.1 million (2015 est.)
Electoral votes: 6

What happened: Iowa has backed its share of Democratic nominees in recent years, including Obama in 2008 and 2012, and there were some doubts before the election about Trump’s ability to hold onto an edge he had there. In the end, he outperformed polls and won by 10 points, scoring huge victories in rural regions and among white voters without a college degree. In all, Trump won 93 of the state’s 99 counties, including many smaller industrial cities that had turned out for Obama.

What’s next: Iowans will be looking to Trump to follow through on support for ethanol and biofuels and will be watching closely to see whether his tough talk on trade hurts exports like corn, soybeans and hogs. Politically, next up is the 2018 governor’s race, when Republicans will look to continue what since 2010 has become a dominance in state politics.

KENTUCKY
Population: 4.4 million (2015 est.)
Electoral votes: 8

What happened: Voter registration may favor Democrats, but Kentucky has been reliably Republican (with the exception of Bill Clinton’s elections in the 1990s) for decades. Still, Trump still did far better than expected, riding a pro-gun, pro-coal conservative message to a 30-point margin. Trump won 118 of Kentucky’s 120 counties, including many in rural eastern Kentucky where the Democrats have traditionally done well in state elections.

What’s next: Trump said on the campaign trail that he’d bring coal jobs back, especially in eastern Kentucky, so people there are waiting to see whether he can follow through, given economic forces stacked against it. Politically, neither U.S. senator is up in 2018, and Kentucky’s governor’s race isn’t until 2019.

MICHIGAN
Population: 9.9 million (2015 est.)
Electoral votes: 16

What happened: Clinton had widely been expected to win a state that hadn’t backed a Republican nominee since 1988, even though polls had it close headed into the election. But Trump’s strength in rural and white working-class areas — buoyed by a message that he would bring manufacturing jobs back and tear up trade deals maligned as taking auto jobs out of Michigan — gave him a leg up as Clinton lagged Obama’s margins in Democratic areas. Trump won by less than 11,000 votes — two-tenths of 1% — out of nearly 4.8 million votes cast.

What’s next: While promising to make Michigan a manufacturing hub for the world again, Trump is threatening a 35% tariff on auto companies that import cars into the U.S. from Mexico, where lower wages make it affordable to make smaller cars. That threat is being watched closely, as well as its impact on the domestic auto industry and whether it would result in substantially more jobs in Michigan. Politically, the governorship will be up for grabs in 2018, and Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow is expected to run for a fourth term and be a target.

OHIO
Population: 11.6 million (2015 est.)
Electoral votes: 18

What happened: Nowhere did Donald Trump’s blue-collar appeal pay off better than in swing state Ohio, where he won by an 8-point margin. He was especially popular with whites over the age of 25 without a bachelor’s degree, who make up three-fourths of the state’s white population. He dominated the state’s Appalachian southeast, won over factory workers in the northwest and took more votes than expected from traditional Democratic strongholds. Meanwhile, African Americans who had turned out in droves to support Obama, failed to provide the same numbers for Clinton — giving Trump the largest margin of victory in a state considered a national bellwether since 1988.

What’s next: Like elsewhere, Trump promised more jobs in Ohio but statistics indicate Ohioans have generally been able to land new jobs: It’s finding ones that pay as well as lost manufacturing jobs that is tough. Ohioans will be looking to Trump’s promise on trade deals, as well as whether the Affordable Care Act is repealed and what will happen to some 700,000 who gained Medicaid coverage. Politically, Trump’s election has already had ramifications, given Gov. John Kasich’s reluctance to back Trump. A Trump-backed challenger ousted the state party chairman in a vote this month. In 2018, the governor’s seat is open, and Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown is up for re-election.

PENNSYLVANIA
Population: 12.8 million (2015 est.)
Electoral votes: 20

What happened: Hammering away at a message that he would restore coal and manufacturing jobs, Trump flipped the state to the Republican column (with polls showing Clinton with a slight edge) for the first time since it voted for George H.W. Bush in 1988. He won by less than 1 percentage point, taking 55 of 66 counties, including three — Luzerne, Northampton and Erie — that supported Obama in 2012. And while five of the eight counties with the largest cities that traditionally go Democratic did back Clinton, voters did not come out in the same numbers as they did for Obama.

What’s next: Pennsylvanians expect Trump to follow through on fixing what many consider lop-sided trade deals with Mexico and China and return manufacturing to the state. The same goes for coal mining jobs, where he said he would “unleash the power of American energy right here in Pennsylvania,” though coal still has to contend with cheaper natural gas. Politically, first-term Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf is up for re-election in 2018, as is Democratic Sen. Bob Casey.

WISCONSIN
Population: 5.8 million (2015 est.)
Electoral votes: 10

What happened: Polls had Clinton winning reliably Democratic (in presidential years) Wisconsin by nearly 7 points, but Trump scored what may have been his biggest upset of the election by taking the state by about seven-tenths of a percentage point – about 23,000 votes. The story was the same as it was across the Rust Belt: Trump dramatically outperformed 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney in smaller, rural and blue-collar communities and won more than 500 cities, towns and villages that voted for Obama four years before. And even though Clinton fared better than Obama in a few areas, it wasn’t enough to keep him from taking a state that hasn’t backed a Republican nominee since 1984.

What’s next: Jobs, trade, immigration — Trump’s supporters want to see whether he follows through on promises to reinvigorate manufacturing in the industrial Midwest and crack down on illegal immigration, which some voters believe is taking jobs away. Politically speaking, the governor’s seat is up in 2018 — it’s not yet clear whether Republican Scott Walker will try for a third term — and Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s seat is up that year as well.

Contributing: The Cincinnati Enquirer's Chrissie Thompson, Jason Williams, Dan Horn, Jeremy Fugleberg and Mark Wert; The Des Moines Register's Mike Kilen and Jason Noble; The Indianapolis Star's Alvie Lindsay and Chris Sikich; The Louisville Courier-Journal's Joseph Gerth and Morgan Watkins; The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Craig Gilbert and Rick Romell; TheYork (Pa.) Daily Record's Rick Lee and Randy Parker; and USA TODAY's Adrian Burns and Deirdre Shesgreen.