YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – The election Nov. 5 erased any doubt about the political disruption and party realignments taking place across the nation and the Mahoning Valley.
The results reflected a Republican dominance in Mahoning and Trumbull counties not seen since the New Deal created the Democratic working class coalition that dominated national and local politics through the presidency of Lyndon Johnson.
Here – and nationwide – cracks in that coalition followed the Voting Rights Act of 1964 and the tumultuous Vietnam war years. Then came Black Monday and the canary in our coal mine: Working class voters lifting Republican Lyle Williams to unseat U.S. Rep. Charles Carney.
Williams, of course, would last three terms, swept away by the Jim Traficant tsunami that crushed the local political order, disrupted Democrats in Congress and foreshadowed the bombast and working-class appeal of Donald Trump.
On Nov. 5, Trump took 57.6% of the vote in Trumbull County and local GOP candidates swept county offices. Democrats in Mahoning County barely did better.
Incumbent Mahoning Commissioner Anthony Traficanti, an aide to the late Traficant, withstood a challenge. But his colleague David Ditzler fell to well-known Trump supporter Geno DiFabio. While Treasurer Dan Yemma was able to hold his office, GOP challengers ousted the Democratic prosecutor, recorder and clerk of courts.
Until the 1930s, the Mahoning Valley had been solidly Republican, its native son, William McKinley, a leading advocate of high tariffs to support industry. From 1915 until 1937, Republican John G. Cooper represented the Valley in Congress. He was unseated by Democrat Michael Kirwan, who served until his death in 1970, and was succeeded by Carney.
“Each of these three voices of this industrial valley have had one thing in common, a strong following among rank-and-file workers of the district who seem disposed to be represented by one of their own,” the late Youngstown Vindicator political editor Clingan Jackson observed in 1970.
As we see in business and industry (think Amazon’s early years and the millions of dollars it lost), disruptions take time to complete. The working class, however, endures.