UNION ADVOCATE TO BEGIN A COAST-TO-COAST TOUR
Retired teamster Steve MacDonald, 67, of Vacaville, to set out on 'Fire Trump Tour'
Steve MacDonald of Vacaville got up Tuesday morning and did something he had never done before: start a GoFundMe account.
The money — “I’m already getting donations; it’s pretty exciting,” he said later in the day during a telephone interview — will help pay for his pending auto-with-trailer “Fire Trump Tour” that will take him through several battleground states until Election Day Nov. 3.
The centerpiece of his effort, when he expects to motor away from his Gonzales Drive home on Saturday, is a pickup truck bed converted into an 8-foot trailer with white- painted plywood panels all around,
topped with American flags, and colorful lettering painted on the wood.
A side panel contains the wording “Fire Trump” in DayGlo orange, “Hire Biden Harris” in Dodger blue, and “Vote” in bright red; and the back panel reads “Enough Is Enough” and “Thanks America” also in blue, “Retire Trump” in the fluorescent orange, and “Vote” repeated three times in red.
A retired member of Local 490 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, MacDonald, 67, the father of three and former trucker for the Lucky Stores distribution center in Vacaville, said the tour idea is something of an extension of his longtime union activism.
Born and raised in San Francisco, MacDonald was a former
vice president of Local 490, retiring in 2004, and he recalled being adamant about removing the union’s East Coast organized crime connections in 1991, then helping to elect Ron R. Carey as Teamsters president.
“We threw the bums out,” he recalled. “We got the mob out of the international headquarters in Washington, D.C.”
“I’ve always been involved in politics,” added MacDonald, a registered Democrat for most of his adult life but also willing to support nonpartisan candidates for Vacaville City Council, including, in the past, Dilenna Harris, Len Augustine, and Michael Kitzes.
In the 1980s, he organized union members to ride on floats to celebrate long-held union goals and values — better wages, safer working conditions, social justice, dignity, security — during the Dixon May Fair in Dixon and Fiesta Days in Vacaville.
“I’m into showing the best part of the union movement,” said MacDonald
nd that effort will begin first with a journey to Las Vegas, Nev., a city with lots of union members, then onto Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Kentucky.
MacDonald hopes to drive his 1991 Chevrolet Suburban “right up to Mitch McConnell’s home” in Louisville, Ky., trailer in tow and with at least one passenger, Buddy, his 10-year- old beagle “who suffers from separation anxiety, so he’s coming with me.”
“I’m going to hit all the states that we have a chance of winning Senate seats,” too, he added. “We’re gonna retire Trump and it’s going to be a decisive win. The party’s over for those guys.”
MacDonald referred to the Sept. 29 Trump-Biden debate and marveled at what he suggested was a steady, earnest performance by Biden, goaded and interrupted frequently by an overbearing president.
“Oh, my God, I’ve been watching Joe Biden for at least 30 years,” he said, adding that his channel of choice is not Fox News but C-SPAN, the nonprofit public affairs cable network.
Does he expect to get some opposition — honking, vulgar gestures, partisan shout- outs — when other drivers see the trailer’s messages while driving cross- country?
He said, “I will fight for their right to support their candidate,” but does not fear the trailer will prompt any violent. actions or vandalism when the trailer is parked. Still, he admitted that he plans to bring along extra paint in case that happens.
MacDonald said his primary mission “is to get people to vote.”
“If I encourage Trump voters, if I inspire them to go vote, then I’m happy as an American,” he said. “But we’re going to get more votes because we’re out there doing something.”
MacDonald pondered another reason to vote Trump out office.
“Those guys don’t believe in science,” he said, adding that, after the first debate, he thought, “We can do better” and Trump’s performance was “off the rails.”
He plans to return to Vacaville in mid-November, after visiting relatives in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the separate northwest section of the state.
But on Election Day, MacDonald said he will be sitting down “in a local tavern somewhere and enjoying the fruits of my labor.”