Trump's dominant performance in the Republican primary in Massachusetts on March 1. Although not a rust belt state, Trump won big in heavily blue collar, union cities.If Donald Trump wins the Republican Party nomination, his path to the White House will run through this working-class city with a knack for picking presidents.
No Republican has ever won the White House without Ohio. And nowhere better reflects the challenges and opportunities Trump faces in his 2016 presidential quest than Canton, a once-booming industrial city that, like Ohio and the rest of America’s rust belt, is going through profound economic and demographic change.
Canton, a gritty northeastern Ohio city where the once-dominant steel industry has been in decline for 20 years, is the heart of Stark County, a political bellwether that, save twice, has picked every winning presidential candidate since 1964.The real-estate mogul’s primary wins in Michigan and in Mississippi on Tuesday, in the face of blistering attacks from the party's establishment, expanded his lead in the White House nominating race and demonstrated his broad appeal across many demographic groups in the Republican Party.
A more immediate test looms next week in the state’s Republican primary,
where polls show Trump narrowly leads Ohio Governor John Kasich, who casts himself as a pragmatic, statesman-like alternative to Trump. If Trump wins Ohio and Florida — states rich in the delegates who select their party's nominee at July's Republican National Convention - he would almost certainly lock up his party’s nomination.
Sitting in a steel workers' meeting at their Canton union hall, Curtis Green, the chapter's vice president, described Trump's support among a growing number of members as their "dirty little secret."
"I view him as a radical and a racist and I don't want to be affiliated with that," Green said. "But if you say what you mean, a lot of guys see that in Trump and they respect that. He doesn't dance around the issues, he takes them head on.
There are a fair amount of our members who do support Donald Trump."
Ohio is often at the center.
The state,
which has not voted for the loser in a presidential election since 1960, is seen as
a microcosm of American swing voters — from culturally conservative “Reagan Democrats” who defected from their party to support Republican Ronald Reagan in the 1980s to suburban soccer moms and upwardly mobile Hispanics.
To offset the growing proportion of blacks and Hispanics in the voting age population, Trump must turn white voters out in greater numbers than Romney in cities such as Canton. His performance in primary states where Democrats and independent can vote, as well as Republicans, suggests Trump could attract large numbers of these voters in a general election.
Reuters interviews here with more than two dozen voters show why.
In this city of 72,500 people,
Trump's denunciation of free trade, political correctness and illegal immigrants is resonating among some traditionally Democratic blue-collar steel workers.
Tuesday’s primary in neighboring Michigan showed how volatile this election has become, with Trump’s potent appeal among disaffected whites stretching beyond the South. In the Democratic race, Sanders won most of the state’s white working-class countryside and small towns in an upset over front-runner Hillary Clinton.
In Canton, like elsewhere in the “rust belt” heartlands stretching from the Midwest to the Great Lakes region and parts of the Northeast,
manufacturing has been hollowed out since the 1970s, due in part to foreign competition. In 1990, Ohio had over 1 million manufacturing jobs; today, just 680,000, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Ohio has shed nearly 200,000 manufacturing jobs since the 2007-2009 Great Recession.
There is no polling to predict which way Canton and Stark County will vote in November's general election. But after a long era of mixed local government, the city council, after elections last year, is now made up of entirely Democratic Party members, although the current mayor, a former Democrat, won office as an independent.
In Canton, there are nearly 6,000 voters registered as Democrats, compared to just over 1,100 Republicans according to the Stark County Board of Elections. In 2006, there were 12,000 registered Democrats and 4,400 Republicans.
Democratic strategists say that despite the demographic changes,
Trump could still prevail.
Mary Anne Marsh, a Democratic strategist, cites Trump's dominant performance in the Republican primary in Massachusetts on March 1. Although not a rust belt state, Trump won big in heavily blue collar, union cities.
http://news.yahoo.com/ohios-dirty-little-secret-blue-collar-democrats-trump-110445523.html
