Fifty miles west along the Iron Range, in the mining towns where empty storefronts outnumber the bars, banks and pizza joints, labor unions are grappling with a new political reality.

Every time Chris Johnson gathers his United Steelworkers Local 2705 at the hall in Chisholm, the union of roughly 600 mine workers that pull iron ore out of the Hibbing Taconite mine have one question: Why isn’t their leadership going all-in on Trump?

It’s a question Johnson, once a mine worker himself and now the union president, struggles to answer to his rank and file. He strongly supports nickel-copper mining but can’t overcome decades of Democratic support that led him to embrace Wellstone, Amy Klobuchar, Al Franken and other liberal heroes.

Trump’s “not pro-labor and that’s the only message we really have for them,” he said. “He basically stole the union’s message and is using that, but to his core, he doesn’t believe any of the stuff we do, but he knows he’s getting votes for it.”

Johnson estimates that about 75 percent of his membership supports Trump.

Trump’s appeal to the “forgotten people” has resonated with a population that has seen the iron-ore mining industry go through decades of boom-bust cycles that have led to mass layoffs, a declining population and a growing sense of survivalism.

In the late 1970s, the industry employed 15,000 people. That’s down to roughly 5,000. The area never recovered those mining jobs after mass layoffs in 1981 as the U.S. steel industry underwent changes and automation took hold.

The environmental priorities of Democrats at the national and state levels are shifting support in places like the Iron Range, where even pro-labor members feel increasingly alienated by a platform more suited to a political party that is rapidly becoming more urbanized.

Johnson recounted a meeting last year in Washington with Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat from Minneapolis. He said the lawmaker told him the way of life in the Iron Range is going to change.

“We’re a vital part of all products made in this country and abroad and for her to just sit there and say, ‘Look you guys are going to have to learn a different industry,’ doesn’t go over well,” he said.

“I’ve voted Democrat my whole life. It’s getting tougher,” said Steve Bonach, president of United Steelworkers Local 1938, the union for the roughly 1,200 workers at the area’s largest mine.

He said he’s leaning toward supporting Bernie Sanders. “I wish I could put my hand on the transformation going on around here,” he said from his union hall in the city of Virginia, a building wrapped in a mural of military men and women in uniform.

St. Louis County, which includes Ely, lost 20,000 people between 1980 and 1990. The county, which also encompasses the lake port city of Duluth, has not really seen its population rebound since that time.