Tonya Rincon just retired and is “learning to cook again.” But most new hobbies need to wait. Election Day is near, and Rincon is trying to help her union and Vice President Kamala Harris win the blue-collar battle for Michigan.
“I think it’s still about 50-50 among union autoworkers,” said Rincon, a member of United Auto Workers Local 900 and a 30-year Ford assembly worker.
Rincon long ago lost patience with supporters of former President Donald Trump in the Ford assembly plant just across the road from her union hall.
“They think the Democrats are going to mandate all electric vehicles and it is going to kill our jobs,” Rincon said in an interview near her home in Wayne. “They think they are going to benefit from the Trump tax cuts even though we don’t make enough money to benefit from the Trump tax cuts.”
With time running short, her focus as she volunteers to knock on doors is on workers who are open to voting for a Democrat. She says many see things differently since the dramatic July shift from President Joe Biden to Harris atop the Democratic ticket.
“There’s a little bit more enthusiasm among some of my female colleagues,” Rincon said. “Couple of my male co-workers are pretty ambivalent about Harris. We may have lost a tiny margin of support, because sexism is a real thing, you know. I don’t think they are going to switch to Trump. I think they just may stay home.”
Rincon is participating in our All Over the Map project, an effort to track the 2024 campaign through the eyes and experiences of voters who live in battleground states and are part of critical voting blocs.
We first met in June and learned quickly that Rincon speaks bluntly. Back then, she was candid about a low level of enthusiasm even among those planning to support Biden.
Now, as she volunteers to help elect Harris, she takes issue with male colleagues who would vote for Biden but are wavering about Harris.
“They are just sexist,” she said. “They are like, you know, ‘I’m not sure she can do it. I don’t think the country is ready for a female president.’”
Trying to win them over is critical for Harris in a state that’s so close and so crucial to her path to victory. It’s also important because the United Auto Workers leadership — which endorsed Harris over the summer — is trying to get more members to make voting decisions based on the issues that are key to labor.
“It’s a pretty easy decision to make if you compare the policies side by side,” Rincon said.
Rincon’s door knocking gives her unique insight on why the math of this campaign is so different and unpredictable.
At one house, she meets a younger voter who voted for Biden in 2020 but is supporting the Green Party’s Jill Stein this year because of anger at how the White House has handled the Israel-Hamas conflict.
“People got to go somewhere with their grief and anger,” Rincon said. “I can have a conversation. That’s all I can do.”
Then, a voter Rincon expects to be Republican but who shares support for Harris.
“There are some people who are just tired of the drama,” Rincon said. “People are just, ‘I want this to be over. I want to make politics boring again.’”
Her take two weeks out: “It’s really, really close.”
New energy for Harris — but also more division
Walter Robinson Jr. agrees it is close — and says there is more emotion on both sides since the July switch to Harris.
“It’s more energy and it’s probably more division,” said Robinson. He sees a net plus for Harris since the switch. In June, with Biden as the candidate, he shared Rincon’s view the Wayne plant was split 50-50.
“Right now, I would probably say it is about 60-40” for Harris, Robinson said. “More people have more energy about the Democratic candidate now.”
The tone of debate, he says, has taken a turn for the worse.
“They have been saying some very disparaging things about the vice president,” Robinson said of Trump supporters. Just about every day, Robinson said, he has to decide how much to push back.
“They parrot what (Trump) puts out there,” he said. “The sexist and the racist things. I call them out, but I’m not going to spend too much time because I know that I’m not going to change their mind.”
Robinson helps with UAW organizing just about every weekend, knocking on doors at labor households in the Detroit suburbs. As time runs short, he sometimes thinks about what it would mean to elect a woman of color as president.
“That’s another ceiling that shows we are kind of moving toward a more inclusive nation,” said Robinson, who is Black. “That would be good to see. If she wins, hopefully all hell doesn’t break loose.”
A Trump voter who doesn’t believe everything he says
Our return visit with 30-plus-year Ford worker Bill Govier was a reminder the Democratic ticket switch was not the only big candidate news this year. In June, Govier said he was intrigued by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
But Kennedy has now ended his third-party campaign and endorsed Trump.
“RFK joining Trump, effectively, I couldn’t script it any better,” Govier said. “I love the idea of Donald Trump being the commander in chief. I love the idea of how Donald Trump handles the nefarious characters in the world.”
Govier voted twice for Barack Obama but has turned anti-establishment in recent years. If Trump wins, Govier voiced hope he would bring Kennedy and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii into his administration. Both are former Democrats who frequently wander into conspiracy theories.
Govier said he has a hard time taking Harris seriously, saying, among other things, she laughs too much.
“What is it?” he said of the Harris message. “You’re the incumbent who wouldn’t do anything different or are you the underdog who wants change?”
Govier also supported Trump in 2016 and 2020. From the beginning, he says Trump critics have overreacted to what Govier insists are exaggerations, not outrages.
“He does it for effect,” Govier said. “I don’t believe that Trump really believes someone’s eating cats and dogs. I don’t believe that he’s going to call the National Guard out and, at gunpoint, round up every migrant and force them across the border. I don’t believe that for a second. But I do believe he sensationalizes things. That’s how he’s always talked. He’s always been that way.”
Why a longtime Democrat is voting Trump
Joseph Knowles has always been a Democrat. Until now.
“I’m independent now,” Knowles said in an interview at his home in Clinton Township, part of blue-collar Macomb County north of Detroit.
Knowles, who is Black, attended a Trump rally earlier this year.
“I took it from my mom, my auntie, my cousins, my sister — they came at me,” Knowles said. Relatives mentioned how Trump treats women, demeans Black people and conducted himself on January 6, 2021.
But Knowles said none of that matters to him.
“All I care about right now is how am I going to be able to take care of my wife and kids,” Knowles said.
Knowles is one of 1,100 UAW members recently laid off by Stellantis, the parent company of Chrysler and Jeep.
He blames corporate greed and said the company is breaking a promise it made in contract negotiations with the UAW last year.
But he assigns “second blame” to Biden and his administration.
“Because of the EV mandates,” he said.
The Biden administration, which has laid out future electric vehicle sales targets for new cars, has not mandated anyone buy them. And there are currently more automobile manufacturing jobs in the United States than at any point of the Trump presidency. But his union supporters here routinely parrot Trump in saying the industry is devastated because of Biden administration clean-energy policies.
Knowles echoes another Trump line in voicing his support for mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.
“If it is done legally and they cross correctly, I have no problem with it,” Knowles said. “But if you do it the wrong way, I think you should get rounded up and just thrown out. I have no problem with that because it jeopardizes my way of providing for my kids if they take jobs.”
He has never voted Republican before. But he finds himself in a new place: struggling to explain being laid off to his four sons and ignoring or deflecting criticism from family members who are harshly critical of his plans to vote Trump.
“I’m desperate,” Knowles said. “So, I’m wanting to try anything right now to make sure I can fulfill my responsibility and to take care of my wife and kids. That’s all I care about.”