Battle for Pueblo
Where Donald Trump needs to make gains to win Colorado
Before Adam Griggs called it The Steel City Tavern, this corner bar in a bluecollar neighborhood blocks from the steel mill bore the name The Downbeat.
The music reference more often described the mood in Pueblo, a working-class city of 110,000 in southeastern Colorado, as the smokestacks went dormant and the economy struggled for decades after the steel industry’s collapse. The wind turbine company Vestas is now the jewel, with a recent expansion plan boosting its employment to more than 900.
A block south from the tavern, the United Steelworkers Local No. 2102 hall is a vestige of the city’s legacy as a union-led Democratic stronghold. Inside his bar, Griggs said he can tell the political mood is shifting.
“You hear about this silent majority of Donald Trump supporters,” said Griggs, who wore a Trump campaign T-shirt and spoke loudly enough to overcome the 1980s anthem “Broken Wings” blaring in the background. “I think he has it. It’s here.”
If Trump is going to win Colorado, Pueblo is where he must make his move — the state’s Rust Belt, a traditional Democratic stronghold where downtrodden laborers and frustrated longtimers are looking for alternatives in the presidential race.
The Republican nominee is scheduled to hold a rally in Pueblo on Monday, one of two stops in Colorado as polls are showing him tied with Democrat Hillary Clinton.
What makes the area fertile ground for Trump is the same as what makes him competitive in manufacturing towns in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Like much of the Rust Belt, Pueblo is older and less educated than other voter-rich parts in the state. The county’s median household income is $40,050 and 20 percent live in poverty, making it one of the most distressed areas in Colorado.
“It’s rough,” said Griggs, who allows regulars to keep tabs when they run short on cash. “It’s a paycheck-to-paycheck town.”
Trump’s messages about better jobs and law and order hit home in Pueblo, where a recent survey showed crime and the economy as the top two issues. Only 29 percent believe the county is headed in the right direction, half the proportion as Denver voters.
But what makes it different — and a significantly tougher challenge for Trump — is the large Latino population.
In Pueblo County, more than 40 percent of the population identifies as Hispanic or Latino, according to Census figures, the largest numbers in the state. And Trump’s hard-line stances on immigration, talk of a “deportation force” and disparaging comments about Spanish speakers are making the GOP sell more difficult. A recent Florida Atlantic University poll of Latino voters in Colorado gave Clinton a landslide advantage, 68 percent to 16 percent.
The complicated political dynamic explains why Pueblo ranks as one of the top-50 swing counties in the nation, according to experts, putting it on par with the Denver suburbs of Jefferson and Arapahoe counties as the places in America that will decide who wins the White House.
“I don’t think a Republican could get dead even in the polls without being very close in Pueblo,” said Floyd Ciruli, a Colorado political pollster who conducted the recent survey, “because the Denver metro area is not nearly as fertile as it used to be for Republicans.”
Republican inroads
Pueblo GOP chairman George Rivera is not ready to suggest his county is beginning to tilt Republican. But he said the party is making inroads, even in the Latino community.
He offered his assessment of the political landscape one recent morning at the Village Inn restaurant north of town, a place he meets to talk politics often enough that the manager stops to joke with him.
“Having been a Democratic stronghold for a while, we have an uphill battle — there’s no doubt about it,” explained Rivera, a 67year-old one-time Democrat. “But I honestly feel like the folks here in Pueblo are more open to crossing over.”
The dissatisfaction this year reminds Rivera of the recall election in 2013, when Pueblo ousted a sitting Democratic state senator who voted for tougher gun restrictions, and put Rivera in the statehouse. The district voted to recall Sen. Angela Giron by the same proportion, 56 percent, that President Barack Obama won the county by in 2008 and 2012.
Dennis Cappetto, a 72-year-old former Democrat and retired police union member, expressed the anger Republicans are finding this election season. “Wake up, people! Vote for someone who is for this country, not someone who is bought and paid for by the Democratic Party,” he exclaimed as he stopped to talk politics downtown at Pueblo’s chili festival.
Rivera served only one year in the state Senate before losing in the 2014 general election. But the same year, Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton won Pueblo County in the 3rd Congressional District seat, defeating a well-known local politico, and Republican Cory Gardner managed to neutralize the Democratic advantage in the U.S. Senate race, essentially tying incumbent Mark Udall on his way to a statewide victory.
Both races represented doubledigit shifts from their previous contests, but Democrats downplayed the trend line given that midterm turnout typically favors the party out of power. To Republicans, it validated a plan put in place by the national party to boost turnout among Latino voters after a dismal showing in the 2012 election.
“Fifty percent of the problem had been Republicans just not showing up in the community,” said Jennifer Sevilla Korn, the Republican National Committee’s deputy political director, who recently traveled to Pueblo to train local organizers — part of their continued efforts in the county this election year. “So if you have Democrats being the only voice … how were we ever going to make any gains?”
The message that resonates with Latino voters in trying to persuade them to vote for Trump, Korn said, is the same that works for blue-collar white voters: the economy. And she suggested that Trump’s stance on securing the border and his “respectful” meeting with Mexico President Peña Nieto are additional selling points.
“We have a lot of people we see coming over to our side,” she said.
Democratic base
Not all are buying Trump. Or forgiving his controversial comments about Latinos. A Trump campaign sign in the Fiesta Day Parade drew boos, middle fingers and insults. Rivera decried the “open hatred” in a letter to the local newspaper.
“There’s a real strong feeling in the Hispanic community against Trump,” explained George Autobee, a retired veteran and Democrat who lives in Colorado City.
The Democratic Party holds a distinct voter registration advantage in Pueblo at 42 percent, compared with 25 percent who affiliate with Republicans. The latest state figures also show rising numbers in unaffiliated voters.
In 2000, Pueblo cast the eighthlargest total of Democratic votes in the state, but in 2012 slid to 10th. If Clinton has a weakness in Pueblo, it is her early advantage in the race, said Sal Pace, a Democratic county commissioner and former state lawmaker.
“Hillary’s own success is causing some of the problems — because we don’t have TV ads and the type of money and infrastructure and investment that you (need),” he said. “But that’s because she’s so far up — or has been.”
The Clinton campaign opened its own office in the area in June, one of the earliest outside the Denver-area swing districts, and counts four times as many local Democratic volunteers compared with the 2012 election.
Pace said he is still confident Clinton will win because she is “talking about an economy that works for everybody.”
Just down from The Steel City Tavern, at the Local 2102 union hall, the economy factors huge into Renee Johnson’s thinking.
The youngest of eight children, she quit high school at age 17, earned her GED and went to work at the mill just 2 miles from her home where her father worked.
She left to work for the railroad in Wyoming, only to lose her job and return home. Johnson’s unemployment benefits expired in July and she spent a month with no income.
The economy “is just not picking up like I hoped it would,” she said.
Now, she is taking leave to help the United Steelworkers of America’s political efforts, canvassing union neighborhoods. No one answered the first door on the other side of the train tracks west from downtown, so she left a flier with the headline: “Donald Trump only wants to help himself and his rich friends, not working people.”
The sentiment is not universal among union workers. Johnson estimates about 30 percent or so support Trump, a further sign of the Republican’s blue-collar draw. But she’s not one of them.
“I never liked Trump. Anybody that makes a living thinking it’s funny to fire people just isn’t my kind of person,” she said, referencing Trump’s reality television show “The Apprentice.” “I went through the ’80s when everything went bad in the steel mill, and I worked two jobs to support my family. To lose a job is not a funny thing.”
In the presidential primary, she supported Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. And she’s not entirely enamored with Clinton. “Sometimes my feeling of her is that she’s kind of like the teacher you always tried to avoid in school,” Johnson said. “Because no matter how much work you put into your paper, she’s going to find something wrong with it.”
But Johnson is quick to come to Clinton’s defense when it comes to attacks on her. “Sometimes when you fight hard in a man’s world, you get a little harsh. I used to cuss like a Marine, because every day, I went to work and fought men. So I was just always grrr,” she said, twisting her face into a mean look.
A block or two later on Park Avenue, a woman answered the door at a modest home with an overgrown yard, a young girl at her hip.
Johnson told her the union is supporting Clinton. “Of course,” the woman said. “I wouldn’t vote for that other whatever-he-is.”
The woman displayed the flier for Johnson to see. “That disgraces that whole page,” the woman said, putting her thumb over Trump’s face. “You’ve got my vote.”
Back in the car, Johnson looked back to the house. “This lady, she’s just trying to make it,” Johnson said. “It looks like she has her granddaughter and her daughters. Just trying, trying to get by.”
Johnson is struggling to do the same. When the campaign ends, she’s out of a job again. Now 58, she’s considering going back to school to become a radiology technician.
She finished her canvassing just before the 7 p.m. union meeting and pulled her Ford Escape back into the office’s parking lot, where a rusting sign on the fence says “No Foreign Vehicles Allowed in This Lot.”
Up the street at the tavern, Griggs’ regulars began assembling. Retired teachers Elaine Starcer and Tony Sanchez, standing at the end of the bar, are Trump supporters.
“I think he’s a darn idiot, but we need him,” said Starcer, 70. “I would like to have a woman as president,” she adds, “but not her. I don’t trust her.”
Others feel the same, Sanchez added. “I just think we are due for a change.”