NEW BALTIMORE, Mich. — Robert Rasch had never voted for president before 2016. Then Donald Trump came along, and finally there was a candidate he could get excited about.
Rasch admired Trump’s business background and political courage. “For somebody to stand up and run for president that has no political background, that’s a set of brass,” he said.
Rasch is one of millions of so-called lost voters whom Trump coaxed back to the voting booth in 2016. Rasch has already decided he’ll be voting for Trump again in 2020, based largely on the president’s stewardship of the economy.
“When you drive down 8 Mile [Road], 9 Mile, 10 Mile, a lot of those small industrial shops were closed a few years ago,” he said of the manufacturing-heavy southern part of Macomb County. “But now you see them being reconstructed to get new tenants in there.” Rasch and his wife Laurie’s small business, LR Embroidered Creations, paid less in taxes in 2018 thanks to tax reform. “We’ve felt the difference,” Rasch said.
“On a scale from 1 to 10, I think he’s doing an 8,” Rasch said of Trump’s overall performance. “He’s making a change for the good for everybody. I think he’s growing on people here.”
Rasch sees that growing support at the Anchor Bay Pit Stop Diner, where he and his friends talk politics on weekends. And he sees it among his store’s customers.
“One gentleman came in and asked us to print that Trump hat,” Rasch said, pointing to a display case featuring red ball caps with white lettering that says, “TRUMP: Elect That MF’er again! 2020.”
“The hats sold like crazy,” Rasch said. “And the guy’s been in numerous times and re-ordered. It’s been a big seller.”
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Asked whether he thinks President Trump will win Michigan in 2020, Rasch was ready with a response: “If [Trump] was going to the optical store to get some new glasses, he’d have 20/20 vision.”
My interview with Rasch was one of more than two dozen I conducted over several days in Macomb County, Mich.
I’d come to find out how Trump was performing among residents of this famous swing county. Specifically, I wanted to know whether Trump’s support here was diminishing.
It’s an important question in a state Trump won by fewer than 11,000 votes, the slimmest margin of any state in the 2016 election. Trump won Macomb County by 48,000 votes, making it the county that delivered Michigan to Trump, and one of three counties nationwide that determined the presidency.
After speaking with Rasch, I swung by Bad Brads BBQ in another part of New Baltimore. There I met Douglas Geering, a clinical psychologist who eschews party labels and supports term limits. He voted for John McCain in 2008, Barack Obama in 2012, and Donald Trump in 2016.
“I’m not a party person,” Geering explained. “If Trump had run as a Democrat, I would have voted for him.”
Geering believes “things are going great” under Trump, and he “definitely” plans to vote for him again next year. He’s even toying with the idea of erecting a Trump 2020 yard sign, something he wouldn’t have done in 2016.
In 2016, Trump became the first Republican in nearly 30 years to win Michigan. But Michigan Republicans took a step backward in 2018 as Democrats swept statewide races for governor, U.S. Senate, and attorney general, and also gained two congressional seats. Michigan Democrats also prevailed in several ballot initiatives, including a referendum on recreational marijuana and a constitutional amendment to streamline the voting process.
But Republicans say 2018 shouldn’t be seen as a harbinger for 2020, because 50,000 Trump voters didn’t show up in 2018. That number includes voters such as Rasch and Geering.
Later I met up with Catherine Bolder, a self-described liberal and former Obama voter who supported Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primary. When we met last August, Bolder described Trump as the lesser of two evils compared to Hillary Clinton.
This time, she had fulsome praise for Trump. “Honestly, I’m beginning to think he’s a genius,” she said. “The way he trolls Democrats and gets under their skin and makes them say stupid shit.”
Bolder has decided to vote for Trump in 2020, and she’s confident he’ll win Michigan again. “He’s making people money,” she said. “Why change if it’s not broke?”
As Bolder and I were speaking, she turned to a middle-age couple sitting beside us at the bar and asked, “Hey, folks, if the election were held tomorrow, who would you vote for?”
The man, an off-duty police officer whose name I didn’t catch, seemed ambivalent at first, but eventually he said, “It’ll probably be Trump. The more I hear negative about him, the more I like him. Because I know if you’re pissing them off, you must be doing something right.”
“He’s a liar, he’s a bully. He’s a womanizer,” the cop continued. “But he’s the first president I’ve seen who actually had a prayer meeting in the Oval Office.”
Neither Bolder nor the cop could think of any Trump voters they knew who’d turned against the president. I wasn’t surprised. Among the two-dozen people I interviewed in and around Macomb County, not a single one could think of a Trump voter who no longer supported him.
That includes several Democrats I talked to. Shelby Nicole, a member of Macomb County Young Democrats, has knocked on thousands of doors across the county canvassing for the Democratic Party. “A lot of people will look you in the eye and say, ‘I voted Dem all my life until Trump came along. And I’m not voting Dem ever again,’” she said. “Or they’d say, ‘I stopped voting a long time ago, then voted for Trump and am not going back.’”
I asked Nicole whether she thinks Trump will win Macomb County in 2020. “No doubt in my mind,” was her immediate response. She added that many Trump voters took 2018 off but will be back to vote for him in 2020.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump pledged to revitalize Michigan’s manufacturing base. “We will make Michigan into the manufacturing hub of the world once again,” Trump promised at a huge rally in Sterling Heights a few days before the election.
Nearly three years later, many manufacturers are nervous about rising tariffs and the USMCA trade deal, which is still in the process of being ratified.
Meanwhile, Michigan’s crumbling infrastructure still hasn’t been addressed. Infrastructure Week has become an internet meme and a symbol of Washington’s inept attempts to discuss serious policy.
But jobs and wages are up in the region. In February, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that Macomb County had added 9,118 manufacturing jobs between the fourth quarter of 2016 and the second quarter of 2018, the largest increase in the nation. Fiat Chrysler recently announced plans for more than $1.5 billion in investment in two Macomb County auto plants that will create over 1,400 well-paying jobs.
“No matter where you stand on Trump, he’s gotten a lot done,” said George Martin, whom I met close to the 8 Mile Road corridor that separates Macomb County from Detroit’s Wayne County.
A former sailor, Martin cited the “night and day” difference in care he receives at the Veterans Affairs hospital. “Doctors are actually listening to people, and the people who work for Veterans Affairs are actually trying to get their problems solved,” he said.
Martin, who voted for Obama before casting his ballot for Trump in 2016, hasn’t seen any regret among the Trump voters he knows. “Anywhere in Michigan that [Trump] won before, I think he’ll win again,” he said. “I don’t think anybody who voted for him wouldn’t vote for him again.”
Later in the week, I attended a local business awards dinner in Port Huron, a small city just north of Macomb County near the Canadian border. A middle-aged woman rushed over to me when she heard about the story I was working on.
Perhaps I’ve found my regretful Trump voter, I thought. But it wasn’t to be. The woman told me that even though she had been taunted on Facebook for supporting Trump in 2016, she was excited to vote for him again in 2020. I also met several other women who didn’t vote for Trump but who said their opposition to him had softened.
As the week wore on, I was desperate to find at least one regretful Trump voter. So as a last-ditch effort, I wrote an ad on the politics page of Craigslist Macomb County, asking people to respond if they had switched their vote.
I got just one reply, but it was illuminating.
“I was a life long Democrat until this last election,” wrote Don Soulliere in an email to me. “And to be honest everyone I know feels that way too! Every person I have talked to said the same thing the Democrats have gone off the rails they have lost a lot of their base.”
I asked Soulliere whether any of the former Clinton voters he knows plan to vote for Trump in 2020.
“Everyone I know!” he responded.
Daniel Allott (@DanielAllott) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the author of Into Trump’s America and a former deputy commentary editor at the Washington Examiner.
