CHARLESTON, W.Va. — It all seemed to come together that May 5th night in 2016 when thousands of West Virginians rallied with then-candidate Donald Trump at the Charleston Coliseum and Convention Center.

There was Trump, best known before his unlikely presidential run for his reality show The Apprentice, on a stage in West Virginia where those in the sell-out crowd were completing with him almost every familiar line he delivered during that rally.

Republican political consultant Greg Thomas remembers it well.

“It was exciting. It was awesome. It was the best political event I had ever been to. It’s the best political event I will ever go to,” Thomas said. “I was really proud to be part of that campaign, I thought it was awesome and that’s Trump at his best.”

There was something about that night that seemed to cement the relationship a majority of West Virginians have continued to have with Trump now four years removed from his only term in office. Support that seems just as strong despite Trump’s well-documented troubles.

Why?

Former Wood County Republican Party Chairman Rob Cornelius said it’s simple.

“Biden has proved the other side can’t get the job done,” Cornelius said. “Ninety percent of you are saying you aren’t better off than you were four years ago.”

Thomas sees Trump’s support in West Virginia in three groups.

He said first there are those who liked him eight years ago and still like him today because he is a disruptor. Secondly, there’s a group that don’t care much for his behavior but that like the policies that were produced in his first administration and then lastly, there’s a group, familiar to Cornelius’ description, that don’t like what the Biden administration has done.

“I think you get these groups that keep layering onto each other and that’s why I think his support is higher than it was eight years ago,” Thomas said.

Trump garnered 68% of the vote in the 2016 general election. In reelection bid four years later it was almost identical.

Act of faith

There’s strong support for Trump among conservative church goers in the Mountain State.

“It’s an act of faith,” former Charleston Mayor Danny Jones told MetroNews. “I don’t think people hold something against people forever. He’s vulgar but they just move that part over. People like President Trump because he is enemies with people that don’t like them.”

Thomas said the seemingly mismatched relationship is based on policy.

“It’s the policies. I’m as pro-Trump as anybody but there are things he says that I say, ‘I wish he wouldn’t have said that.’ If you really are a person of faith and you really care about family values, it’s the policies.”

Fairmont State University University Assistant Professor of Political Science Greg Noone said the biggest thing Trump has been able to do is to connect with people who feel like they’ve been left behind or left out of the economy.

“There’s that disaffected feeling that others are rocketing ahead and they’re being left behind,” Noone said. “I think he speaks to that on a gut base level and I think that’s the connection he makes,” Noone said.

Post-Trump

Trump will win West Virginia in November with the national race once again expected to be tight. Some are wondering where West Virginia will look post-Trump, whether that’s in November, four years down the road or eight years from now.

Cornelius called it a heavy lift because it will be difficult for anyone to match Trump.

“Politicians are boring by nature and that are risk averse, Trump is neither one of those things,” Cornelius said.

He said Trump has been popular, especially in 2016, with people who don’t usually vote. Again, he said any further GOP candidate will have a tough time matching that.

“It’s hard to find someone that interesting,” Cornelius said.

Thomas said Trump won’t always be there but if he’s reelected then he can get his policies in place that will impact the country for years to come.

Jones said Trump’s popularity, that many West Virginia candidates in this election cycle are latching themselves to, is not going to last.

“I don’t buy into it. It won’t work the next time,” Jones said. “If he doesn’t win this election he’s probably going to prison.”

Prediction

How will Trump do Tuesday?

“Sixty-eight percent,” Jones said.

Thomas said Trump will once again show how strong he is in West Virginia despite his issues. He said a large majority of West Virginians seem to be able to choose policy over person. He said that was on display during that Charleston rally eight years ago this month.

“That was Trump at his absolute best and he has those moments but he has some moments that are not his best. But that’s the thing with Trump–you’ve got to take the whole thing,” Thomas said.

WEIRTON, West Virginia — The hum is gone.

It was a sound that told locals that men and women were working. It told small businesses that have tried to hold on, after each cutback at the iconic steel mill that for over 100 years defined their skyline, that people would need their services. Services from mechanics that fixed their cars. Services from mom-and-pop shops that served them fresh sandwiches and Mountain Dew after their shifts. From grocers who filled their cupboards and ice boxes with staples to feed their families, and from barbers who relied on their biweekly haircuts to make ends meet.

In February, the announcement came from Cleveland-Cliffs to idle its Weirton plant after the U.S. International Trade Commission, which has two appointees from the Obama administration and two from the Trump administration, voted 4-0 to overturn a Department of Commerce recommendation. Commerce was in favor of implementing tariffs on tin imports from China, Germany and Canada, but the commission nixed them and also stopped an investigation of South Korean imports.

That ITC decision, made by appointees that likely have never been to Weirton or any other place in West Virginia, quite arguably sealed the fate of the last 900 workers as well as the fate of this region.

And outside of local West Virginia news coverage, no one heard the lives of thousands of people fall apart. No one heard the despair of having to relocate their families and the emotional and economic impact it would have on them.

The question is why? The answer is simple: They have no political power. The plant is in West Virginia, which has a small population and no major political figure nor any major industrial figure to lobby for them.

This is what happens when your lives are expendable to the rich and powerful.

And it’s not just here that is hurting because of the shutdown. The impact will be felt up and down the Ohio Valley. David A. Velegol Jr., who serves as mayor of Follansbee in Brooke County, just down the river, said the death of the mill is devastating to his tiny city.

“That is 25% of our tax base, how do you even begin to fill that gap?” he said of a region forged on steel but dying a death of a thousand cuts.

The sad thing is there were no cameras here to mark the end and no swell of protests to try to save their jobs, their town and their region. The moment has this sense of a tree falling in the forest and no one hearing it, except that it was a steel mill that fell, and no one in the national news heard the silence that followed.

All that is left here at the Weirton plant is the cleanup of the end of life.

Come tomorrow and the next day and the next day, 900 people will no longer report to work here, 900 people won’t stop at the local gas station, grocery store, barber shop or hardware store.

Some workers said they were hoping to transfer to other Cleveland-Cliffs plants, but that brought deep sadness in leaving behind family and a region they called home.

There is one glimmer of hope for this plant: Last week at a press conference at the Cleveland-Cliffs Butler facility in Pennsylvania, Chairman and CEO Lourenco Goncalves said he was going to expand the transformer production in the region, which could mean he would convert the Weirton plant to facilitate that. United Steelworkers Local 2911 President Mark Glyptis, who represents the 900 workers at this plant, told West Virginia MetroNews that he was optimistic but that no deal was set yet.

So the silence continues, with only the sound of a handful of workers keeping the idling plant from falling into despair. As for the sound of hope, well, for many people here, it has been dashed for decades, with each furlough taking a piece of their lives away from them.

Salena Zito is a CNN political analyst, and a staff reporter and columnist for the Washington Examiner. She reaches the Everyman and Everywoman through shoe-leather journalism, traveling from Main Street to the beltway and all places in between. To find out more about Salena and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Ant Rozetsky at Unsplash

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