Michael Taylor, mayor of Sterling Heights, says he’s voting for former vice-president as Biden and Sanders battle for key state

This article is more than 6 months old

This article is more than 6 months old

As Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders compete for victory in Michigan, the biggest prize on offer in Tuesday’s slate of Democratic primaries, Biden has received a key and unexpected endorsement: from the Republican mayor of the state’s fourth-largest city.

“How could I look at those three kids and tell them I’m proud to support Donald Trump?” Michael Taylor, the mayor of Sterling Heights, wrote about his family on Twitter on Monday.

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“I can’t. I won’t. I’m voting for Joe Biden tomorrow and endorsing him for president of the United States. I hope you’ll join me.”

Taylor also wrote that Biden was “the candidate who can unify all of the Democrats, and he’s the candidate who can appeal to moderates and Republicans like me who don’t want to see four more years of President Trump”.

Sterling Heights is in Macomb county, a white working-class battleground in a key swing state, home to the fabled “Reagan Democrats” who powered a Republican to the White House in 1980.

Barack Obama won Macomb twice before Trump took it from Hillary Clinton in 2016, on his way to the White House thanks in large part to wins in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Speaking to the Chicago Tribune, Taylor, 36, said: “I remember thinking this Trump thing is insane, but when it was down to him and Hillary, I kind of said: ‘Well, you are a Republican, and yeah he’s nuts, but maybe he’ll get better and you know he’s going to lower taxes.’

“I slowly talked myself into it. ‘He can’t seriously be this deranged once he gets in there,’ and he’s even more deranged now than I thought then. So, I take the blame. I voted for him.”

Michigan offers 125 national convention delegates, a significant prize as Biden seeks to build an insurmountable lead.

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It may be Biden does not need the support of a former Tea Party favorite to swing the primary his way. After his Super Tuesday surge, polling in Michigan has given him a commanding lead over Sanders, who beat Clinton in the state four years ago.

Taylor’s endorsement seems to embody the main problem facing Sanders, a self-proclaimed socialist: appealing to moderates, independents and Republicans seeking to dump Trump.

Speaking to the Guardian recently, the former Republican consultant Rick Wilson said Biden was “the one candidate who has shown the most ability to contrast with Trump in terms of a broader, bigger picture that isn’t just locked into what’s the hot flavor of Democratic messaging this year.

“He’s talking about that big American sense of unity and reconciliation and saying we’ve got to work with Republicans too.”

Biden has attracted much local criticism for an endorsement he gave in Michigan in 2018.

Speaking for a reported $200,000 fee from the Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan, Biden called the Republican congressman Fred Upton, an architect of attempts to kill the Affordable Care Act, “one of the finest guys I’ve ever worked with”.

Upton was re-elected, beating the Democrat, boosted by using Biden’s comments in his campaign advertising.