Will the Rust Belt ever be great again?: Bill Sternberg
As the good old days of the manufacturing era fade away, the bellwether bell might not ring as loudly as it once did.
NORTH CANTON, Ohio — To understand how political newcomer Donald Trump managed to capture the Republican presidential nomination, and the challenges he faces winning the general election in November, drive an hour south from the glitzy GOP convention in Cleveland to Stark County.
Trump lost the county to favorite son Gov. John Kasich, 48% to 38%, in Ohio’s primary in March. But the nominee’s anti-establishment message resonates in this swing county in a swing state. “People are ticked off, and they want change,” says Janet Creighton, a county commissioner and Kasich delegate who now supports Trump.
Stark County — home to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the McKinley Presidential Library & Museum and the National First Ladies’ Library — is particularly fertile ground for the GOP candidate’s criticism of trade deals and his vows to return jobs to the Rust Belt.
The county has lost a third of its manufacturing jobs in the past 15 years. To the extent that those jobs have been replaced, it has been with fast-food and health care positions with lower pay and stingier benefits. People don’t necessary believe that Trump can bring back those lost jobs — he can't, and no one can — but many think he’ll make it more difficult and less attractive for employers to move jobs overseas.
Nowhere is the impact of manufacturing’s decline starker than in North Canton, where the hulking brick shell of the old Hoover vacuum cleaner plant stretches along Main Street. Founded here in 1908, Hoover once employed 3,000 unionized workers in 1 million square feet of space.
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But over two decades starting in the mid-1980s, Hoover and later its new owners shifted the production jobs from North Canton to Texas, Mexico and ultimately China. Today, membership in Local 1985 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers is down to 16. The union hall across the street from the plant is scheduled to close for good at the end of July.
The county’s largest and most important manufacturing employer, Timken, also faces tough times. Under pressure from activist investors, the company split into two concerns in 2014, one focused on making steel and one on bearings. The split is a long and complex story, but it provides more evidence that the system is rigged against working-class people in favor of Wall Street. Since the split, TimkenSteel, in particular, has been hurt by weak energy markets and foreign competition.
Athens restaurant, in a Canton neighborhood near one of the Timken facilities, used to be packed with shift workers in what people refer to as the good old days. Now it attracts a sparser lunchtime combination of blue- and white-collar employees.
When you ask diners about the presidential race, the answers verify Stark County’s reputation as a key electoral battleground within Ohio, a must-win state for presidential candidates. There’s the retiree who changed his registration to Republican this year just so he could vote against Trump. And there’s the veteran Canton police officer unhappy with Hillary Clinton’s support for the Black Lives Matter movement.
The common theme is a distinct lack of enthusiasm for either Trump or Clinton, mirroring the national polls that reflect two highly unpopular candidates. Voters’ comments reflect the talking points on their favorite partisan media: Clinton is dishonest. Trump is an unpredictable narcissist who needs to be kept away from the nuclear codes.
In the past four presidential elections, Stark County went for Republican George W. Bush in 2000, Democrat John Kerry in 2004, and Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, all by narrow margins.
Mike Hanke, a retired county administrator and former newspaper editor, says the county’s bellwether bell might not ring as loudly as it once did, given Stark’s aging population and relative lack of immigration. He predicts Clinton will win Ohio, despite many people’s disgust and anger with the political establishment. “When Trump says he’ll make America great again, the implication is we’re not a great nation now,” Hanke says. “Yes, we are.”
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Some residents are wrestling with, even agonizing about, their votes. “It’s unbelievable that in a country of 320 million people, this is the choice we have,” says Don Leuchtag, 83, president of a material handling and storage equipment company.
Hillary Clinton? “I don’t trust her for a minute.”
Donald Trump? He’s offended too many people, and it’s a “pipe dream” to think you can wall off America from immigrants and global commerce.
Leuchtag is right about that. For people in the Rust Belt communities where this presidential election will be contested, Trump is selling an unattainable return to what they regard as glory days gone by — and making preposterous promises that, if he's elected, seem destined to leave people on Main Street in North Canton even more disillusioned about politicians than they already are.
Bill Sternberg is editor of the Editorial Page.
(A previous version of this column said Republican Mitt Romney won Stark County in 2012. After provisional ballots were counted, Democrat Barack Obama won the county.)
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