Promises still unfulfilled

Trump tests the loyalty of the Ohio Democrats he won

The president heads to the Democratic stronghold of Youngstown with many of his campaign promises still unfulfilled.

By ANNIE KARNI

Down-and-out Youngstown, Ohio, last year became emblematic of the power of Donald Trump’s campaign. With his populist message targeting white working-class voters, he outperformed every GOP nominee since Richard Nixon won the Democratic stronghold of Mahoning County.

Today, the blue-collar town represents one of the looming challenges of Trump’s presidency, six months in: how to keep the support he won as a populist candidate, when he flipped disgruntled Democrats and independents to his side of the ledger, while in many cases governing like a plutocrat who has so far failed to deliver on many of his campaign promises.

Trump will test the waters Tuesday night when he takes the stage in Youngstown at the Covelli Centre, a large arena that typically hosts events like ice hockey, WWE wrestling matches, and monster truck tours. The campaign rally is designed to energize the president, excite his base, and offer Trump a chance to tack away from the Russia scandal that never stops brewing in Washington – one that his advisers claim no regular, outside-the-beltway Americans really care about.

Trump campaigned across Ohio as the “jobs candidate,” promising to re-negotiate trade deals, protect Social Security, make no cuts to Medicare or Medicaid, invest $550 billion in infrastructure – assurances that have yet to materialize.

For now, the Trump loyalists are still granting the president a long leash. They credit him for rolling back Obama-era regulations, and they blame Congress for the promises he has been unable to keep.

“He’s doing the right things in my opinion,” said Dave Johnson, a third-generation CEO of his family’s Ohio-based tile company and diehard Trump supporter. “I blame Congress for not fixing healthcare. Trump is not going to give up on repealing and replacing Obamacare.”

Johnson’s personal story is emblematic of the anxiety rippling across the Rust Belt towns that ultimately helped elect Trump over Clinton. In the 1990s, the Johnson family tile company counted 800 employees and 18 distribution centers. Today, Johnson said, “I have 150 employees and I’m fighting like hell to keep those jobs alive.”

Johnson, who served as the Columbiana County chair of the Trump campaign last year and will be one of the official greeters at a VIP reception with Trump before Tuesday night’s rally, said he hasn’t been in touch with the president since meeting him once on the trail.

At that meeting, he proudly told Trump that his company made some of the tiling that blankets the White House roof. “He was with Ivanka,” Johnson recalled. “He said, ‘Ivanka, get his card before we leave.’ I haven’t heard from them since, but they’ve been pretty busy.”

But the looming question is how long President Trump can ride the trail magic that Candidate Trump created last year.

“Candidate Trump was able to convince people that because of his own personal wealth and brand and name, he would be able to fix a lot of these [economic] problems,” said Ohio Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, whose district includes Youngstown. “Six months in, he has not delivered on any of those promises. He talked about expanding healthcare, and making it more affordable. How does he explain completely going back on the promises he made to those people, many of who supported him? Where is this trillion-dollar infrastructure bill? It’s nowhere to be found.”

Trump’s campaign rally – his first one since his June appearance in Cedar Rapids, Iowa – comes as the president has grown increasingly frustrated with the focus on Russian meddling in the 2016 election, which carries with it the implication that he didn’t win the biggest accomplishment of his life on his own.

Tuesday night will serve as a hearty reminder that it was also his campaign message that allowed him to cut so deeply into one of the most Democratic counties in the country and ultimately win an entire state that helped him defeat Clinton.

During last year’s campaign, Ryan claimed voters in Youngstown would see through the hypocrisy of Trump’s tough talk on China, when he manufactured his clothing and brand lines there. “In Youngstown, they’re going to call B.S. on that,” Ryan said in an interview last year.

That prediction didn’t quite pan out. Trump lost Mahoning County, but only by three points – 50 to 47 percent – an unprecedented swing for a county that President Barack Obama carried by 27 points just four years earlier.

Republicans elsewhere in the state – even some who don’t count themselves as riders of the Trump Train – said the rally would benefit the party overall, and help energize voters who knew they were getting a messaging agent, not a policy wonk, when they elected Trump in the first place.

“He’s coming here to reaffirm his commitments,” said Robert Frost, chair of the Cuyahoga County Republicans. “He’s been very consistent, just with the Democrats obstructing progress in D.C., there may be things he’s still working to accomplish that haven’t happened yet.”

Democratic leaders in Ohio said they don’t expect the rally to produce more than a sugar high for Trump. “He would be better off coming to Youngstown having delivered on any of his promises,” said David Pepper, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party. “If he could say, here’s what I did on NAFTA like I promised, here’s the added auto manufacturing jobs I talked about, I’ve said China is a currency manipulator – but he’s done none of those things. At some point, without one single promise kept, showing up again to have a rally is going to get hollow.”

For Trump, there’s not a lot to lose in slipping out of Washington for a quick rally: in addition to charging him up, it gives him hours of live cable airtime to talk about whatever is on his mind in an arena venue he knows how to work. “He’s really good at the marketing piece,” Ryan acknowledged.

The question is how long Trump gets the benefit of the doubt. Even as Trump has touted his “great job numbers,” Ohio’s unemployment rate increased to 5 percent in June, from 4.9 percent the previous month – slower than the previous year.

And Youngstown has the highest percentage of residents on Medicaid – 14.4 percent – of any county in Ohio.

“Cutting Medicaid and food stamps in order to give tax breaks to billionaires is not going to fly in Youngstown,” said Democratic strategist Paul Begala, a former official in the Bill Clinton White House. “How long he can continue to maintain such strong support there is anyone’s guess.”