The Republican appeals to fears over disappearing jobs in coal mines and steel factories of Ohio and Pennsylvania, persuading voters to abandon loyalties

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The Ohio river valley was once a foundation of the American economy, and of the Democratic party.

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For decades, coal- and steel-producing areas in south-east Ohio and south-west Pennsylvania voted Democrat. Union workers, supporting the party of organized labor, counted on steady and well-paid jobs.

But the US coal industry has been unable to survive major shifts in the world economy and steel has been subject to mechanization. In recent years, those steady jobs have disappeared.

This has turned the region into ripe territory for Donald Trump. In the Pennsylvania Republican primary, the billionaire won a crushing victory, sweeping the Appalachian part of the valley. In Ohio, the valley was the only area he won against the state’s governor and favorite son, John Kasich.

On Tuesday, Trump made campaign stops in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania and Belmont County, Ohio, areas that went Democratic even in the Reagan landslide of 1984 but were lost by Barack Obama in 2012.

Trump has geared his message to voters in such counties. On Tuesday, in a policy speech at a scrap metal facility south of Pittsburgh, he pledged to pull out of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement and potentially the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) as well.

Against a backdrop of bales of aluminum, Trump said he could bring back manufacturing jobs. The loss of such jobs was not “some natural disaster”, he said, “it is politician-made disaster.

“It is the consequence of a leadership class that worships globalism over Americanism ... Our politicians took away from the people their means of making a living and supporting their families.”

Rick Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator and two-time presidential candidate, told the Guardian that Trump was well positioned in south-west Pennsylvania, capable of winning Democrats to his cause.

“I think he’ll do exceptionally well because he’s not your typical Republican candidate, Santorum said. “He’s not an orthodox candidate by any stretch of imagination and that allows a lot of folks who have Ds next to their name in south-west Pennsylvania to feel like the Republicans don’t even like him, and [say] ‘I’m OK voting for him.’”

Santorum said Trump’s biggest challenge would not be wooing Democrats but getting “our Republican base solidifying and supporting” in the coming months.

‘I’m afraid we’re going to lose America’

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Factories along the Ohio river, in Steubenville’s industrial heyday. Photograph: Francis Miller/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image

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Steubenville is a former Ohio steel town that has seen better times – Michael Cimino shot scenes there for The Deer Hunter, his classic story of industrial decline and the Vietnam war.

This week, at a greasy spoon restaurant in the city center, Kathy Kontoa told the Guardian she thought the area was “still big Democratic because a lot of my friends are all Democrats”, but said the region’s political leaning “comes and goes with the way the jobs are”.

“Once the coal mines left”, the West Virginia native said, many in the region stopped voting for the Democrats. A Democrat herself, Kontoa nonetheless expressed her disappointment that she wasn’t wearing her “Hillary for Prison” T-shirt. She would, she said, be voting for Trump in November.

“I really feel we need a big change,” she said. “I’m afraid we’re going to lose America.”

This was echoed by Justin Dudzik, who lives just outside Steubenville in rural Jefferson County. At a Trump rally on Tuesday, he said he thought the candidate’s message would appeal to voters in economically depressed areas, especially where the decline of coal has hit the hardest.

However, not everyone was following the election. Sitting outside a McDonald’s in Steubenville, waiting for their shifts to start, Jane Smith and Rachel Stevens expressed apathy toward politics.

“I don’t wanna vote this year,” Smith said, adding: “I don’t just because it’s so hard to tell. I don’t know, country’s already damaged, it doesn’t matter who gets it, still going to have to dig us out of a hole and still have a bunch of stuff to fix.”

The women bemoaned the state of the local economy.

“You can’t find a job here anymore,” Stevens said. “You need to go out of town.”

This sense of apathy was echoed by Paul German, who was walking into a Steubenville supermarket adorned with a mural of Dean Martin, the city’s most famous son.

“I don’t care about politics,” German said. “I don’t want to get into it.”

He described life in Steubenville simply as “like everywhere else: survival of the fittest”.

In November, in this fading town where the population has fallen by more than 50% since 1940, the question is this. How many voters can be distracted from that fight?