LIQUIPPA, Pa. — Drive through this sleepy town and you’ll see rows of shuttered homes and the carcasses of buildings where molten metal once flowed. Stop by Babich’s Family Restaurant and you’ll find supporters of Donald Trump.
Joshua Carr, 35, is one of them. He’s the owner. Black T-shirt and a backward cap, raising a young family with his wife. Craving not just change but the kind of radical change that Trump offers.
“The world is all screwed up. The big J and L” — the former Jones & Laughlin steel complex along the Ohio River — “is gone.” So is most everything else around here, he said. The people. The jobs.
Although Trump has electrified white working-class people across the spectrum who are eager for volatile transformation, those voters are far from the entirety of an increasingly diverse electorate where Trump-style change is as feared in the cities and suburbs as it is embraced in the countryside.
Trump’s chances Tuesday are likely to hinge on whether there are enough voters in states like Pennsylvania, which last sided with a Republican in 1988 and where Trump has poured energy, who are willing to abandon their usual voting patterns in favor of disruption.
he journey through Pennsylvania revealed that while Trump signs dot countless lawns throughout the industrial region, they do so progressively less as you move east, as if Trump’s support were a fading red swath on the map. Cities such as Pittsburgh and many suburbs are still strongholds for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who has been ahead in polls all year and remains narrowly so in the final days of the election.
For Trump — who rallied Sunday in Moon, Pa., near Pittsburgh and plans to be in Scranton on Monday — the hurdle remains wary voters, including moderates in his own party, who see his rowdy populism as an unwelcome upending of American life.
Clinton’s challenge is one of turnout. The demographics and organization favor her in vote-rich areas like Philadelphia, where she will appear Monday night with President Obama, first lady Michelle Obama and former president Bill Clinton. But the appetite for change elsewhere does not.
Sitting across Babich’s is Phil Patton, 69. A Vietnam veteran, he graduated from the nearby high school with the brother of Mike Ditka, the legendary football coach who hails from here and is part of the town’s mythology.
“Always been the home of champions,” Patton said. “It’s the way we were all brought up.”
But Patton said Aliquippa has changed, and so has he. This year the longtime Democrat will vote for Trump:
Tucking into their breakfasts, John Rita and Bill Battisti were similarly bleak but do not back Trump. Both 76-year-old Democrats, they have seen men like Trump throughout their lives and
he men recalled that when they were in high school, they got recruited by manufacturing companies “before we even graduated,” Battisti said. “They wanted you that quickly.”
“It’s never like that nowadays,” Rita said.
Their waitress — Trish Mihalik, 52 — has three sons working with her husband down the road at Smiley’s Tire. She said they’re doing fine but it’s not easy. Her family, which is Pentecostal Christian, is praying for Trump.
“Look around Aliquippa. It’s dead,” she said. “There’s nothing. I’ve put it all in God’s hands.”
Pittsburgh
Twenty miles southeast and in the shadow of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ gleaming baseball stadium is a Giant Eagle grocery store on the city’s North Side. A light rain drizzles as a predominantly African American crowd makes its way through the parking lot. The only signs for blocks are baby-blue banners.
“That’s Clinton blue,” Katie Hicks, 60, said. She said this city, along with Philadelphia, is Clinton’s base and the reason Democrats should expect to carry Pennsylvania.
“Before I retired, I had a good job at the Heinz factory — put the ketchup into packets. Started in ’77, benefits and Blue Cross, you name it,” Hicks said. “That was then. It was a good job. But hey, let’s not call it the glory days.”
( continued)
Joshua Carr, 35, is one of them. He’s the owner. Black T-shirt and a backward cap, raising a young family with his wife. Craving not just change but the kind of radical change that Trump offers.
“The world is all screwed up. The big J and L” — the former Jones & Laughlin steel complex along the Ohio River — “is gone.” So is most everything else around here, he said. The people. The jobs.
Carr, a Democrat who voted for President Obama, was the first person encountered during a road trip late last week that began in western Pennsylvania and ended 350 miles to the east in a prosperous Philadelphia suburb — and he reflected both the promise and peril facing the Republican presidential nominee in this battleground state in the race’s final sprint.
Although Trump has electrified white working-class people across the spectrum who are eager for volatile transformation, those voters are far from the entirety of an increasingly diverse electorate where Trump-style change is as feared in the cities and suburbs as it is embraced in the countryside.
Trump’s chances Tuesday are likely to hinge on whether there are enough voters in states like Pennsylvania, which last sided with a Republican in 1988 and where Trump has poured energy, who are willing to abandon their usual voting patterns in favor of disruption.
he journey through Pennsylvania revealed that while Trump signs dot countless lawns throughout the industrial region, they do so progressively less as you move east, as if Trump’s support were a fading red swath on the map. Cities such as Pittsburgh and many suburbs are still strongholds for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who has been ahead in polls all year and remains narrowly so in the final days of the election.
For Trump — who rallied Sunday in Moon, Pa., near Pittsburgh and plans to be in Scranton on Monday — the hurdle remains wary voters, including moderates in his own party, who see his rowdy populism as an unwelcome upending of American life.
Clinton’s challenge is one of turnout. The demographics and organization favor her in vote-rich areas like Philadelphia, where she will appear Monday night with President Obama, first lady Michelle Obama and former president Bill Clinton. But the appetite for change elsewhere does not.
Sitting across Babich’s is Phil Patton, 69. A Vietnam veteran, he graduated from the nearby high school with the brother of Mike Ditka, the legendary football coach who hails from here and is part of the town’s mythology.
“Always been the home of champions,” Patton said. “It’s the way we were all brought up.”
But Patton said Aliquippa has changed, and so has he. This year the longtime Democrat will vote for Trump:
Tucking into their breakfasts, John Rita and Bill Battisti were similarly bleak but do not back Trump. Both 76-year-old Democrats, they have seen men like Trump throughout their lives and
he men recalled that when they were in high school, they got recruited by manufacturing companies “before we even graduated,” Battisti said. “They wanted you that quickly.”
“It’s never like that nowadays,” Rita said.
Their waitress — Trish Mihalik, 52 — has three sons working with her husband down the road at Smiley’s Tire. She said they’re doing fine but it’s not easy. Her family, which is Pentecostal Christian, is praying for Trump.
“Look around Aliquippa. It’s dead,” she said. “There’s nothing. I’ve put it all in God’s hands.”
Pittsburgh
Twenty miles southeast and in the shadow of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ gleaming baseball stadium is a Giant Eagle grocery store on the city’s North Side. A light rain drizzles as a predominantly African American crowd makes its way through the parking lot. The only signs for blocks are baby-blue banners.
“That’s Clinton blue,” Katie Hicks, 60, said. She said this city, along with Philadelphia, is Clinton’s base and the reason Democrats should expect to carry Pennsylvania.
“Before I retired, I had a good job at the Heinz factory — put the ketchup into packets. Started in ’77, benefits and Blue Cross, you name it,” Hicks said. “That was then. It was a good job. But hey, let’s not call it the glory days.”
( continued)
Aliquippa's been on the skids for decades, since the steel industry collapsed during the reagan reign. Those people are nuts if they think Trump can bring it back.