UPDATE: Since I posted on Sunday about NBC’s “Meet The Press” airing a feature about the all-important Macomb County voters and their flip to Donald Trump, two more Macomb-centric media reports have emerged.
Fox News today broadcast a piece on what Macomb expects from the new president, and the overriding answer was a quick move toward change.
Relying upon a series of Skype interviews with Republican activists – Jamie Roe, Terry Bowman and Brian Pannebacker – Fox found that sealing the Southern border and taking a tough stand against global trade and imports were at the top of the priority list. One interviewee said he expects the president-elect to cut individual taxes by at least 50 percent.
Meanwhile, Jack Lessenberry, the veteran curmudgeon of the Michigan press corps, wrote a column that began with this description of Macomb: “What may just be the politically craziest county in Michigan, if not the planet.”
The syndicated columnist focused on some of the “bizarre” voting patterns in Macomb on Nov. 8, from the top to the bottom of the ballot. Trump’s huge win in Macomb, a 68,000-vote turnaround from Obama’s win there in 2012, was duly noted. As was a rather distinct distaste for Hillary Clinton.
Stretching back to the 1984 origins of Macomb emerging as one of the most politically interesting counties in America, Lessenberry wrote this:
… The national media fastened on the so-called “Reagan Democrats” of Macomb as their symbol.
Some stories depicted Macomb residents as culturally boorish ethnic whites, largely of Polish or Italian extraction, who don’t much like people of color. But that’s a caricature.
President Obama carried the county twice, and in 2013. Macomb residents voted to tax themselves to support the Detroit Institute of Arts. But there was a big backlash this time. Many Macomb residents clearly didn’t like Hillary Clinton.
Donald Trump got (more than) 54 percent of the Macomb vote; his plurality of 48,348 was almost four times his statewide margin.
The longstanding scribe also mentioned the “bizarre, expensive and nasty” campaign for county drain commissioner, in which retiring GOP congresswoman Candice Miller defeated 24-year Democratic incumbent Tony Marrocco.
Lessenberry offered one more touch to his head-shaking recognition of Macomb as a maverick, unpredictable county when he noted that Republicans Karen Spranger and Larry Rocca, both wholly unqualified for office, won election as county clerk and treasurer, respectively, over two highly qualified Democrats, Fred Miller and Derek Miller (no relation – and no relation to Candice).
*****
Here’s my original Sunday post about the NBC/MTP broadcast:
Twelve days after the election, Macomb County voters were in the national spotlight again today as NBC’s “Meet The Press” featured interviews with several Donald Trump supporters at a Warren pub.
MTP host Chuck Todd followed the usual script, noting that Macomb is the home of the “Reagan Democrats” and that it is a big, important county in a battleground (formerly blue) state. Those interviewed at Kuhnhenn Brewing were typical working class voters who said they hope for change in the Trump presidency.
“Give us the opportunity to work and take care of our families,” said one man.
Much of the commentary was familiar: Hillary Clinton is a “criminal,” Trump is a billionaire who “can’t be bought,” outsourcing of jobs overseas should be answered with tariffs on products imported into the U.S., and transgender people should not be allowed in the bathroom of their choice.
Since the election, numerous national publications and TV outlets have mentioned Macomb’s dramatic flip – a 68,000-vote change from President Obama’s win here in 2012 to Trump’s triumph in 2016. The limelight is reminiscent of the huge amount of attention Macomb voters received in the ‘80s and ‘90s from national and international media.
It also signals that Macomb will remain an important place on the electoral map in 2020 as a bellwether county that reflects the views of Middle America.
But the increasingly diverse demographics in the county brought a new wrinkle to the MTP report that went beyond blue-collar stereotypes. One woman, a Clinton voter, said she is pleased with the cultural depth that her child experiences by attending a school where students speak a collective 30 languages.
Todd also interviewed the owner of a diner, Little Joe’s Coney Island in south Warren, who said his immigrant father is a Kosovar Albanian Muslim. The bigoted rhetoric aimed at people who look or speak or worship differently must stop, the restaurateur said.
Then he added this: “He (Trump) has the chance to unite us all.”
http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/the-voters-who-picked-trump-in-16-but-obama-in-12-all-want-the-same-thing-change-813603907679
