Weirton, West Virginia
THERE WAS A TIME when the people of Weirton, West Virginia, loved Bill Clinton as much as they love the Pittsburgh Steelers — which is pretty much the pinnacle of adoration in this northern West Virginia town.
Those happy days, however, are over. In the last year, a wave of anti-Clinton feeling has swept through Weirton like a fever. Even the administrators of the Millsop Community Center — Weirton’s townhall and the place where locals work out before heading over to Gus’ Goodies for eats — have turned against the president. They removed from the main hallway a photo of Clinton and Al Gore on their 1992 Weirton campaign stop. The image of these one-time heroes was chucked into a dusty storage closet because, as Dave “Goose” Gossett of the Independent Steelworkers Union explained, “He came to this town, and he lied to us.”
The offending lies weren’t about Monica, perjury, or obstruction of justice. They were campaign promises related to the Weirton Steel Corporation. “I want to first make sure we enforce strictly the anti-dumping laws, and the laws against unfair subsidized steel being dumped into this country,” Clinton said in 1992. “That’s not fair . . . they shouldn’t have access to our markets.” This was music to the ears of Weirton’s steelworkers.
Today, those steelworkers say that Clinton has betrayed them by his trade policies. “[Treasury secretary Robert] Rubin is about globalization,” says Gossett. “He’s more concerned about the Russian and Brazilian economies than he is about American steel.”
While Clinton is all but being burned in effigy, another politician has won the hearts of Weirton’s disaffected. Republican presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan, in his third try for the nomination, knows that this town is a case study in what he believes is wrong and right about America. And that’s why before announcing in New Hampshire, he made a big show of drumming up support here. Though Weirton and Buchanan may seem at first an unlikely pair, it is easy to see why they now make a perfect fit.
When Weirton Steel was at full tilt, it provided 14,000 jobs. Now its workforce is hovering around 4,000, and Weirton may lose its mill entirely as other countries are undercutting the price of its steel. Waiting on the fate of the mill, as one man who had worked there for over forty years told me, “is like being sentenced to death and knowing that the governor isn’t going to help you out.”
The union had tried everything to attract national attention, but until Buchanan put the town on his dance card, the steel crisis, as it is known, was merely a regional issue. When Buchanan visited Weirton last week, he was greeted with what was by far the most enthusiastic welcome this Democratic stronghold has ever given a Republican. The incongruous sight of over 1,000 die-hard union Democrats chanting “Go, Pat, Go!” was particularly interesting to me, as Weirton is my hometown.
The audience was full of old friends and neighbors like Lora Crow, who presented Buchanan’s wife, Shelley, with a Kroger bag bursting with just-baked pepperoni rolls. Growing up, I had been to the community center on many occasions, and to see it now decked with signs saying “Thank You, Pat,” “Pat Buchanan Stands Up for Steel,” and “Free Traders are Traitors” was a little surprising. Yet, Buchanan couldn’t have picked a more beleaguered steel town to showcase.
Weirton Steel has long been fighting for stability. In the early 1980s, National Steel, which owned the mill, decided that it could no longer afford its Weirton plant. So, in 1984 the employees joined together to buy it themselves, forming what is still the country’s largest industrial employee stock ownership plan. In order to make the company profitable, costs were trimmed through early retirements and a 30 percent cut in wages and benefits. The newly formed corporation then invested $ 1 billion in plant modernization. It was a Toquevillian effort beyond compare.
This heavy investment allowed Weirton Steel to become one of the most modern and efficient mills in the country. But Weirton Steel is not just competing with other American mills. As economies around the world have collapsed, the American market has been flooded with super-cheap steel from abroad. In 1996, Russia sent 1.6 million tons of steel to U.S. shores. In 1998, that tonnage shot up to 5.2 million. Japan sent 2 million tons in 1996; in 1998, 6.6 million.
These enormous increases came with awesome cost reductions. Weirton spends $ 240 to produce one ton of steel, but it costs as little as $ 180 to import foreign steel. The company has decided to fill a portion of its orders by using imported steel: The savings, through imports, will total $ 23 million.
To send a message, the steelworkers’ unions embarked in November on a nationwide “Stand Up for Steel” campaign. Weirton has done its part with a 5,000-strong local rally, followed up by a march on Washington that attracted 6,500 people. “Stand Up for Steel” signs hang in the windows of every Weirton establishment except Wal-Mart, which caused the store a major flap and sparked talk of a boycott. Union officials have testified before the House Ways and Means Committee. In Congress there are now bills that would require the administration to enforce current anti-dumping laws.
What Pat Buchanan made clear in Weirton is that he understands the town’s frustration, both economic and emotional: “American factory workers who make $ 15 or $ 20 an hour cannot and ought not have to compete with workers who have to work for a dollar an hour.” He wooed the crowd with a combination of patriotism — “Is there anyone who thinks this country could have won World War II without a steel industry that produced half the steel in the world?” — and anti-communism. “We’ve got a $ 60 billion trade deficit with Chinese Communists who persecute Tibetans, persecute Christians, persecute political dissidents, and who are targeting American Marines on Okinawa and sailors in the Seventh Fleet with missiles . . . paid for by surpluses they get from trading with the United States.”
Buchanan paused while the crowd booed, and then he lowered the boom: “Now, you’re walking very close to the line of treason when you’re giving money to people targeting our troops.” Loud whistles, long applause, the works.
Since this is still a Democratic stronghold, Buchanan insisted that keeping American industry alive is a non-partisan issue, although he mentioned Ronald Reagan whenever possible. He credited Reagan with instituting temporary steel quotas “to give our steel industry a fighting chance to come back,” and he reminded the crowd that he had once worked for the former president: “Reagan had five things. He said to me, ‘Pat, our campaigns are about work, family, faith, community, and country.’ Now isn’t that what Weirton is about?”
Pia Nordlinger is an editorial writer for the New York Post.
