“People just want to work.” That’s a refrain I heard again and again while talking with my family in Upstate New York over the Thanksgiving weekend. I was there to enjoy the holiday with them, but I was also there to answer a question that many political journalists didn’t come close to resolving during the campaign: What drove so many middle and working-class people to support President-elect Trump?
Upstate New York isn’t technically in Appalachia, but it exhibits many of its demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. Overwhelmingly white and working class, it’s a place where firearms and church play a dominant role in most people’s lives.
My family lives near the city of Cortland, in a nearly 150-acre forest of majestic pine trees intersected by meandering creeks. It’s a five-minute walk to their nearest neighbors and a 10-minute drive to the nearest small town.
Cortland County voted for Trump 49-42 percent. Its economy has grown more slowly than the national economy since the recession, and its productivity is well below the national average. Many manufacturing jobs left the region decades ago and never came back. With fewer economic opportunities, drugs have taken hold. Cortland County led the state in methamphetamine busts in 2014 and 2015.
The recession hurt the region’s construction industry and with it the fortunes of my cousin Jamie Denkenberger’s small land surveying company.
The early 2000s were a boom time, relatively speaking, for his business. But finances have been tight over the last eight years due in part to higher taxes and more burdensome government regulations. “For a lot of small businesses, the recession hasn’t ended,” he said. “I just want an environment whereby people can interact with one another without losing too much of the fruits of their labor.”
Jamie liked Trump’s calls for lower taxes (New York has the highest tax rates in the country) and more infrastructure spending, which could be used to help repair the region’s aging roads, bridges and water systems.
Guns also played a role in Jamie’s vote. New York’s Safe Act, which contained several firearms regulations, was signed into law in January 2013. But even today, “Repeal Safe Act” signs can be seen on people’s lawns. Many gun enthusiasts voted for Trump hoping he’ll appoint justices to a Supreme Court that one day overturns the law.
Jamie’s eldest son, James, is a freshman at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He supported Trump, but said he and other conservative students were embarrassed to show their support because Trump is “kind of an idiot.” The day after the election, some distraught students showed up to class sobbing.
Jamie’s younger brother Matt works as a campus life coordinator at Bryant & Stratton College in Syracuse. He told me that some school employees were elated with the election results and the prospect of Trump rolling back the Obama administration’s regulations on for-profit universities. The regulations were meant to help students avoid defaulting on their federal loans, but they also meant that school administrators spent too much time “providing information about and justifying the money we spent.”
But what resonated most for Matt was an April Trump campaign rally in Syracuse, where a “family-like atmosphere” created a strong sense of solidarity. “It was just cool to see so many like-minded people come together.”
Jamie and Matt’s father, Jim, voted for Trump reluctantly. A former land surveyor who won a seat on the Cortland County legislature at the age of 70, Jim liked that Trump is an outsider who will bring business experience to the White House. “Trump had not been part of our government,” he said. “Hillary was deep in it.”
James’ wife Cindy is president of the Board of Trustees of a proposed charter school in her hometown, and she appreciated Trump’s pledge to support school choice. But she said that 80 percent of her acquaintances who voted for Trump were actually voting for Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence.
“In my circle, many were initially against Trump because he’s a buffoon,” she said. “Pence became the way we could hold our noses and vote for Trump. The hope is that Pence will be able to inform and challenge and influence and temper Trump’s rough edges.”
The biggest problem facing America’s working and middle classes is the feeling that their choices don’t matter, that the system is rigged against them. “People here don’t want to be rich,” Jamie said. “They just don’t want to keep falling behind … Trump shows the desperation of where people are at.”
Jamie liked that Trump said after winning the election, “Now we’re going to get to work and prove ourselves.” But he said the new president must deliver on his promises. “Most people are taking a wait-and-see approach with Trump. In Upstate New York, actions speak louder than words. This is a ‘show me’ state. Show me.”
“Show me,” he said again. “Prove it.”
Daniel Allott is deputy commentary editor for the Washington Examiner
