International News

CLEVELAND, (APP/AFP) – Stephen Emmert lost
his Ohio longshoreman job in the 1990s, the victim of industrial automation.
As the Rust Belt state struggles to recover from economic decline,the
ex-Democrat said only one presidential candidate can set things right:
billionaire Donald Trump.
Emmert knows that any path to victory for the Republican frontrunner will include votes from Ohio’s gritty factory communities, from the shores of Lake Erie to hardscrabble Canton and beyond, where blue-collar union laborers often decide the outcome in one of America’s most politically consequential states.
No Republican, after all, has won the White House without winning Ohio in the general election.
Already Trump has romped to primary election victory in nearby Michigan, another industrial state.
To pull off a similar feat in Ohio, which heads to its primary on Tuesday, Trump will need to cobble together Republicans in places like largely white Canton, as well as working-class Democrats.
His fiercest competition in the state race is Ohio Governor John Kasich, who holds a slim lead in polls.
In a series of interviews with AFP, several Ohio laborers expressed
confidence that Trump will generate crossover appeal in Tuesday’s big primary test.
Emmert used to be a dedicated union man, back when he worked on the
Cuyahoga River docks offloading ore in the shadow of ArcelorMittal, whose
hulking, century-old Cleveland steel mill remains in operation today.
But technology swallowed up his position.
“I was a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat back when. A union guy,” said Emmert.
Now a Teamsters union member who has driven a rig more than one million miles over the past decade, he said he has had it with the political system, and winces when asked if he could support Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
He and several friends and neighbors are now turning to Trump, he said, much like “Reagan Democrats” who defected in the 1980s to support eventual president Ronald Reagan.
“Look at all the empty factories,” Emmert said as he stood in line to
attend Trump’s rally Saturday in Cleveland.
“He’ll bring back the jobs.”