When Brian Pannebecker shows up in front of a factory, the shift change gets a little louder than usual. Once a week, in the early afternoon, he positions himself in front of one of the many car plants in Detroit and the surrounding area to campaign for Donald Trump. On this sunny October day, he and a handful of other members of his Auto Workers for Trump group are in Sterling Heights, a Detroit suburb where Ford makes rear axles for its cars. He grew up nearby and worked for Ford and Chrysler for a long time and recently retired. He’s brought signs and flags that say things like “Trump 2024,” and when cars drive by he yells things like “Yeah, Baby, Trump!” Although his group is small, it creates quite a buzz here on 17 Mile Road . She gets plenty of approving honks, often accompanied by a thumbs-up, both from Ford employees leaving the factory at the end of their shift and from traffic in front of the factory. Not everyone likes the campaign, some drivers shake their heads or show an extended middle finger, and “Fuck Trump” can be heard a few times. One threatens that he will ensure that Pannebecker and his group are removed. But the positive reactions clearly outweigh the negative ones, with even some school bus drivers honking. There is no doubt that Trump has many passionate supporters in this part of the state of Michigan. A few kilometers south of the Ford plant, Heathie Jenkins is also trying to mobilize voters, although for Kamala Harris and not with as much publicity as Pannebecker. The 80-year-old retiree sits in a plain room in the regional headquarters of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union. Together with a dozen other volunteers, she does “phone banking,” calling UAW members to campaign for Harris. She’s currently on the phone with a man who doesn’t want to reveal who he’s voting for, and she’s rattling off arguments for Harris and against Trump. “Kamala is the candidate for the middle class.” “She will hold the country together, not divide it.” “Maybe you heard how badly Trump spoke about Detroit yesterday?” “Trump belittles women, and surely you have a mother or a sister in your life?” Jenkins also brings up Harris’ gender, in case the person she’s talking to sees that as a weakness: “We know there are a lot of people who think she’s not strong because she’s a She is a woman, but in reality she is very strong.” The union started the call campaign four weeks ago, and recently it increased the number again because it is entering the hot phase before the election. We now talk on the phone for eight hours a day instead of the previous six, and not just from Monday to Friday, but also on Saturdays. Heathie Jenkins catching voters on the phone.Roland LindnerMichigan is one of the hotly contested “swing states” that will determine the presidential election in November. In polls, Trump and Harris are close together in the race to succeed Joe Biden. Trump won here in 2016 but lost in 2020, as well as in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. All three states are part of the American Rust Belt, the country’s traditional industrial regions, which have experienced a decline in the manufacturing sector in recent decades. Michigan is the heart of the auto industry; this is where the “Big Three” are based, i.e. General Motors, Ford and the US -A branch of the European Stellantis Group, which includes brands such as Chrysler and Jeep. They also employ fewer people in the region today than before, but remain important employers. And especially in Macomb County, which includes Detroit suburbs like Sterling Heights, car factories still dominate the picture. A large part of its population is working class, so it is to some extent an indicator of how well the candidates are generally doing in this group . He also enjoys a lot of attention among election strategists because he often changed political sides. The people here voted twice for the Democratic Party’s Barack Obama, but then twice for the Republican Trump. Trump owed much of his narrow victory in Michigan in 2016 to Macomb County, where he won by a fairly clear margin. Is the base rebelling against the union leadership? Harris can claim that she has the official support of the UAW in the county. Shawn Fain, the union’s president, has appeared at some of its rallies. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that most UAW members will vote for her. Brian Pannebecker says he gets a completely different impression from his actions in front of the car factories. He often hears from employees there that 65 to 70 percent of colleagues in their work environment are for Trump. There is a difference in political attitudes “like night and day” between the union leadership and the members in the factories. Harris supporters consider Pannebecker’s estimate to be exaggerated, but not completely out of thin air. James Jewell, who represents the UAW at Ford’s Sterling Heights axle plant, said a large portion of union members would follow the official recommendation and vote for Harris. But he can imagine that they are voting for Trump in greater numbers in Macomb County than elsewhere. Alysa Diebolt, the chairwoman of the Democratic Party in the district, thinks the race here is very close: “Shit’s really tight,” she says. “Shit’s tight,” says Democrat Alysa Diebolt about the election campaign in her district of Macomb County.Roland LindnerJoe Biden likes to describe himself as the “most union-friendly president in American history,” and last year he even visited UAW members in an unusual gesture of solidarity They went on strike with the “Big Three”. Unionist Jewell also sees Harris as an ally. “She has shown time and time again that she is on our side. And that is simply not the case with your opponent.” Trump recently showed his true colors when he joked with multi-billionaire Elon Musk about firing striking employees: “That is explicitly anti-union.” Trump supporter Pannebecker counters: Biden only visited the striking workers to have his photo taken with them. Harris is a “liar” who has no knowledge of the auto industry. She is “stupid” and a “total disaster”. Trump, on the other hand, sometimes says “stupid things,” but is by no means stupid. Trump voters in Michigan cite many arguments that can also be heard elsewhere in the country. Inflation is high on the list. “The last four years of my life were just pretty tough financially,” said Nelson Westrick, a Ford employee who is part of Pannebecker’s group. There are also election campaign issues that have enormous weight, especially in this region, and one of the biggest points of contention is electromobility. Nelson Westrick (right) is also voting for Trump because of the financial hardships of the past four years. Roland Lindner Trump accuses Harris and her party of wanting to force America to switch to electric cars, which would destroy jobs and play into China’s hands. He often talks about an “electric car mandate” that Biden and Harris have introduced; one of his commercials says: “Attention, auto workers: Kamala Harris wants to stop all gasoline-powered cars. Crazy but true.” This message resonates and puts Harris on the defensive. Recently, at a rally in Michigan, she was forced to counter: “Contrary to what my opponent suggests, I will never tell you what kind of car you have to drive.”Uncertain e-futureTrump’s claim is indeed misleading. There is no mandate in America that dictates the construction of electric cars instead of gasoline ones. However, this year the US government introduced rules to cut CO2 emissions from cars by half by 2032, and to achieve that goal, the EPA estimates that more than half of all new cars sold would have to be cut by then be electric vehicles. Harris is also vulnerable on this point because in 2019, when she was running for the Democratic nomination for president, she advocated that all new cars in the USA should be emission-free by 2035. She no longer talks about it today, but Trump supporters like Pannebecker suspect that this is the true position she would implement as president. He considers such mandatory requirements to be “madness” and “socialism”, especially since electric cars are currently selling worse than many manufacturers had hoped. A concern that has often been expressed, and now also during the election campaign, is that fewer workers are needed for the production of electric cars. Whether this is really true is controversial. Although electric vehicles usually have fewer components than gasoline engines, there are also studies that show that this does not have to have a negative impact on the number of employees. Not everyone indicates their preference. In any case, there is a lot of skepticism about electric cars. In a survey by market research group Epic MRA in Michigan in August, 51 percent of participants said they opposed Biden-Harris administration initiatives to promote electric mobility. 41 percent were in favor. Epic President Bernie Porn believes that Harris has not yet communicated convincingly enough on this topic. She needs to argue much more aggressively that her policy on electromobility will not harm the American auto industry and its employees, but rather benefit them. If you drive through residential areas of Sterling Heights, pro-Trump signs seem to predominate in the front yards. But Harris’ supporters also see encouraging signs. Alysa Diebolt, the local Democratic party chairwoman, talks about the successes she feels when campaign staff go door-to-door these days. They could have recruited many additional volunteers who wanted to help. James Jewell of the UAW says that if you can get into a conversation with one of the few undecided voters, then the chances of convincing that person to support Harris are pretty good. He doesn’t see the signs in the front gardens as a reliable indicator of how sympathy is really distributed. Many Harris supporters were afraid to put signs outside their homes because they feared being harassed by Trump fans. “Generally speaking, Trump voters are loud and obnoxious. And Harris voters tend not to be.”More on the topicJewell sees starting points for consensus when it comes to the substantive debates surrounding the auto industry. He says he’s not a “huge fan” of electric cars himself. But they are ultimately unstoppable, and efforts should be focused on making them made in America and by UAW members. “If we ignore politics and emotions, we all have the same goal. But it’s become difficult to have a rational conversation about it.”
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