After all, employment at the plant is now a fraction of what it once was. And not far from anyone’s mind was the fact that Bay County flipped to Republican in 2016, against the wishes of the UAW. The county was one of 12 former Democratic strongholds in Michigan that delivered parts of the once impregnable industrial Midwest to Donald Trump.
Almost four years later, Bay City, the county seat, still has the feel of a traditional labor town. For the 40 days of the GM strike, nearly every car that passed the strikers honked. A steady stream of residents and businesses kept dropping off food, firewood, tents and other supplies.
But fissures are never far from the surface. Lamas and some other workers were infuriated that Trump didn’t offer support for the strikers. The union instructed them not to talk politics on the picket line, especially after a scuffle broke out between fellow strikers when one of them showed up carrying a Trump 2020 flag.
The strike, the longest national walkout against GM since 1970, symbolized the contradictions and tensions in places like Bay City as Michigan nears its primary Tuesday.
Trump often touts a “blue collar boom.” But there is a sense that residents in Bay County are barely hanging on. The poverty rate increased to almost 15% in 2017 from under 10% in 1999. Real median earnings for men working full-time and year-round fell about $7,000 in that time, as an ecosystem of factories that held up the Midwest was hollowed out, said Gabriel Ehrlich, director of the University of Michigan’s Research Seminar in Qualitative Economics. The plant where Lamas works now employs fewer than 400 workers, down from nearly 5,000 at its peak.
Barreling down I-75, the north-south expressway that runs from the northern tip of Michigan to Florida, many drivers barely notice Bay City. Anchoring a flat landscape of factories and farms north of Detroit and Flint, this small, unassuming city is perhaps best known for being Madonna’s hometown.
It happens to be my hometown as well.
I graduated in 1984 from Garber High School, about 3 miles from the GM plant. Back then, mid-Michigan was just emerging from a recession so severe that some parents of my high school classmates lost their jobs.
Michigan came back then, and like the auto industry, has a history of booms and busts — and surprises.
As the political stakes rise for Michigan, I found myself drawn to my hometown for signals about how 2020 will unfold.
In a polarized nation, places like Bay City do not fall into a neat script. Democrats tend to favor gun rights and oppose abortion, which leaves them feeling out of step with the national party. Though young people like Lamas tend to be strong Bernie Sanders supporters, others prefer Joe Biden, worried that a far-left candidate would not fare well in the general election.
“This isn’t Ann Arbor or Lansing,” said Jim Barcia, referring to the state’s most liberal college towns.
Asked how Bay City is doing these days, Barcia, a lifelong resident, points to the 1993 passage of the NAFTA and a most favored nation trade pact with China. He estimates that Bay County has lost 7,500 jobs since 2000, almost a tenth of its population.
“Much of what we feared ended up happening. I saw our manufacturers disappear,” said Barcia, who voted against both while in the House. “When Trump talked about trade, it really did resonate with working families.”
With fewer jobs with benefits in traditional industries like autos, many people are working multiple jobs just to get by, a grueling working-class calculus to stitch together enough work to pay the rent and bills. Of the top five occupations in Bay County, only one — a registered nurse — exceeds $25,000 a year. Manufacturing does not make the top five.
“I don’t know anyone who isn’t working two or three jobs or has a side gig,” said Kim Coonan, owner of Coonan’s Irish Hub, a neighborhood restaurant and bar down the street from the GM Powertrain plant, a backbone of the city since it began making parts for Chevrolet in 1916. “The middle class is gone.”
Recently, there has been talk of more layoffs. Most of the stores in the Bay City mall have shuttered. Downtown is dotted with empty storefronts.
There aren’t a lot of Trump signs or MAGA hats visible here. Yet there is evidence of a quiet support for Trump for being willing to take on China, even if the results have been mixed. Support for labor runs so deep that what is expressed behind closed doors is often different than what is said in public, making political opinion hard to gauge. “People wear masks here,” said one business executive, who asked not to be identified by name.
One exception to this rule: the area’s farmers, who are proudly supportive of the president. “In my group of friends, I don’t know anyone who won’t support Trump,” said Brian Johnson, who this year took over the family farm in Pinconning, north of Bay City. He received $80,000 in federal compensation from lost sales in soybeans to China last year, an amount he says prevented him from a financial disaster. For now, it seems that the people who are fortunate enough to have one job — and only one job — are thinking about politics more than others.
Jeffrey Bulls works at Nexteer, a Chinese company that bought Saginaw Steering Gear, an auto supplier and a symbol of the shift toward a new global economic order. Purchased by the Chinese out of bankruptcy in 2009, it now employs about 12,000, down from 20,000 at its peak. Bulls started a podcast in his downtime, “Independent Jeff,” that focuses on issues of concern to African American voters. “
In this swing region of a swing state, Bulls senses that any outcome is possible in November and that much may rest on the struggle so many people have to make ends meet. As I wandered through the region talking to people, it was those stories of getting by that emerged again and again. Uncertain still is which politician gets blamed for that and who benefits. “I don’t know what way it’s going to go this time,” Bulls said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times .