Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump continues to try to win votes in small-town and rural Wisconsin. He spoke Sunday in Dodge County, which he easily won four years ago.
Democrats are trying to cut into his margin this year.
Trump not only won the so-called WOW counties of Washington, Ozaukee and Waukesha, and most of northern Wisconsin in 2020, but he also topped 60% of the vote in several central Wisconsin counties, including Dodge.
On Sunday, to a nearly all-white audience at the county airport in the Dodge County seat of Juneau, Trump said illegal immigration may top inflation and the economy as the nation’s number one concern.
He even made the following claim, without evidence: “Midworsten, I mean, the Midwestern cities are just devastated by this, will be flooded with illegal migrants from the most dangerous places on Earth, and Wisconsin will not be Wisconsin any longer. No state will be. The country won’t be the U.S. any longer. It’s very simple," Trump said.
One of Trump’s biggest applause lines came when he said the U.S. would return lawbreaking immigrants to their home countries: “And we’re going to shove them right down their throat. They should have never been allowed to be here," he said, to wild cheers.
But Trump’s appeal in heavily Republican small towns goes beyond immigration.
Heather Staedler, a Lutheran school teacher in Theresa, said, "I think just the common sense. The overall common sense. When it comes to immigration, education, the gender ideology, freedom of speech. All of it rolled together is why I’m voting for Trump," she told WUWM prior to Sunday's rally.
For Trevor Rebahl, a welder for a manufacturer in Cambria, the number one concern is inflation.
"Every guy I work with—we’re blue-collar workers—and it’s just the economy and the cost of everything right now is through the roof," he said.
Rebahl said he’d especially like to see Trump come through on his promise to end taxes on overtime pay, though a nonpartisan group, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said that tax change would cost the U.S. Treasury $1.7 trillion over 10 years.
Political scientists have said Trump’s electoral strength is strongest in areas struggling in the current economy and feeling left behind.
Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, a Democrat, has visited many of those communities, including some in Wisconsin, as U.S. Agriculture Secretary.
Emphasizing last Friday evening that he was speaking in a personal capacity and not as a Cabinet member, Vilsack said in an interview set up by the Harris-Walz campaign that the Democratic ticket of Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is listening to small-town and rural residents.
Vilsack said the Democrats are responding to concerns, like the lack of housing.
“I think that’s why the vice president came out with the proposal to help first-time homebuyers with a significant grant. Down payment assistance is going to make it easier for them to afford that first home,” Vilsack said.
Vilsack added that the Biden-Harris administration is making other improvements outside urban areas, such as fixing roads, expanding health care, and promising to try to reduce prices.
“I think rural folks feel, and with some justification, that they don’t get a fair deal in the marketplace. That’s why the vice president has said, ‘Look, we’re not going to let price gouging take place; we’re not going to let that happen, and we’ll make that illegal,’ ” Vilsack said.
A central Wisconsin farmer, Sarah Lloyd, said during a media call Sunday organized by the Harris-Walz campaign that she’s voting for Democrats partly because of consolidation in agribusiness.
“It makes it very difficult for us to find fair prices for the supplies and different things we buy—seed, inputs. But it also makes it really difficult for us to get a fair price for our milk, our corn—any of the products we’re producing,” Lloyd said.
Lloyd said Trump sides with the big corporations, while Harris is promising to attack monopoly power.
The Democrats’ focus turns back to vote-rich urban areas Tuesday, as President Joe Biden is scheduled to visit Milwaukee and give an update on the removal of lead drinking water pipes.
In 2020, nine times as many people voted in Milwaukee County as in Dodge County, and Milwaukee County went deep blue.
