EAST LIVERPOOL, Ohio — Rich Andrason isn’t blind to the evidence of decay that a collapsed local economy and two generations of heroin addiction have brought to Columbiana County. Still, he wouldn’t change anything about his life here.
“I have a good life here, I still do,” he said, settling behind a desk slightly elevated from the counter of the antiques shop he and his wife Janice own on Washington Street.
Things used to be grander in the once-bustling downtown of this city of about 13,000 along the Ohio River. Parents brought kids here to shop for back-to-school clothes or to visit with Santa Claus as Christmas approached. This was a place where people made things, sold things, to carve out a decent middle-class American life.
These days, Andrason, 72, suspects government officials in Washington couldn’t find his hometown on a map, and the local officials seem to have a tin ear for clearly stated societal problems. Two weeks ago, East Liverpool made national news, though not in the way a city trying to remake itself would want. An unprecedented Facebook posting by police went viral, showing with shocking realism a man and woman unconscious from heroin in the front seat of a car with a 4-year-old boy in the back seat.
The extent of drug addiction is shameful and alarming, said Janice Andrason, 70.
“We cannot escape it. We see these young people, and not-so-young people, walking down the street. They have the shakes. They have robbed themselves of their own youth, and they come into the store asking for money,” she said.
Sometimes, addicts break into cars, undeterred by daylight, looking for coins or small bills, her husband said. Like the officers who posted them, Andrason hopes the photos of James Acord and Rhonda Pasek will make someone think twice about using in a child’s presence. The couple, revived with Narcan by emergency medical technicians to reverse the opiate overdose, face charges.
On a single day last week, 11 people overdosed in East Liverpool, neighboring Wellsville, Ohio, and Chester, W.Va., across the river. The images might wake up America to a troubling situation in many towns, Andrason said. “Perhaps they sent a message . . . that we are hurting, our problems are big and real, and that we are not just angry voters for no reason.”
From ‘Pottery City’ to poverty
This town earned a nickname as “Pottery Capital of the World” for housing 300 pottery makers at one time. The Andrasons worked as hard as anyone else here, even before opening Jayes Antiques Shop. She was a hair stylist who owned a beauty shop and then a beauty supply company; he worked in construction and operated a used-car lot.
They still own rental property, something that may cause them to be slapped with fines — $400 the first year and $1,200 the second — if they cannot find tenants.
“This town is dying right before our eyes,” Andrason said. “We are trying to be part of the solution, not the problem. But if you can’t get someone to rent a building, you can’t get someone to rent a building.”
Most people here, including the Andrasons, are registered Democrats — born into families of Democrats. “It was as much a part of your identity as which church you went to and which neighborhood you lived in,” he said. But this year, he and Janice will vote for Donald Trump. “The truth is, no one can really fix the mess we are in economically,” she said, “but you have to start somewhere and the guy who can shake things up a little is the best place for me to place my support.
“This little town used to be the hub of the Ohio Valley. Now we are the bottom of the barrel,” Andrason said. “We just keep trying to punch our way back up.”
“This little town used to be the hub of the Ohio Valley. Now we are the bottom of the barrel.”
- Janice Andrason
There are indications of that throughout the downtown. A block away from the antiques shop, Dean Elliot painstakingly worked to restore a black-varnished wooden door to its former grandeur. He’s renovating two former retail stores that will house a New Castle School of Trades branch.
Farther down the street, crews were tearing down a brick building to make way for Market Street Lofts, apartments that will be marketed to potential trade-school students.
Elliot, 55, supervisor for the renovation project, holds out hope that the career school will provide people with skills to secure jobs promised from a nearby shale-gas plant that Shell will build in Beaver County, Pa. The energy giant in June said it would move forward with the petrochemical complex that will turn ethane from Marcellus and Utica shale wells into ethylene, used for manufacturing plastics.
Civic leaders hailed the announcement as a game-changer. They expect the plant to create 6,000 construction jobs over a decade and eventually employ 600 people. It could draw plastics companies to set up shop in western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio and West Virginia’s northern panhandle.
“It’s the first good news to come around this region in a long time,” said Elliot. He hasn’t lost hope, despite the devastation from poverty and addiction that “makes zombies out of them.”
“All of this is interconnected,” he said. “The economic despair and feeling of being stuck has led to depression. The depression and hopelessness has led to drug addiction. And the inability of cosmopolitan America to understand our frustration has led those of us watching everything around us collapse to support Donald Trump.”
The son of a still-active Democratic committeewoman, Elliot will vote Republican in November.
“Come on, it’s not that hard to figure out,” he shrugged.
Valley of decision
The leaves are just beginning to change colors in the Ohio Valley, where a leisurely drive along winding roads in these hills reveals many yards and berms peppered with campaign signs for Trump and his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence. Once considered the Steel Valley of America, the Mahoning Valley is geographically tied to the Mahoning River, stretching through Stark, Mahoning, Trumbull and Portage counties in Ohio. Its largest city is Youngstown, with East Liverpool sitting in Columbiana County slightly south of Mahoning County.
The Trump signs increase north toward Youngstown, overlapping in some areas, even though the Mahoning Valley is traditional territory of the Democratic Party.
The last time Mahoning County voted Republican was in the landslide victory for Richard Nixon in 1972, before that it was Eisenhower in 1956.
“Trump’s solution — one that his supporters find believable — is to renegotiate or abrogate the trade deals so that American manufacturing can make a comeback, bringing with it jobs, families, schools and prosperous communities.”
People here have long voted for Democrats who promised to bring back jobs — Jimmy Carter, Mike Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry. They believed when these candidates told them they had their best interests at heart. They believed in Barack Obama so much that they gave him a nearly 2-1 margin victory over Mitt Romney.
Then fissures began to weaken that firm foundation of Democratic voters. In Ohio’s primary this past March, Hillary Clinton won 21,468 votes in Mahoning County — but Trump garnered an astounding 17,394 votes.
And two of the latest polls in Ohio show Trump surging over Clinton. Last week’s Bloomberg poll of likely Buckeye State voters gave him a 5-point lead, and a Fox News poll released Wednesday showed him maintaining that same number over Clinton.
When American steel was booming, so was Youngstown’s economy. Here, Youngstown Sheet and Tube, Republic Steel and US Steel were among manufacturers to take advantage of iron ore found along the Mahoning River and turn this area into one of the world’s largest steel-producing regions. When the mills closed, Youngstown became the epitome of a Rust Belt city.
Though technology has brought a more diverse economy, this is still largely a working-class population. And people like that identity, said Paul Sracic, who chairs the Department of Politics and International Relations at Youngstown University.
“The most important thing you notice when you come into this area is what a close-knit community it is,” Sracic said. “It is not uncommon to see multiple generations of families living within a few blocks or a few miles of one another.”
The culture of Youngstown grew from a love of community, gathering for Friday night youth-football games. Often, strangers who meet will ask, “Where did you go to high school?” he said.
When eastern Ohio’s mills closed and jobs disappeared, that sense of community began to disperse. Downtowns emptied as people and money left. Families broke apart when young people moved elsewhere to find jobs — though, certainly, that wasn’t always their preferred choice. Many here want to keep close to friends and family and to rebuild communities.
“This is Trump’s appeal,” said Sracic. “The type of jobs people had around here were manufacturing jobs. What happened to those jobs? If you ask people around here, they will tell you that they were shipped abroad because of unfair trade agreements.”
Trump’s solution — one that his supporters find believable — is to renegotiate or abrogate the trade deals so that American manufacturing can make a comeback, bringing with it jobs, families, schools and prosperous communities.
“That is the ‘great America’ that they want to see again,” said Sracic.
Along Ohio Route 7 in North Lima, Rich Canegali, Drew Duggar, Wayne Fogle and John Dalton stood together holding a large sign: “Shame. Shame. Shame.” Their message was intended to make people think twice about visiting the Dollar General store behind them.
“From our point of view, Dollar General has failed to meet area wage standards to build their new store. That decision results in our community experiencing a loss of dollars because their workers have less to spend,” said Canegali, 56, of Youngstown.
Canegali, Duggar, Fogle and Dalton all grew up here; three of the four friends intend to vote for Trump. They’re all members of the Carpenters & Joiners Union, among the many unions here that forged strong ties over the years.
“Organized labor was the foundation on which the Democratic Party built its dominance in the Mahoning Valley,” said Sracic.
The Democrats were seen as the workingman’s party; Republicans owned the mills. And Youngstown became a place for iconic labor disputes, including one that led to a 1952 Supreme Court case over Harry Truman’s nationalizing the steel mills to prevent strikes. In Youngstown Sheet and Tube v. Sawyer, called the “Steel Seizure Case,” the court limited the president’s power to seize private property.
“The dominance of the union-based Democratic machine remained in the Mahoning Valley,” said Sracic, “even after working-class white voters elsewhere began to take their socially more conservative values and moved to the Republican Party.”
No Republican presidential candidate could ever hope to get more than 36 percent of the vote here. Romney and John McCain, for example, each received only about 34 percent of the vote in Mahoning County. George W. Bush did a little better in 2004, winning 37 percent.
“The most competitive national Republican over the past 40 years, however, was Ronald Reagan,” said Sracic. He didn’t win Mahoning County “but did manage to cross the 40 percent line.”
Many political experts think of Hamilton County and Cincinnati as a swing battleground that could serve as a bellwether of where Ohio is going; Obama won this area in both of his elections. The Mahoning Valley’s two counties — Mahoning and Trumbull — together equal about half the population of Hamilton County, yet Sracic thinks the valley could become crucial in this year’s presidential choice.
“Given how Democratic the area is, the net loss to the Democratic Party could be huge, particularly if Trump were somehow able to win an actual majority of the vote in either county,” he said.
Democrats, however, argue that Trump could just as easily lose typically loyal Republican voters in Ohio.
The outliers
In a more than 200-mile circle through the Mahoning Valley from East Liverpool and back, Trump signs posted along highways and at homes and businesses numbered in the triple digits — compared with only two visible signs supporting Clinton.
Her supporters are tough to find here as well. Two confessed their allegiance in a tavern-turned-gathering spot for Alcoholics Anonymous members on Dresden Avenue in East Liverpool. One sipped soda as she surveyed others in the room from a bar stool; the other served the refreshments.
Jessica Carroll, 32, a mother of five and cook at East Liverpool City Hospital, was still wearing her hospital uniform. From her perch at the bar, she ticked off Democratic talking points as the basis for her support of Clinton. Behind the bar, her mother, Bonnie Carroll, put it simply: “You’d have to have your head examined to vote for that man.”
Paul Householder doesn’t fit any matrix the political experts may have. Seated on a stoop outside Buckeye Online School for Success, Householder, 73, hasn’t voted in his life and won’t start this year. He’s a Jehovah’s Witness. “We don’t get involved in politics,” said Householder, who came with this building as an electrician when it morphed into a school from a call center for Huntington Bank.
An Air Force veteran, however, he’s keenly aware of what’s at stake for America in today’s world and of his neighbors’ general leanings in the coming election. Whether Trump wins the White House or not, Householder is certain he’ll win this part of Ohio.
“Why? Because people believe he is listening to them,” he said. “That’s a potent feeling for an area like this.”