Todd Sias in his home in Erie in 2017. (Jordan Allott)
UNTIL 2016, David Moore had always considered himself politically independent—so independent that he’d never even bothered to vote. But Moore was eager to vote for Donald Trump for president. So was everyone he knew at the plastics shop where he worked. “I know firsthand from just my division, of 125 employees out of three shifts, every single one of us voted for Trump for the same reason,” he told me over drinks at an Erie Applebee’s early in 2017. “We wanted change.”
We were pretty much standing as a shop saying, “We want to see something different. We don’t want the same political promises that don’t hold up.” And Trump was very, very persistent through his campaigns that he was going to bring that change that a lot of us lower-class working families were trying to find.
Moore didn’t agree with Trump on everything; he opposed Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico, for instance. And Moore said that, had he voted in 2012, it probably would have been for Barack Obama. He even gave the former president an “A” grade on performance. That said, Trump’s pledge to “make America great again” by renegotiating trade deals and bringing jobs back from overseas made Moore a big fan from early in the campaign. “Myself, and I know my wife, and numerous family members, we were all for Trump from day one.”
Moore, once an itinerant youth, settled down in Erie in his early twenties, married, and began working as a roofer, then in manufacturing. In 2012, Moore started off “at the very, very bottom” in the molding division at Plastek Group, a plastics packaging manufacturer and one of Erie’s biggest employers. By Moore’s count, at least ten established plastics shops in the area had moved abroad during the Obama presidency. “They would come and try to get jobs with us,” he said of the laid-off workers. “I think that had a huge influence on why so many of Plastek’s employees actually voted for Trump.”
In 2016, Moore himself was laid off when Plastek underwent a series of cuts. At the time of our interview, he was doing seasonal contract work, installing sprinkler systems throughout the county. He enjoyed working outdoors again. But with a growing family at home, he knew it wasn’t a long-term solution. He was planning to submit his resume to Erie plastics shops, and he seemed confident that he’d soon land a job.
Moore’s job loss only reinforced his election day decision. “He’s an advocate for the working class and that the politicians haven’t listened to them,” Moore said of Trump. “If you did not have people in manufacturing, you didn’t have people in construction, you didn’t have people doing the real hard jobs, our country would not be nothing. I think our voice should be heard a lot clearer, and I’ve felt that over the years it hasn’t.”
Trump, Moore said, appealed to the working class on an “‘I’ve been there, I know what you guys have been through’ level.”
Donald Trump performed well among blue-collar workers like Moore in 2016: He won 52 percent of voters without a college degree, according to the Pew Research Center, a five-point improvement over Mitt Romney’s 2012 performance.1 Trump even won 52 percent of white union households, a formerly Democratic constituency—the best result for a Republican presidential nominee since Ronald Reagan’s landslide in 1984.2 Trump’s strength with working-class voters was crucial in places like Erie County, a faded manufacturing hub that borders Lake Erie to the north, New York to the east, and Ohio to the west.
Four years after Romney lost Erie County by 19,000 votes, Trump won it by 2,000, making him the first Republican presidential candidate to win there since 1984. That 21,000-vote swing (a reversal of 19 percentage points) helped Trump become the first Republican to win Pennsylvania since 1988.3 Hillary Clinton dominated in Erie City, whose population of 100,000 comprises about one-third of the county’s total. But even as she won all of the city’s 69 voting precincts, Trump won overwhelmingly almost everywhere else in the county.4
Erie has been hit hard in recent decades by the loss of manufacturing jobs and the consequent decline in population as people have moved elsewhere to find better opportunities. More than 10,000 people moved out of Erie County during the six-year period leading up to the 2016 election—a hefty number for a county with fewer than 280,000 residents.5
As the 2016 election approached, locomotive manufacturer GE Transportation, then Erie’s largest employer, announced it would be laying off 1,500 employees, one-third of its workforce.6 During the same period, 3,900 refugees and immigrants settled in Erie, including hundreds of Syrian refugees, helping to prop up the shrinking population. But as Erie’s economy shifts from manufacturing to a combination of manufacturing and services, education, and health care, some workers are being left out. That’s why Trump’s pledge to bring back manufacturing jobs resonated so deeply here.
The day after interviewing Moore, I met Todd Sias and his wife Diana at their humble apartment on Parade Street in downtown Erie, just a few blocks from the Lake Erie shore. Before we sat down to talk, Sias showed me some photographs. The printed photos showed Sias, an unemployed forty-four-year-old who immigrated from Mexico as a child, smiling, gesticulating, and having a grand old time at the Erie Insurance Arena on August 12, 2016. That was the day Todd and Diana had witnessed then-presidential candidate Donald Trump holding court in front of some 10,000 admirers. Todd looked in the photo as though he could hardly contain his enthusiasm. “This is me. And I’m wearing my ‘Make America Great’ shirt,” Todd explained. “And I’m happy.”
Like Moore, Sias said he had supported Trump “since day one.” Sias listed the reasons why he was so enthusiastic about Trump: Trump’s pledges to repeal Obamacare, to ban certain refugees from entering the country, and to build a wall between the US and Mexico to keep out illegal immigrants.
I asked Todd whether he was troubled by some of Trump’s hard-line positions and harsh rhetoric on immigration. “I know that Trump seems like he’s hard-pressed against Hispanics, Muslims, anybody who is not basically an American,” Todd answered. “And as well he should be. America should be for Americans. I am Hispanic, but I have dual-citizenship, and I filled out the paperwork and got in this country legally.”
Todd Sias in his home in Erie in 2017. (Jordan Allott)
But the topic that mattered most to Sias and many other Erie County residents was the one Trump zeroed in on that day Sias saw him: trade and manufacturing jobs.
“Would I be good at keeping jobs over here?” he asked the crowd. “You look at this arena, and you see thousands and thousands of people. I think we’re going to do great.”
Earlier that day, Trump had told the Erie Times-News that he’d come to Erie as an ambassador for “the working man and woman.”
“I’m representing people whose jobs have just been taken away because their companies have left,” he said.7
Sias had worked in construction and manufacturing for most of his adult life but hadn’t found work lately. The day before I met him, he had interviewed at Taco Bell. “I mean, no job is too demeaning when you need food on the table and a roof over your head,” he explained. “The thing I like about Trump is, he wants America first,” Sias said as Diana looked on. “It seems like we’re getting short-ended on all the trade deals. It doesn’t seem like we have any growth in the economy, and it seems like we’re literally outsourcing all our economy and commerce out of the country.”
Perhaps most notable about Trump’s presence in Erie was how it contrasted with Hillary Clinton’s absence there. Clinton sent all of her top surrogates—husband Bill, daughter Chelsea, and her running mate, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine—but never set foot in the county herself. “Hillary Clinton wasn’t even good enough to campaign for herself,” Todd said. “If you’re not willing to put in the work, you don’t deserve the title.”
Maybe Clinton felt she didn’t need to show up. As then-Mayor Joseph Sinnott told me later in the week:
(The city of) Erie was a big Clinton area. It always was. They were very, very supportive of Bill Clinton, very, very supportive of (Hillary) Clinton in 2008. But Hillary did not come here. And it was noticed and it was talked about within the party and the voters. And as history now shows, a lot of the folks that you would have expected should have been Hillary voters went the Trump route.
Clinton took this Rust and Snow Belt county for granted, and she paid dearly for it. In places and among people who have felt abandoned and forgotten, hope had been in short supply. And as Todd Sias put it, for many Erie residents, “The hope of (the American dream) is alive again with Donald Trump.”
***
Following the 2016 election, Erie and other pivotal counties received an avalanche of national media attention, but not necessarily the type of attention their residents felt they deserved. In many of the places I traveled, people would tell me that other journalists had visited, curious about the political changes that had occurred there. Many were wary of out-of-town reporters. Once, when I tried to interview a Hispanic woman in rural Wisconsin, she declined, explaining that a reporter had come through a few weeks earlier and misreported what she had told him. In other cases, residents welcomed the chance to speak with me, sometimes in the hope of dispelling what others had previously reported.
That was the case in Erie, where I met many residents who felt journalists had forced their story into a narrative box. As Sean Fedorko, co-founder of Radius Cowork in Erie, put it about the thrust of the post-election coverage in Erie, “Here’s our story about a sad Rust Belt town and the people who are angry about its change, and we just fill in the names.”
The subtext was usually that only economic desperation could explain why counties that previously voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama subsequently voted for Trump. Exhibit A in the media’s one-sided treatment of Erie was a documentary produced by CBSN, the streaming video news channel operated by CBS News. Airing a couple of weeks after Trump’s inauguration, the twenty-minute documentary was titled, “America: Manufacturing Hope.”8 The video begins with an elderly woman describing how GE Transportation laid off six men, including her brother, who went on to commit suicide. As she tearfully recounts the story, ominous music plays in the background, and on a TV screen nearby, Donald Trump is seen delivering his inaugural address. Erie is referred to as a “sinking ship” that “you’d be crazy not to get off” and as “a community (that) has lost the means to provide for its people.”
The video also tells the story of Justin Gallagher, who was about to graduate from a local college. Gallagher tearfully tells of his fear that he’ll have to leave Erie because the prospects of finding work at GE, where his father had worked as a principal engineer for thirty-three years, are slim.
The CBS documentary riled a lot of people in Erie. At least half a dozen people across the city mentioned it to me as an egregious act of journalistic malpractice. “The documentary gave Erie a very bad name,” said David Moore. It focused on “all the negative of Erie, all the blight, all the violence and didn’t reflect how most people here feel about Erie.”
There was one particular shot that bothered Fedorko. “It’s a really ridiculous (shot) of this decrepit building,” Fedorko said with frustration. The thing is, the shot left out what surrounded that building. “To the right is a beautiful new maintained modern one, and to the left is a beautiful brand new sports arena.” The depiction of Erie as being in decline was not without merit. Erie had lost half its manufacturing jobs since the 1980s. Whenever I drove along the 12th Street corridor in Erie City, I saw blocks of shuttered warehouses and rusting factories. And every time I visited Perry Square Park and other parts of downtown Erie, I was taken aback by the number of people who appeared homeless, high, drunk, or physically injured in some way. Most of those people appeared to be working-age men.
But the negative portrayal of Erie is incomplete. Erie is more accurately seen as a county in transition, and one with some notable signs of promise. In early 2017, at least three $100 million-plus building projects were beginning in Erie—a $135 million expansion of Erie Insurance that would make room for an additional 600 employees and $100 million-plus expansions of both Erie hospitals, UPMC Hamot and Saint Vincent’s. Erie also boasts five universities, including the nation’s largest medical school.
Erie’s unemployment and poverty rates were only slightly higher than the state and national averages, and the share of adults with a college degree was only slightly lower. Erie was going through the growing pains that usually accompany economic diversification.
Erie residents are quick to list some of Erie’s less depressing attributes, including its low cost of living, beautiful scenery, beaches, a symphony, and sports teams, as well as Presque Isle State Park, a sandy peninsula that extends into Lake Erie and is visited by 4 million people annually. Erie’s challenge has always been attracting young people, especially college-educated young people who want to build businesses and start families there.
In April 2017, I spoke with six members of the Erie Regional Chamber and Growth Partnership and the Erie Redevelopment Authority, which provides loans to companies that want to expand or relocate to the area. They wanted to make their case that after years of decline, Erie was in the midst of reinvention. Barbara Chaffee, president and CEO of the partnership, said that while a lot of people in Erie talk about the problem of “brain drain,” the emigration of well-educated people out of an area, she was seeing what she called “brain gain”—talented Erie residents who move away only to return to start a family and settle down. “It’s amazing how many requests we get for, ‘I want to come back now. I have a family now. Can you give us some advice on a job or what positions are open?’” she said. “We see a lot of that bounceback.”
In the 1950s, more than half of Erie County workers were employed in manufacturing. By 2016, roughly one quarter were. Heavy industry had left and many smaller, family-run firms got bought up by larger companies and moved elsewhere. Some employers were struggling to fill open slots, particularly for skilled positions. That’s partly because so many people have left the county, and partly because many who haven’t are addicted to drugs and thus unsuitable for employment. The smaller population has shrunk the tax base, straining public services. At one point in 2016, the Erie public school system threatened to close its high schools for insufficient funding.9
Almost everybody I spoke with agreed that, despite its decline here, manufacturing would continue to play an important role in Erie’s economy. Katrina Vincent, director of real estate for the Erie County Redevelopment Authority, recounted how Lord Corporation, a global aerospace company specializing in shock- and vibration-dampening products, had recently decided against relocating its manufacturing facility away from Erie. Vincent and her team helped Lord, which was founded in Erie nearly a century ago, find a new factory in the county and enticed it to stay through a combination of grants and low-interest loans. “It was a great success,” she said. “A loss of 1,100 jobs to this region could have resulted. (But) we were able to work creatively to ensure the company retained their core manufacturing and (research and development) in Erie.”
But most people in Erie seem to agree that, even more than manufacturing, the key to Erie’s future will be economic diversification. A recent study found that Erie ranked as the 118th most economically diverse medium-sized city in the country out of 144 studied.10
“Yes, we’ve lost hundreds of jobs at GE,” said Fedorko, who is in his late twenties. “I don’t care. I didn’t want to work for them. I don’t know anybody my age who says that he wants to work a manufacturing job.”
Jake Rouch, vice president of economic development at the Erie Regional Chamber of Commerce, predicted that a generation from now, manufacturing will still be an important part of Erie’s economy, but that it will be balanced by stronger medical, education, hospitality, and insurance and professional services sectors.
Erie Insurance, a Fortune 500 company that employs 5,000 Erie residents, had recently hired new employees to build one of the most sophisticated databases in the insurance industry. “We’re shifting what kind of city we are,” Fedorko said.
Bicentennial Tower in downtown Erie. (Jordan Allott)
County Executive Kathy Dahlkemper talked about the importance of culture in making Erie a more inviting place to work and live. She said Erie is working on making the city more walkable and bike-friendly, and thus more connected. She added that it’s important to improve what she calls Erie’s “entrepreneurial ecosystem.” Entrepreneurialism is seen as a key to Erie’s revival. Fedorko’s Radius Co-Work provides a “first desk” to remote workers and anyone else who doesn’t have office space or wants to connect with others in the city. Each time I visited Radius, I’d see dozens of ambitious young entrepreneurs and contractors working away.
I asked the participants what they saw as their greatest challenge in attracting people to Erie. Fedorko said it comes down to lifestyle and culture. “It’s not about better tax credits,” he said. “It’s not about a special incentive program. It’s, is your city a place that talented people want to live?”
Daniel Allott discusses Erie’s economic situation with members of the Erie Regional Chamber and Growth Partnership and the Erie Redevelopment Authority in 2017. (Jordan Allott)
Rouch countered that creating good jobs is what’s most important. “If I’m a graphic designer and I have six opportunities in Portland, Oregon, but I have one job opportunity in the Erie market, as much as I may love what I see here, I’m probably going to go there because if it doesn’t work out with that company, I can move to another,” he said. “They may also pay 20 percent more. To me, it’s all driven by a job if you get the job opportunities.”
Overall, I sensed a cautious optimism about Erie’s future.
What does any of this have to do with President Trump? Not much, according to this group—and that’s the point. The new president was barely mentioned in our two-hour conversation. The group agreed there were things the federal government could do to help or hinder their progress—lower the cost of college and address infrastructure, for example. But they emphasized that what really matters is local initiative.
“Who the president of the United States is doesn’t impact us on a day in and day out basis,” Rouch said. “We’ve got to take care of ourselves. We have to formulate our own solutions.”
***
Two pernicious narratives have taken hold about how immigrants are treated in America and about how they live their lives once they arrive. The first narrative is that immigrants are unwelcome, discriminated against, and even at risk of harm and death, particularly in rural and Middle America and other places where Donald Trump is popular. This narrative has taken hold on the political left and become almost axiomatic among many journalists. Consider the following headlines:
“Endless fear: Undocumented immigrants grapple with anxiety, depression under Trump” (USA Today, Aug. 25, 2019)
“Six immigrants talk about the anxiety of living in Trump’s America” (Vox, Aug. 30, 2017)
“On edge in Trump’s America” (Los Angeles Times, June 30, 2017)
“In Trump’s America, immigrants are modern-day ‘savage Indians’” (The Conversation, July 16, 2018)
“‘It’s worse than ever’: how Latino Americans are changing their lives in Trump’s America” (The Guardian, Oct. 7, 2019)
The second narrative is that too many immigrants fail to appreciate the opportunities they have when they arrive in the US, that they are ungrateful, unwilling to assimilate, and interested only in taking advantage of America’s generosity. On the right, this narrative has been used as proof that America must scale back immigration significantly.
Both narratives are mostly false. It is true that long-ignored immigration laws are finally being enforced, which means that immigrants who are in the country illegally are at heightened risk of deportation. And you can find examples of casual discrimination against immigrants. It’s also true that some immigrants come with malign intentions, and that many fail to adequately assimilate once they arrive.
But I discovered a very different story in talking to immigrants across the country. I talked to high-school-age Central American DACA recipients in rural Wisconsin, Haitian visa-holders in rural Iowa, West African immigrants in West Virginia, Mexican immigrants in southern California, Iraqi immigrants in southeast Michigan, and many more. Far from exposing America’s inherent prejudice, their stories reveal its enduring promise. Those I got to know best are Iraqi immigrants Hiba, her sister, Jasmine, and Jasmine’s then-husband, Ali.
Erie is home to tens of thousands of refugees and other immigrants. According to one study, no other small American city received more refugees between 2012 and 2016, about 4,000.11 They have come from places such as Bhutan, Nepal, and Sudan but more recently from Syria and Iraq. In fiscal 2016, 658 Syrian refugees were resettled in Erie. Refugees make up roughly 20 percent of the city’s population of 100,000. On my first visit to Erie, I spoke with nearly a dozen refugees and other immigrants. All said they had been welcomed with open arms. And the Erie residents I met, almost to a person, all said they were proud that their community is a top refugee destination. The refugees have been welcomed in part because they’re needed. Erie’s new residents have helped temper the impact of the county’s shrinking population.
Once when I asked the mayor’s chief of staff what the federal government could do to make their job easier, his answer was “send us more immigrants.” This was understandable since Erie’s population had recently dropped below 100,000, making it ineligible for certain federal programs.
Hiba and Jasmine told me their stories over a dinner they prepared of dolma, tepsi baytinijan, fattoush salad, and other Iraqi dishes.
Hiba has lived in the US since 2014 and Jasmine since 2012. They were granted asylum because their male family members had worked as interpreters and in logistics with the US military, which made them targets of the jihadists.
Hiba has a degree in laser engineering. But her initial job in the US was as a cashier at Wal-Mart. She enjoyed it, and made such an impression on her coworkers that some of them cried when she left to take a job as a case manager at Catholic Charities.
Upon arriving in Erie, Hiba and Jasmine were struck by how friendly, polite, and law-abiding Americans are. “This is amazing,” Hiba said. “Honestly I get a lot of support, the people here in United States, they’re so friendly, so helpful and they are accepting each other, it doesn’t matter who you are. They don’t treat you based on your race or your background. That’s my experience by living here.”
“I have a friend who lives in DC, and I tell him I live in Erie,” Jasmine said. “He say, ‘This is redneck area where nobody likes refugees.’ This is not right. I said ‘I live there four years and people are so nice, so caring.’ Really … I (haven’t) met anyone who was against me or didn’t like me.”
Jasmine recounted being invited to give a talk at a Catholic church in Erie. She was nervous because her English wasn’t great and because she’s a Muslim who at the time wore a hijab. She was surprised by the response she received. “Oh my God, the reaction I got after that, like I was looking at their faces, they were crying,” she said. “Like many women when I was done, they just came and hugged me and said, ‘(We’re) so proud of you, God bless you, if you need anything, (let us know).’ This is amazing.”
Both women said they often got compliments from women on their head coverings. Jasmine even said she was treated more kindly when she wore her hijab than when she didn’t. Jasmine said she understood why Americans are skeptical of some immigrants. She knows some who are entitled and ungrateful, she said. But “(coming to America) is like heaven for me, so you have to appreciate it, you have to work hard for it. And you just have to prove it …. You have to prove yourself to the society.”
More than anything, the sisters said they appreciated that America is the land of unrivaled opportunity. “Here, if you work hard, you see the results,” Hiba said.
Some readers may find it strange that a county that voted for Trump would be so welcoming to refugees, the fear of whom Trump constantly invokes. That’s just one apparent irony for a people and place that defy easy categorization.
During a subsequent trip to Erie, I met Jasmine’s husband, Ali, who echoed Hiba and Jasmine’s comments about feeling welcomed. In 2012, Ali immigrated to the US with a Special Immigrant Visa, or SIV, after working as a translator and logistician for the US military during the Iraq War. The SIV is granted to Iraqi nationals who provide “faithful and valuable service” to the US government for at least one year and experience ongoing serious threats as a consequence of that work.
During an interview at Ali and Jasmine’s home, I learned that both were Trump supporters. Ever since he began running for president, declaring, “Islam hates us,” Donald Trump has been dogged by the accusation that he is bigoted against Muslims and immigrants.12 The Trump administration’s so-called “Muslim ban,” which the administration attempted to implement in its first year, is considered by many to be the cruelest manifestation of that bigotry. But Jasmine and Ali support Trump—not despite his immigration policies but in part because of them.
When the Trump administration released the first version of its travel ban in January 2017, Jasmine’s only quibble was that it left out Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s leading state-sponsors of terror. Ali’s only objection was that their birth country was ultimately taken off the list of banned countries. The couple had an interesting take on the president’s view of Muslims. Ali and Jasmine believe Trump is Islamophobic. But they don’t blame him or other Americans for fearing Muslims because most Americans hear about Islam only when it involves terrorism.
Jasmine and Ali said they encounter other Iraqis in Erie. Fully employed (Ali as a truck driver and Jasmine as an orthodontic assistant) and raising two children, they were alarmed at the sight of newcomers who exploit America’s generous immigration and welfare systems.
“I get annoyed by someone who chose to be here, and they are illegal,” Jasmine said. “They know the law, and they break it. And I feel like they are taking advantage. And they have all the benefit and they complain. Why don’t you move if you don’t like it and are taking all of these benefits? … Some families, every year they have a new baby, and you ask them why, and they say they want more benefits,” Jasmine continued. “You need time to adjust, but there are families living here twenty years and they still get the benefits.”
“Oh yeah, they’ve got Medicaid, food stamps, tax credits, Section 8 housing,” Ali added.
Ali and Jasmine said some Iraqi immigrants operate cash-based businesses to keep their tax burden low, helping them qualify for government benefits. “They save the money and then they decide after fifteen years to leave and buy a (nice) house and pay in cash,” Ali said. “And that’s not right.”
“That’s what I’ll always say,” added Jasmine. “Immigrants are not here to visit. If you left your country, you are not here to visit. Most of them, if you ask them, they say, ‘Oh, we miss our home country, we wish we could go back.’ … Okay, go back! But they say, ‘Oh but there’s no power, schools are not great …’”
Had they been eligible to vote in 2016, Ali and Jasmine said they would have voted for Trump. Ali didn’t like everything about the president, especially how he takes credit for rising financial markets. And he hadn’t committed to checking Trump’s name when he casts his first presidential ballot in 2020. That said, he was “absolutely” happy with Trump’s performance thus far and graded him as an “8 out of 10.”
Trump earned the same grade with Jasmine, who said she appreciated his determination to put America first on the international stage, even if it risks alienating allies. “Unlike Obama, Trump knows what he wants. If he doesn’t like it, he will say it straight in your face.”
Hiba Alsabonge and Jasmine Alsabonge at Jasmine’s naturalization ceremony in 2018. (Jordan Allott)
In April 2018, after a nearly six-year process, Ali and Jasmine became US citizens. Both said they’d felt a kinship with America long before they recited the Oath of Citizenship. “For me, country is not where you born, it’s where you feel home, safe, welcomed, accepted, equal, and protected by law,” Jasmine posted on her Facebook page after the ceremony. “Home means the United States for me. This country is in my blood.”
While he was proud to become an American citizen, Ali said the ceremony didn’t alter an allegiance he’s felt deeply since the moment he arrived in the country. “My loyalty didn’t change toward the United States since day one and will never change,” he said. “So (reciting) the oath just confirmed that.”
I returned to Erie several times in 2018 and 2019. In 2017 GE Transportation announced it would transfer all locomotive production to Fort Worth, Texas, eliminating hundreds of jobs. The Erie plant would be left to produce prototypes and components. But the company struggled to recruit skilled workers in low-wage Texas, and when demand for locomotives increased, work was sent back to the Erie plant. Hundreds of workers were recalled, and the plant continues to make locomotives. In February 2019, Wabtec Corporation merged with GE Transportation, making it a Fortune 500 company.13
Throughout most of Trump’s term, Erie’s unemployment rate remained at record lows, dropping to under 4 percent in the summer of 2019, and generally tracking slightly above the national rate. As a headline in the Erie Times-News put it, “Erie’s economy roared in 2018.”14
Erie’s GDP rose by 3.1 percent adjusted for inflation. The article found that personal incomes in the county grew 6.1 percent in 2018, up from 2.8 percent in 2017, putting it in the top quarter of counties in the state. Erie Insurance became the county’s largest employer and is gradually turning part of the city into a corporate campus. The region’s four universities announced a collaboration called the Innovation Beehive Network to support startup entrepreneurship throughout the county.
The Economic Research Institute of Erie’s (ERIE) third quarter 2019 report found an uptick in its Erie Leading Index, a group of ten leading economic indicators.15 And by the end of 2019, the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported that per capita personal income in Erie County rose by an impressive 6.1 percent between 2017 and 2018, after having risen by 2.8 percent during the previous year. The 6.1 percent rise was higher than the increase in Pennsylvania (5.8 percent) and the nation (4.9 percent).
With election day still a year away, Trump couldn’t argue that he had brought blue-collar jobs back—the total number of workers employed in manufacturing in Erie had dropped from 19,400 to 19,100 over the course of Trump’s first three years in office.16 But with the economy as strong as it was, few residents seemed to notice.
Whenever I visited Erie, I’d check in with Jake Rouch and Sean Fedorko to get a sense of Erie’s economic situation. Rouch usually talked about the big picture. During a 2018 visit, he stressed that there had to be more honest talk about Erie’s future.
You can’t just wake up and say, “Erie’s going to be a biotech center.” If you’re going to be a biotech center, you have to have a major research university combined with a hospital, and you’ll probably get research. So biotech is probably only going to happen around so many places around the world.
A lot of people know how Pittsburgh has rebounded from the steel mills closing. We didn’t have a fatal heart attack like that. What we had was chronic bronchitis. To cure yourself of the chronic bronchitis, you have to stop things; you have to stop smoking and exercise more and eat better and make better mental health decisions. All that stuff is happening in Erie right now.
Local business leaders were pleased with the tax reform law of 2017, Rouch said, while still hoping for a federal infrastructure spending bill.
In 2019 Erie Insurance announced a private $40 million campaign to get more apartments and stores in downtown to attract more young people and businesses. Rouch had noticed more business leaders were stepping up. “Finally, they are investing in their community,” he said, citing Erie Insurance as an example. “There are people in Erie who seem both entrepreneurial and civic-minded. They care about their town. They don’t like the image it has and want to prove the cynics wrong.”
This was something I heard again and again from many civic leaders. A veteran local newspaper reporter, a lifelong Erie resident, told me he was encouraged by the newfound sense of community and solidarity. “You see a lot more collective will to improve things than I’ve seen in a long time,” he told me in 2019 when we met at a local coffee shop.
There used to be a lot of turf battles between agencies. You see a lot of them starting to break down. Because I think people realize we are at a critical point as a community. We have to address poverty, the blight. More people are working together to that end than I’ve ever seen.
Daniel Allott with Jake Rouch in 2019. (Author’s personal collection)
Indeed, in December 2019, the Erie Regional Chamber and Growth Partnership announced that it’s hoping to bring at least 2,000 jobs to the area through a $5 million economic development campaign, called Erie Forward, to aggressively recruit new industry, capital investment, and high-paying jobs in the region. Some of the jobs would be in manufacturing, but also food and beverage processing and life sciences.
Fedorko said home prices were finally beginning to rise and noted that Value Momentum, a software company, had opened up a new location in Erie and planned to hire 120 people. And the city had passed tax incentives for homeowners to renovate their homes. Meanwhile, Radius CoWork had just expanded its businesses. “We’ve never been busier,” Fedorko said.
On politics, Rouch told me in 2019, “I think the percentage of people that voted for Trump the first time that won’t vote for him the next is extremely small.” Mercyhurst University conducted polls of Erie County throughout Trump’s term. Trump’s approval rating hadn’t budged much at all since the first month after his inauguration.17
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One day in June 2018, I met up with Allen Ewanick, one of the 1,500 employees GE had laid off in 2016, at a gastro pub in Millcreek Township, just east of Erie City. “I was a little reluctant to meet with you,” Ewanick confessed as he pulled up a chair across from me at a table in the outdoor seating area. “I was like, ‘Why does he want to meet with me? I don’t have any pearls of wisdom or earth-shattering viewpoint.’ But I didn’t want to be closed-minded. I think it’s important for people to see other people’s viewpoints—the average working guy or whatever.”
Ewanick, who somewhat resembles Mitt Romney, has lived in Erie since he was five years old. He worked at Kaiser Aluminum for more than three decades and had been a United Auto Workers union member. He left in 2008 and got a job testing locomotives at GE Transportation, where he worked for eight years.
“I loved my job the whole time I worked there,” he said. “On the test track, I would take locomotives out and test them. I felt I had the best job at GE. I worked the night shift. We hit a few deer, and coyotes.”
Ewanick was sixty years old when he was laid off. “It was a little traumatic at my age,” he said. Instead of going back to school or becoming a Wal-Mart greeter, he decided to retire early. Ewanick was on the Trump train early, and he made sure his wife and three daughters got on board too. “I told my three daughters at election time, I said, ‘You guys are voting for Trump,’” he said.
They are all very informed about politics. My youngest swears she voted for Trump, and she doesn’t lie. I know she was on Hillary initially then stuff started coming out about her, and she said, “Well I don’t think that’s such a good idea.” So I think she voted for Trump by default. But I kept telling them, “When we get there we’re voting for Trump. Don’t hem-haw around.” And my wife, she was all for Trump.
His father’s vote took Ewanick more by surprise.
I don’t think my dad ever voted Republican before Trump. Voted for Obama. He’s retired from GE. He had forty years there. Union guy his whole life. I never thought in a million years that he would be (for Trump). But he was. He kept saying, ‘I’m on the Trump train.’ Same with my stepmother-in-law. They were fed up. And that’s what got Trump into office. People who were just sick and tired of all the BS.
I asked Ewanick to elaborate on the “sick and tired” comment.
Well, when you’re in manufacturing basically your whole life, and you’re watching company after company after company leave…. And that was one of the reasons I voted for Trump. I won’t say it’s protectionism. It’s just the way he said, “You know what, our country comes first.” And a lot of people don’t like that attitude. But when your country is struggling, you’ve got to start looking at bettering your own country…. It’s time to take care of our country.
Ewanick suspects very few of his former co-workers voted for Trump, but he knows many farmers who did. They “all went Trump. I mean, signs in their yards. A few years ago I never would have guessed that. But most of the people I knew who voted for Trump were just fed up. Fed up with the pablum that the Democrats have been feeding us.”
A couple of months before our interview, the Trump administration had imposed import tariffs on steel and aluminum products, prompting retaliatory tariffs from the affected countries.
“I’m all for fair trade, but we had to do something. We can’t have this trade imbalance like we’ve had,” Ewanick said, echoing the farmers I talked to in Iowa, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. They had all supported President Trump’s hardball trade tactics despite the way it was affecting them. “I think in the long term, (the tariffs are) going to help.”
Allen Ewanick in Millcreek Township in 2018. (Daniel Allott)
“I used to vote Democratic,” Ewanick confessed. “But the shine on that kind of wore off with Bill Clinton and NAFTA.” He noted that every time he was laid off, a Democrat was in the Oval Office. “Obama basically said, ‘I’m going to bring the coal industry to its knees,’” Ewanick said. “And a large majority of the locomotives built at GE are BNSF locomotives. And that’s mostly what they haul is coal. So when the coal industry dies, the locomotive manufacturing business takes a nosedive.”
Social issues also played a big role in the Ewanick’s vote. He and his wife staunchly oppose abortion and same-sex marriage; in fact, they are “the two biggest things” that determine their votes. Ewanick said Trump was doing a good job so far and that he anticipated voting for him again absent “a major faux pas,” such as a reversal on abortion or immigration.
A few days later, I met Dale and Darlene Thompson, who offered a very different perspective. Dale is nearing retirement-age and has large tattoos running down both of his arms. He is a union member and works at a tool manufacturer in Erie. Darlene, a few years younger, is a health care administrator. They invited me to their home in Southeast Erie, where we chatted while sitting on their back patio.
Dale and Darlene loved President Obama and cried watching his inauguration. “On that day, we both turned to each other and said, ‘Love won,’” Darlene recalled.
They voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary, then for Hillary Clinton in the general election, although they both expressed admiration for former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who ran as a more moderate and less combative alternative to Trump in the Republican primaries. Both expressed shock and horror at Trump’s victory but also a curiosity about how it had happened. “On the day he was inaugurated, hate won,” Darlene said. “We were physically and emotionally ill for like the first two weeks. We were like, ‘Are you kidding me? I couldn’t even watch him on TV.’ And then Dale was like, ‘Dar, we have to watch. We have to know!’”
“And for the life of me, I’m still trying to figure it out,” Dale added.
They were astonished to learn that Trump had won the support of many people they know, including most of Dale’s coworkers. Dale saw Trump’s election as a historical inflection point. “We can’t turn America into Leave it to Beaver again, which it never was in the first fucking place,” Dale said. “And I think we need this exposure of the underbelly of nationalism and white supremacy and hatefulness for everyone to see to launch us into the next era.”
“I look at (the Trump era) as the last gasp of the desperate white man’s grip on power,” Dale went on. “I really do. I don’t like his methods. I don’t like the fact that he lies. He’s white and we’re getting our way, so fuck you! Honestly, I don’t know if he can be beat in 2020…. This has always been Democratic territory, but they have completely lost touch with working class people. It’s not a big secret. And Trump knew that and Trump gave them somebody to blame. It’s the Mexican, Chinese, black people.”
Despite what they saw as Trump’s obvious unfitness for office, Dale and Darlene worried that Democrats still didn’t understand the voters they will need to win over to defeat Trump in 2020. “If he doesn’t fuck things up too much and the Democrats don’t get any more organized with a message than they are right now, then I think he will win again,” Dale said.
When I returned to Erie in the summer of 2019, Dale and Darlene were even more anxious about the weakness of the Democratic field. “We need to nominate a candidate that can win, period!” Dale said as we chatted again on their back patio. They responded as I listed some of the other Democratic candidates at the time:
Kamala Harris? “Too radical.”
Bernie? “Too damn old, and he can’t win.”
Pete Buttigieg: “Too gay, for this area.”
Julian Castro? “About as exciting as cold oatmeal.”
Cory Booker? “Come on!”
Darlene said they were pinning their hopes on a primary challenge to Trump.
“Who could take him on?” I asked.
“I love John Kasich,” said Darlene.
“I’d vote for Kasich,” Dale said.
Both seemed to think Joe Biden would have the best shot at beating Trump, but the prospect of Biden standing as the lone bulwark between Trump and a second term made them nervous. Dale called Biden a “gaff machine.”
Dale and Darlene Thompson outside their home in Erie in 2018. (Daniel Allott)
“I would be walking on eggshells up until election day if he’s the nominee,” added Darlene. “Like, what is he going to fuck up now? You know what I mean?”
Dale was convinced that his Trump-voting coworkers were turning against the president. But Darlene was seeing the opposite. “All the Trump voters I know are die-hard,” she said. “They’re going to vote for him again.”
In the year between interviews with Dale and Darlene, one thing had changed, something that I found disconcerting. The first time we chatted, while horrified by Trump’s actions, Dale and Darlene were comforted by their assurance that America’s institutions were strong enough to withstand Trump’s authoritarian tendencies. “He probably won’t fuck things up too bad because our institutions have been able to put enough of a check on him,” Dale had said then.
But a year later, Dale had become far less optimistic in the strength and resiliency of America’s system of checks and balances. When I asked what would happen if Trump won a second term, Dale said, “I think we’re done.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think we’ve lost our leadership position in the world,” Dale said. “Our allies will know they can’t count on us. I just don’t know how we recover as a country. I don’t know how we get out of this.”
As for David Moore, the out-of-work manufacturing worker who said all of his coworkers voted for Trump in 2016, I couldn’t get ahold of him for more than two years. Then when I called him in the summer of 2019, suddenly he picked up. He told me that he had just moved away from Erie, not because he couldn’t find work there, but because his company had burned down in a fire and was moving operations to South Carolina.
Moore was still very enthusiastic about Trump, saying that he planned to vote for him again. He said he “absolutely” thinks Trump will win Erie County again, and predicted that all the people he knows who voted Trump the first time will do so again. He said that he didn’t know any Trump critics who’d changed their minds about him. But he added that he knew of quite a few apolitical people who didn’t vote in 2016 who had signaled that they will vote Trump in 2020.
I also kept in touch with Hiba, Jasmine, and Ali over the next three years. It was apparent that during that time all three had more fully immersed themselves in the American experience. I spent Memorial Day 2018 at a barbeque Ali and Jasmine hosted in which they were both decked out in red, white, and blue.
Hiba became a US citizen and began a new job as a bank teller. I also noticed that she no longer wore the hijab. In 2019, I learned that Jasmine and Ali had divorced. One weekend in the fall of 2019, I spoke with Hiba and Jasmine over dinner at Bayfront Grille, a restaurant on the bayfront with a stunning view of glimmering Lake Erie.
They again expressed gratitude for the opportunities they had and the lives they were living in America. Jasmine remarked that she no longer has an emotional connection to Iraq and doesn’t feel even a tinge of patriotism when she hears the Iraqi national anthem.
Hiba said she feels safe in the US, and appreciated that as a woman she has equal rights and opportunities to men. Jasmine added that that was especially important in her divorce proceedings, which under Iraq’s religious laws would have given all the control and rights to the divorcing husband. They both said that they no longer felt Muslim, and that their former faith didn’t make much sense to them anymore.
A few weeks later I flew to Milwaukee, where Ali had moved to be closer to his cousin and to begin a new life. We met at an Iranian restaurant on the south side of town. He was no longer working as a long-haul truck driver. I was immediately struck by how much happier and healthier Ali appeared. He smiled and laughed freely during our conversation. Ali was still deeply hurt that his marriage had ended. He became emotional as he recounted the final months of his marriage. Ali, still a practicing Muslim, said Jasmine had complained that he was “too traditional” and “too old country.”
“When she walked out, I thought one way—life is destroyed, it has vanished,” he said of Jasmine. “But then later on, I realized she did me a favor. She changed me. She make me more care about my daughters.” Ali said he had enjoyed taking his daughters to Walt Disney World in Florida and was excited about visiting San Francisco with them the following year.
More than anything, Ali seemed hopeful. He had gotten a job as a garbage truck driver two weeks before and was optimistic that he would marry again. He was considering going to college or becoming a stock market analyst. (Ali would become a real estate agent in 2020.)
I wondered whether Ali regretted coming to America because the move had clearly transformed Jasmine. He acknowledged that living in America had put a strain on his marriage. “At one point I did regret it because everything is for the women, I mean the laws,” he said, referring to the child support and alimony he’s obliged to pay and the scant amount of time he gets to see his daughters.
“But I don’t miss Iraq,” he said. “I miss the people over there but not the country. That country doesn’t mean anything to me. This country right here means more to me. It means everything.”
“Are you still glad you came?”
“Oh yes, absolutely. Absolutely, yeah. Nothing can compare to this.”
