Rust Belt Rick
 | |
| Era | The Modern Era |
|---|---|
| Age | 50-65 |
| Home | Youngstown, OH |
| Demographic | ex-manufacturing, white, working-class |
| Lean | Lean Republican |
| Race | white |
| Predecessor | Janesville Gary |
Rick is a former steelworker in Ohio's Mahoning Valley who now drives trucks, and he has left his family's union Democratic politics to support Donald Trump. He represents the white working-class vote of the industrial Midwest, once a Democratic stronghold and now a Republican one.
Who they stand for
Rick represents the white voter without a college degree in towns that lost their manufacturing base. Youngstown's steel industry collapsed after 1977, and General Motors closed its Lordstown plant in the Mahoning Valley in 2019. Rick's family voted Democratic through their union membership for two generations. Barack Obama won Rick's support in 2008 and 2012, but Donald Trump won it in 2016 with tariffs, a Buy American message, and open contempt for the leaders who had told workers like Rick that free trade would benefit them. Trumbull County voted Republican in 2016 for the first time since Richard Nixon's era, Mahoning County followed in 2020, and Ohio, long a bellwether state, stopped swinging between the parties.
Ozark Wayne and Janesville Gary, earlier personas, held a similar grievance about NAFTA and the federal government but had nowhere to direct it except a vote for Ross Perot or a reluctant vote for George H. W. Bush. Rick differs because the Republican Party now builds its platform around that grievance, making him the first persona in this line who is not a swing voter, because the Republicans earned his support directly, and the Democrats would have to win it back.
Playing to them
Rick responds well to policies that protect manufacturing, including tariffs on steel and on Chinese imports, federal contracts that require buying American-made goods, and a president who blames Wall Street and past trade deals for the loss of jobs in his town. He is not a social conservative, so a Democrat who avoids culture-war issues and focuses only on jobs and trade can reach him; abortion and same-sex marriage do not move his vote in either direction. He does not forgive a free-trade agreement, an environmental regulation aimed at the industries he used to work in, or a president who appears to use his education to talk down to people like him.
The tariffs Rick supports cost the support of Country Club Craig and Edison Chen, who pay more because of them, and of Bay Area Priya, whose industry depends on the trade that Rick wants restricted. A president who goes far enough to please Rick on coal and steel loses the support of Woodstock Allen and College Chloe on climate policy. Union Jack and Detroit Denise share Rick's economic views, but Rick is the one of the three who no longer follows his union's endorsement.
Where they live
The five states where Rust Belt Rick makes up the largest share of the electorate in the modern era:
- West Virginia
- Ohio
- Indiana
- Pennsylvania
- Michigan
Lineage
Ozark Wayne → Janesville Gary → Rust Belt Rick
The Perot voter who becomes the Trump voter. Wayne is patriotic and hostile to the federal government at the same time, and votes Perot. Gary voted Perot, hates NAFTA, and votes Bush as the lesser evil. Rick votes Trump, who campaigns on exactly Rick's grievances: tariffs, Buy American, contempt for the college-educated. The grievance is the same throughout, and moves from the Vietnam aftermath, to the plant closing, to the country's decline. By 2016 a major party runs on it. Rick is the first of the three who is not a swing voter.