Voters in the American midwest states are divided
Trump or Biden? Our correspondent visited election critical states and found communities and neighbours deeply divided
Bill Contrera sits in the front yard of his home in Detroit, Michigan, smoking a Cuban cigar and talking, in between puffs, about American values and Donald Trump.
An American flag flutters loudly in the wind atop a flagpole near him as this retired school janitor tells me why he wants Trump to win the US election on Wednesday (AEDT)
“For me, it is about our way of life, our values, our democracy and what our country was built on in the first place,’ he says.
Contrera says he will be voting for Trump because of the culture wars in America.
Trump has cast himself as the custodian of the values of Apple Pie patriotism, faith and freedom against the dark forces of the left.
“At no time before have voters faced a clearer choice between two parties, two visions, two philosophies or two agendas. This election will decide whether we save the American dream or whether we allow a socialist agenda to demolish our cherished destiny,” Trump says of his opponent Joe Biden and the Democrats.
These words speak to voters like Contrera who believe that Biden is a puppet of the left wing of his party.
“I want to defend the American way of life, not socialism. I want my freedoms, and I am more likely to get those under Trump than Biden,’ he says.
“With Biden and Obama, I sometimes think they haven’t done much for America at all. But Trump is for the working people and we are the working people,’ he says.
Across the other side of the Midwest, in eastern Pennsylvania, Paul Kugelman and his wife Pat Zebley and standing in their front yard, except that unlike Contrera, their American flag is hanging upside down.
“It is the international symbol of distress,’ Kugelman tells me. “And this country is in distress.’
Kugelman, a retired management consultant, has a different take on Trump and American values.
“I feel like Trump is taking away everything we stand for as a country,’ he says. “Our diversity, our world dominance, our relationships with our allies, our belief in science. He is undermining our democracy daily. He is tearing this country apart. This is not just an ordinary election, this is a ‘save the nation’ election.’’
Across these battleground states that will decide this election, the very notion of what America stands for is at play in the contest between Trump and Biden.
For months now, the 74-year- old President and his 77-year-old challenger have tried to sell their starkly different visions of America to these swing state voters who will decide their next president.
I spent weeks driving through the country’s rust belt states during this election campaign talking to people outside their homes, in diners and at gas stations. Depending on who I am interviewing, it often feels like I am switching between two Americas. People are living in the same communities, the same streets, sometimes even the same houses and yet so often their politics could not be more different.
One person, displaying a Trump 2020 flag would talk to me about the dark and dystopian future that awaits the US under a Biden presidency. Their neighbour — sometimes literally across the road with a Biden sign on their front lawn — would tell me that Trump has divided their community, their street and their country. Neither believe that the US will be the same again.
I found 55-year-old Joan Marie Lupi, an accountant, walking with her son Nic in the outskirts of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Lupi, a mother of three, voted for Trump in 2016 and can’t wait to do so again. “For me, Trump is taking this country in the direction that I want it to go,’ she says.
“Those three appointments to the Supreme Court were so important to me. I mean how good is (new Justice) Amy Barrett? This has been his best move as president.’’
She, like many Trump supporters I meet, thinks the country is too obsessed by the coronavirus pandemic despite it having so far claimed the lives of 227,000 Americans.
“This whole pandemic thing has been blown out of proportion,’ she says. “We should not be told what we can and cannot do. I enjoy my freedom. And I don’t want the government telling us what we can and can’t do and if Biden wins there will be a lot more of that.’
Like many Republicans, Lupi doesn’t love Trump’s personality but says it is worth putting up with it for the bigger picture.
“Trump’s demeanour is not the best, he comes off as a loudmouth and he is all into himself, but I really think he knows what he is doing. He has done a good job with the economy. He’s not being a politician which is great,” she says.
“You know I went to a Trump rally the other day and there were so many young people there, couples with small children and it really gave me hope. I think he will win.’
Back in southern Michigan, Simone Babridge, is the lone person in her street with a Biden sign in her front yard. She is also one of the few African-Americans in a white neighbourhood which is full of pick-up trucks bearing Trump stickers.
“I think Trump has been an embarrassment for African-Americans,’ the 48 year old elementary schoolteacher and mother tells me.
“On voting day does he expect us to somehow forget all his incendiary comments that stoke racial division?’
“Are we supposed to forget how he has treated us. Even before he got into office he was a birther who tried to stop Barack Obama. This is not The Apprenticeand there is a reason why the address of the White House is now 1600 Black Lives Matter Boulevard.’
Trump won Michigan narrowly in 2016 but Babridge believes that was because not enough people bothered to vote for Hillary Clinton. “It is very different now,’ she says. “Biden is a decent man and people will see the error of their ways — they will get out and vote this time. I think Biden will win.’’
In the small farming community of Clyde in northern Ohio, Mike Cadhill, is rearranging Halloween pumpkins on his front veranda in front of a God Bless America sign when I approach him.
He doesn’t like talking politics and he strikes me as one of Trump’s so-called “silent majority’’, the Trump voter who flies under the radar in the polls.
Eventually he opens up about why he likes Trump. “I was a welder at the Whirlpool plant up the road,’ he says. “I worked there, my mum worked there. I’ve lived here all my life. And I am sick of foreign countries that have taken advantage of America. I’ve seen what it has done to Ohio.”
“So when I see him (Trump) standing up to China I like that. I just like his style — no nonsense. Joe Biden is a politician, Trump is not. Simple as that.’’
In western Pennsylvania, a region littered with struggling towns that once lived off steel and coal, the support for Trump is palpable.
Trump signs and flags are everywhere in Beaver County, a former Democrat stronghold that turned to Trump in 2016.
Stephanie Wingard, a retired nurse and Biden supporter, sits on her porch in Beaver County and laments how so many of her neighbours have swapped from Democrat to Republican.
“It seems to have changed so much, we see so many Trump signs here now,’ she says. “When we were growing up there was a steel mill right over there,’ she says pointing up the road to the rusted remains of the Babcock & Wilcox mill. “There were a lot of union workers and they seemed solidly Democrat but not any more.’
Her husband Larry Wingard, a retired IT worker, says he has grown more alarmed with each year about the sort of president Trump is.
“In 2016 I could understand why a lot of people voted for Trump because they were dissatisfied with what was going on in this country and they thought a successful businessman other than a politician might work,’’ he says. “But after you have seen four years of Trump and what he has done, how can you possibly have that same logic?”
“He is the worst president I have seen in my life, like by 100 times,’ he says.
“He takes no advice from anyone, he sacks everyone who disagrees with him, he trashes our allies, he has failed with the pandemic. How can people be attracted to someone who is that amoral, he cares about nothing but himself.’’
Back in Michigan, on the northern outskirts of Detroit, 65- year-old Tom Wilder is tinkering on the street with his motorbike as he tells me why he believes Joe Biden and his son Hunter are corrupt. “What about Hunter Biden’s involvement in all that stuff in Ukraine and China,’’ says Wilder. “I don’t trust Joe Biden. The way he acts and talks and what did he know about his son’s business dealings.
“The Clintons got away with so much, Hillary got away with Benghazi, with Travelgate, president Clinton with Monica Lewinsky.
“That’s why I’m going to vote for Trump.’
Down the road, Patty Urquhart, a mother of two young children and a swing voter, says she will vote for Biden on moral grounds. She dislikes the divisive way Trump speaks and acts and says she doesn’t want her children growing up in a divided America.
“I just hate the way he handles himself,’’ she says. “I am raising two children here and it is difficult to respect someone as president when he doesn’t respect anyone else. I don’t think Biden is the perfect choice, but he is the better option to Trump. But I’m not confident that Biden will win. I think Michigan will vote red again.’’
In conversations across the rust belt, Biden supporters return again and again to the issue of Trump’s divisive style. It is that issue, as well as his handling of the pandemic, that most energises them.
Joe Montalvo is mowing his front lawn on the outskirts of Philadelphia and says he admires the job that Trump has done on the economy but he still can’t bring himself to vote for him.
“The economy is much better off than it was four years ago,’’ he tells me.
“I think if Trump could keep quiet he would win by a landslide, but he just can’t keep quiet.
“What he says just keeps dividing the country more and more. I will probably vote for Biden this time because I think he is a person who really cares and who will try to unify this country.’’
Across the road, Mike Dorazio, a plumber, loads his truck in the driveway and tells me that he is voting for Trump.
“I think he has done well,’’ he says. “My retirement (fund) has skyrocketed in the last four years, the economy has been good, business has been good.
“There is something about Biden and Kamala Harris that I don’t like.
“I don’t like how they don’t care what’s going on with all this rioting and looting and Biden just seems old and fragile to me.’’
But Dorazio, a father of two young children, says he can’t really explain why he feels so strongly about Trump.
“I’m not a good speaker but I guess I just like Trump. Yep, I just like him,’ he says with a smile. But it’s not looking good right now.’’
Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia
