The day after Kamala Harris entered the race for the White House, Connie Griffis, a retired Ohio teacher, was so eager to plant a yard sign supporting the new Democratic candidate that she had no choice but to order one from Amazon, she said, unable to wait days or even weeks for her local Democratic Party office to provide one.
“It was such an exciting twist in the campaign that I had to have one right away,” the recent retiree said, glancing from her doorstep at the sign and its simple message: “Kamala Harris, of course.” “I love that slogan. It sums up my feelings perfectly. And I’m going to help all my neighbors who want to put up a sign find one.”
The mission that M has given himselfme Griffis, a former special education teacher, would normally be considered an activist in many parts of the United States. But in the small town of Middletown, Ohio, she is more about resistance, bravado and a bit of a lost cause, as the political terrain of this working-class and steel-industry stronghold has sunk into conservatism and Trumpism in recent years. And this, with a pride reinforced in 2024 by the arrival on the Republican ticket, as vice-presidential candidate, of local senator JD Vance. The local boy, whose radicalism is appreciated by the former president, has built his mythology and media ascension on his essay Hillbilly Elegywhich is largely anchored in the territory of this municipality of 50,000 souls planted between factories, pipelines, rivers and forests, in the heart of Appalachian culture.
“We work at the plant with a guy who went to school with him,” says Calen Messenger, a worker he met at the exit of Cleveland Cliffs, one of the region’s major employers and an American producer of carbon steel, with a shy smile. “It’s very cool J.D. Vance coming from here makes us feel important.” And he adds: “The world at the plant is pretty good for Republicans. I’m not too interested in politics. But I’m going to vote Republican. That’s all.”
The worker’s mindset partly embodies the mathematics of Butler County, of which Middletown is a part, and which, since 2008, has revealed in each presidential election a remarkably consistent vote, more than 60%, in favor of the Republican candidate in the race, regardless of the name of the Democrat on the ballot. And this, in a social and economic context whose deterioration seems, itself, to ignore the political currents that clash on the scale both locally and nationally.
In this industrial stronghold battered by the present and by the relocation of a certain number of jobs abroad since the beginning of the 2000s, the poverty rate wandered between 24.8% and 23.2% during the presidency of Donald Trump, before decreasing slightly to 20.2% two years after Joe Biden took office in the White House, according to data from the American Bureau of Statistics. It nevertheless remains above the state average (13.4%) and that of the United States (11.5%), in 2022.
Stubborn convictions
In the residential neighborhoods surrounding the Cleveland Cliffs plant, the general state of disrepair of several houses and the carcasses of cars abandoned in the street easily put images on these figures. The presence in the city center of several pawn shops seem to be the most active in the area, too. A portrait, however, far from shaking the political convictions of Dean, a machinist in a metalworking plant in the region.
“We were a thriving city here under Donald Trump,” said the man I met a few days ago at the door of his union office. “The trade war he launched against China protected our jobs here. He didn’t get a chance to finish the job he started because of COVID, and that’s why we need to bring him back to the White House.”
In many rural and industrial regions of the United States, the vote of unionized households certainly contributed to Donald Trump’s rise to power in 2016, allowing him to win key states such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio. In 2020, a decline in this vote for the Republican partly reshuffled the cards in favor of Joe Biden in several of these places. However, it gave him narrow victories that, four years later, leave his successor, Kamala Harris, facing the same fragile prospects.
“I have no good reason to believe that rural workers are going to be attracted to the Harris-Walz duo [Tim, de son prénom, gouverneur du Minnesota et aspirant vice-président] because they face unique economic and social problems that Democrats rarely talk about, Harvard University political scientist Jennifer Hochschild said in an interview. It’s still possible that former MAGA supporters [Make America Great Again, mouvement de Donald Trump] are changing sides, disappointed by the former president’s promises of jobs that have not delivered results. But I am skeptical. Inflation and its consequences on purchasing power are marking the minds at the moment in favor of the Republicans. The Democratic policies of the last few years [et leur effet sur la vie des Américains et sur le développement économique] are little known. And Donald Trump’s support is not motivated by promises and economic policies anyway,” but by a visceral opposition to the Democrats and by the cultural, identity, religious, and ideological wars that the former president has managed to drag the country into. With a series of shock statements combined with racism, authoritarianism, and conspiracy theories.
A paradox in an industrial city like Middletown, where, however, the simple comparison of the record of the two camps in terms of worker protection does not allow us to get lost in the nuances, estimates Robert Forrant, union historian contacted by The Duty at the University of Massachusetts. “The contrast is stark,” he says. “Lately, alongside Elon Musk, Donald Trump has promoted firing workers who go on strike. As president, he has slashed federal spending on health and safety enforcement, leading to a spike in worker deaths and injuries during his term. He has signed three executive orders attacking federal workers’ collective bargaining rights… Joe Biden, for his part, became the first president in the nation’s history to support workers on a picket line in a labor dispute,” while Kamala Harris and Tim Walz made the Democratic convention in Chicago in August a celebration of Democratic policies that protect workers’ rights while highlighting the strong endorsements they received from several of the nation’s largest unions ahead of the November election.
To (re)read, among the reports of “Le Devoir” in the United States
Combating disinformation
“Most workers know which political party in the United States supports unions and union members,” says Billie Bowermaster, secretary of the Middletown local of the Laborers of North America. “But for several years, we’ve also had to combat misinformation that’s very difficult to counter, especially among people who don’t have a lot of education.” She points to a recent online fear campaign launched by Republicans against a Democratic plan that they say is preparing “to tax workers’ money before they earn it.” “Those were the words. It’s actually a capital gains tax that would hit people making a million or more,” she continues. “But when the rumor gets out there, when it’s picked up even by Fox News, it becomes increasingly difficult to correct.”
And she adds: “Our union members know what is right. But Trumpism has also become a cult.”
A cumbersome cult to carry for Chuck and Sheil, met at the door of the Republican Party campaign office, where the couple came to pick up an oversized sign touting the candidacy of Donald Trump and JD Vance. “If Trump is not re-elected, the country is going to burn in hell,” the man said, as he placed the sign in the trunk of his pickup.
“The Democrats are going to try to cheat again,” said Larry Lamb, a construction worker who also came to pick up a huge sign to put on his front yard, “next to two flags that are starting to wear out.” “Kamala Harris is a bigger threat than Joe Biden. If she wins, we’re done. Trump and the Republicans won’t be able to hold office for many years,” he said.
This report was financed with the support of the Transat International Journalism Fund-The Duty.