16 places that shaped the 2016 election: Youngstown, Ohio

By Nov. 9, the votes will have been cast and counted, there will be a winner and a loser, and the country will begin a slow return to normal. Historians will have their say on the outcome, but all of us who have lived through this election will carry away indelible memories of a shocking year in American history: of a handful of ordinary people, swept up in the rush of history; of a series of moments on which the fate of the nation seemed, at least briefly, to turn; and of places on the map that became symbols of a divided nation. As we count down to Election Day, Yahoo News has identified 16 unforgettable people, moments and places.

Driving around Youngstown, Ohio, you can’t miss the painted signs, stuck in yards or in the beds of pickup trucks. They vary somewhat in size and language, but the most popular versions are quite large and read “Cross Over — Vote Trump” and “Save America — Vote Trump.”

They are the handiwork of Donald J. Skowron, a retired Youngstown police officer who has been active in the local Republican Party for years. What makes this election cycle unique is that Donald’s twin brother, Ronald Skowron, a former sheriff’s deputy, is helping. A lifelong Democrat, Ronald crossed party lines to vote for Donald Trump in the Ohio primary and said he plans to stick with the Republican in the general election.

Donald crafts the signs in a workshop adjoining the Mahoning County Republican office, just south of Youngstown, with the help of other Trump enthusiasts. Some of the signs are hand-painted, but many are silk-screened, a process he says has made production both quicker and cheaper.

“I made 13 signs for [Republican presidential nominee Mitt] Romney four years ago,” said Donald Skowron. “I’m looking at about 400 this time around.”

A tea party sign supporting Donald Trump sits on the back of a truck
A tea party sign supporting Donald Trump sits on the back of a truck located off of Market St. in Youngstown, Ohio. (Photo: Angelo Merendino for Yahoo News)

One of the reasons for the signs’ popularity is that Ronald isn’t the only Democrat with an interest in Trump’s populist, antitrade message. The county added 21,000 registered Republicans during the March primary, counting unaffiliated voters joining and Democrats crossing over, essentially doubling — at least temporarily — the number of GOP members in one day. In that primary, the county broke strongly for Trump, giving him a 13-point win over John Kasich. It was a stark contrast to the statewide vote, which the sitting governor won by 11 percent. This is all happening in the traditionally Democratic stronghold of Mahoning County, which has voted at least 60 percent blue in the last five presidential elections.

Youngstown is representative of large swaths of the Midwest, where manufacturing jobs moving overseas have resulted in economic hardships and a sense that Washington has left them behind, adding appeal to Trump’s outsider message.

The story of Youngstown’s economic downfall from one of the country’s great industrial centers has been told in books, documentaries and Bruce Springsteen songs. The closing of the steel mills, beginning in the late 1970s, led to the loss of 60 percent of the city’s population over the last half-century. Manufacturing jobs in the Youngstown area fell 42 percent from 2000 to 2014 and its poverty rate is one of the highest in the nation. Organized crime and labor racketeering are common.

Those numbers alone might seem enough to explain the appeal of Trump’s focus on jobs, but it’s impossible to truly explain the Republican nominee’s allure here without also telling the story of a politician who was a folk hero in Mahoning Valley and whose name was mentioned by many Youngstown residents in explaining Trump’s crossover appeal.

James Traficant was a star football player for Youngstown’s Cardinal Mooney High School in the 1950s, and then a quarterback at the University of Pittsburgh alongside Mike Ditka. Returning to his hometown, he became sheriff of Youngstown in 1981, winning supporters for his refusal to issue eviction notices to unemployed mill workers, even at the price of being jailed himself for contempt of court. After successfully defending himself against federal racketeering charges stemming from a bribery investigation, he was elected to Congress in 1984, a populist Democrat with blue-collar roots.

U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr.
U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr., D-Ohio, responds to a committee attorney’s question during cross-examination at a House Ethics Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in 2002. (Photo: Joe Marquette/AP)

Traficant’s career in Washington will sound familiar to anyone who’s followed the Trump campaign: He hated trade deals, wanted to send the Army to protect the Mexico-U.S. border and fought with the head of his own party, Bill Clinton. And he was famous for his hair, an unruly gray mop later revealed to be a toupee. Reelected eight times, he finally left Congress in 2002, expelled after he was convicted on 10 felony charges, including bribery and racketeering, but ran for his seat again as an independent and won 15 percent of the vote while in federal prison.

But the comparison between Traficant — who died in 2014 — and the Republican nominee falls apart if you look closely.

“The difference between Traficant and Trump is that Jim Traficant had genuine working-class credentials,” said Bill Lawson, a Mahoning Valley native who serves as director of its historical society. “He frequently referred to himself as a son of a truck driver, and his family would have lived paycheck-to-paycheck at times. When he spoke up for the many blue-collar workers who lost good-paying jobs and were left behind in the wake of the economic transition of the 1970s and 1980s, he did so from the heart and from his own experiences growing up in Youngstown.”

Traficant’s successor, Rep. Tim Ryan, is one of many Democrats in the area who’s not mincing words as he tries to sway his constituents away from Trump. At an October event headlined by former President Bill Clinton, Ryan spent most of his introduction attacking the real estate magnate for his use of Chinese steel in his buildings and his history of stiffing contractors.

“He will gut you,” said Ryan, “and he will walk over your cold, dead body and he won’t even flinch. He’ll climb over your cold, dead body and get on his helicopter. I don’t mean to be dramatic, but that’s what’s at stake.”

David Betras, chair of the local Democratic Party, acknowledged the effects of Traficant’s legacy with voters but said not to discount the number of Democrats who crossed over to vote Kasich in an effort to stop Trump. Early voting in the state started on October 12 and the first indications, as measured by Twitter enthusiasm, seemed to favor Clinton. The city of Youngstown itself is also majority minority, with over 50 percent of the population as either African-American or Latino, two demographics that Trump has struggled with in polling throughout the entire campaign.

“She’s not going to lose this county,” said Betras. “It ain’t gonna happen, they’re in a pipe dream. [Hillary] and Bernie still outvoted, all of their primary votes, still outvoted them and it was a primary and we had no get out-the-vote apparatus. Now we have a get-out-the-vote apparatus, and they have no apparatus.”

Betras predicted Clinton’s percentage in the county would end up in the high 50s come election night, continuing a streak of Mahoning going Democrat in every presidential race since Richard Nixon’s landslide in 1972.

A sign promoting Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump is posted off of Market St. in Youngstown, Ohio. (Photo: Angelo Merendino for Yahoo News)
A sign promoting Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump is posted off of Market St. in Youngstown, Ohio. (Photo: Angelo Merendino for Yahoo News)

Despite the enthusiasm Trump has sparked among some local voters, it hasn’t been smooth sailing for local Republicans.

In September, the Mahoning County chair for the Trump campaign resigned after telling a reporter that racism was a 21st-century construct. “I don’t think there was any racism until Obama got elected,” said Kathy Miller, who stepped down shortly after those remarks were published, causing outrage across the country. Even after stepping down, she appeared in the front row of a Mike Pence rally in nearby Leetonia, Ohio, and said she apologized for the “problems for Mr. Trump, not for the statements.”

But despite the struggles any community would have in attempting to consolidate 63,000 people in a city built for a population three times that size, there is progress in Youngstown, thanks to organizations like Youngstown CityScape, a nonprofit dedicated to the revitalization of the city.

The city’s business incubator — a joint effort with Youngstown State University — is considered one of the best in the world. America Makes, a 3D printing acceleration program that was praised by President Obama during his 2014 State of the Union address, is a partner with the incubator, along with other tech companies downtown.

Sharon Letson, executive director of CityScape, has lived in the area for 34 years and has worked with the organization for 12; she is focused on what awaits Youngstown in the aftermath of Nov. 8.

“I know this,” said Letson. “After the election, we will all still be here, working together, trying to make things work for our city. I hope whoever ends up in the White House pays attention to us.“ — By Christopher Wilson. Video produced by Kelli Hill.

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