PORTAGE, Ind. — James Snyder, the mayor of Portage, Indiana, is a Donald Trump delegate from the state whose primary on May 3 made Trump the de facto Republican nominee. He is a two-term Republican mayor in Porter County, which sits on the shore of Lake Michigan, is predominantly Democratic and delivered big majorities for both Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Politically, Porter County, near the heart of northwest Indiana’s heavily unionized steel industry, was once an extension of Chicago’s Democratic machine. Now, after years of economic upheaval, places like this are going their own way, not Washington’s way. That’s a problem for Hillary Clinton, linked in these voters’ minds with a federal government that has failed them.
Even in relatively prosperous Chicago bedroom communities like Chesterton, Indiana, on Porter County’s northern edge, for a voter like Angelica Levy it’s “anybody but Hillary.” Levy, who was selling her children’s old clothing in a front yard with a Bernie Sanders sign, was concerned about Clinton’s contributions from the financial industry. “How do you fix things when people who are part of the problem are giving you money?” Sanders is “something different” from established Washington, added Levy’s partner, Jon Nolan.
Portage was incorporated in the late 1950s, and it became home to white steelworkers and business owners fleeing racial change in neighboring Gary, Indiana. Today, that divide is less over race than economics, city officials say. Portage has helped plow Gary’s streets, but it’s further away politically than it has ever been: Lake County, where Gary is located, was the only county in northwest Indiana that Clinton won.
Trump, Snyder told me, “is making three very simple points. He’s tied a wall to jobs, China to jobs, and he’s said, ‘Let’s take care of our veterans.’ Even if you may not like him, who disagrees with those three points? And all of those are executive, more executive decisions than they even are legislative. And they’re things that everybody goes, ‘That’s reasonable, we’re in America, we can do that.’”
Snyder said he wasn’t “angry at anybody.” There just comes a time, he explained, when people think, “You know, why are we giving all this when we’re not taking care of our own people?”
That is Donald Trump’s and Bernie Sanders’ underlying argument, Snyder said, “and it is a great, simple argument.” Expressed as “America first” by Trump, and by Sanders as, “This country belongs to all of us,” it resonates well beyond Porter County. From the Rust Belt to the Great Plains, blue-collar workers, farmers and small-business owners said the recession showed them that the federal government and major political parties had become almost freakishly disconnected from their struggles. They are voting for people they view as furthest from that system.
“I certainly don’t agree with everything Trump says, but I do like, ‘Our country should be first,’” said Steve Letic, 39, a self-described conservative. “We need to take care of our veterans, our disabled, our kids.” Letic, a former steelworker, is a director at the Portage Boys and Girls Club. He says Clinton represents a system that’s “all corrupt,” a tradition of broken promises, red tape and bureaucracy that can only be moved by people with money. “Everyone in Washington seems to have a lot more money than anyone in Portage. Why?”
Portage was hit hard by the decline of the steel industry. A modest recovery fueled by reasonable housing prices and the city’s proximity to Chicago was cut short by the recession. Now Portage is relying on private money to fund a renaissance. Portage’s economic development is led by Andy Maletta, the son of one of Portage’s former mayors. Maletta is from a family of staunch pro-union Democrats. He voted for Sanders in the primary, which had a record turnout. If Sanders doesn’t win the nomination, he say he’ll sit out the general election.
“Coming out of the crash of 2008 and what everybody’s been through in that period of time, there’s distrust of Washington, and you’ll probably hear that from anywhere you go in the country,” Maletta told me. Sanders and Trump are “the ones saying, ‘We’re gonna cut through all the crap and we’re gonna get things done for you.’”