erie, pa. <u+2014> sean d. wiley recalled the moment it hit him, hard, that the people he had known all of his life and represented in the pennsylvania state senate were abandoning his democratic party . union workers at the general electric plant just east of here, which makes locomotives, told mr. wiley that they would vote for donald j. trump . once erie county<u+2019>s largest employer, the plant has shed thousands of $34-an-hour workers and moved production to a nonunion factory in texas. in their desperation to hang onto jobs, general electric<u+2019>s workers embraced mr. trump even though his pledge to tear up trade deals to rebuild american manufacturing would seem to have little to do with their own situation, with jobs moving to another state. mr. wiley, who lost his senate seat in harrisburg, the state capital, on election day, said he had warned voters <u+201c>ad nauseam<u+201d> during the campaign that republicans in the legislature would pass an anti-union, <u+201c>right-to-work<u+201d> law, but it was to no avail. <u+201c>we have allowed the republican party to be the party of working families,<u+201d> he said. <u+201c>that<u+2019>s a sad misrepresentation of where we have been in the past.<u+201d> election night maps of pennsylvania for decades included a bright blue crescent in the upper left corner. it was erie county, a democratic stronghold with an industrial economy that president obama won by 16 percentage points in 2012. but mr. trump flipped the county, winning by two points as he carried pennsylvania, one of the rust belt dominoes whose white working-class voters came out in droves for him. <u+201c>my views have realigned,<u+201d> said chris trott, 26, a small-business owner who voted for mr. obama four years ago, but for mr. trump this time. <u+201c>the world has changed a lot.<u+201d> mr. trott was having breakfast at dominick<u+2019>s 24-hour eatery (<u+201c>home of the meatball omelette<u+201d>) on 12th street, once erie<u+2019>s corridor of industrial plants, most of them now mothballed. the front page of the erie times-news in the box out front proclaimed <u+201c>a new reality.<u+201d> the population of the city of erie recently slid below 100,000 for the first time in nearly a century. about 10 percent of its residents are refugees, resettled with the help of local agencies and injecting new blood as the economy shifts from industry to small businesses. still, after general electric laid off 1,500 people this year, anxiety spiked along with the jump in unemployment, which rose to 6.4 percent from 4.5 percent. in august, more than 10,000 people filled the erie insurance arena to hear mr. trump hammer the twin themes he effectively drove all year: that trade deals have hollowed out the united states<u+2019> industrial core, and that undocumented immigrants and refugees threaten the nation<u+2019>s safety. democrats here lost the messaging war about jobs; about mr. obama<u+2019>s achievements, including the affordable care act, which covers 600,000 pennsylvanians; and, especially, about hillary clinton <u+2019>s trustworthiness and her connection to the working-class americans president bill clinton once viscerally inspired. <u+201c>erie has historically loved the clintons,<u+201d> said state representative ryan a. bizzarro, a democrat who won re-election from a suburban district in the county. he was shocked by what he heard knocking on doors while campaigning this year. <u+201c>every door i<u+2019>d go to they<u+2019>d say, <u+2018>i don<u+2019>t like donald trump, but i don<u+2019>t like hillary,<u+2019><u+201d> said mr. bizzarro, 30, a scion of a local family that owns car dealerships and includes the retired prizefighter lou bizzarro, who once fought roberto duran. <u+201c>these were democrats i was trying to get to support her,<u+201d> he said. <u+201c>they said they didn<u+2019>t like her, and one of the main reasons was they felt she was not truthful. the trump campaign effectively was able to make an issue of her supposedly being dishonest.<u+201d> the fierceness of the contest here stunned people, as an old order crumbled amid angry outbursts. signs for both mr. trump and mrs. clinton were repeatedly vandalized. one trump sign on west 38th street was wrapped in barbed-wire coils. lou aliota said a large trump/pence sign that he erected in his yard was hit with a paintball gun and with eggs. he replaced it with a sign 15 feet high. <u+201c>i am ecstatic right now,<u+201d> mr. aliota, a retired pharmacist and school board member, said on thursday. <u+201c>in the next four years, you<u+2019>re going to see an america that is strong. that is going be a beautiful thing.<u+201d> on another neighborhood street, a driver swerved onto the front lawn of the home of betty and gerald hoffman to mow down their clinton sign. <u+201c>i<u+2019>m scared to death of trump,<u+201d> ms. hoffman said, coming to the door from watching c-span, on which she said a woman was in tears over potentially losing her coverage if the health care law is repealed. ms. hoffman fears that a more conservative supreme court will overturn roe v. wade. in the 1960s, she said, she was hospitalized when one of the twin fetuses she was carrying died in utero. she was told she would not live if the other were not aborted, but the catholic hospital in which she was bedridden for 11 days refused. her husband was told to call their three children to her bedside to say goodbye, but a doctor eventually performed the abortion, saving her life, she said. <u+201c>i think a woman should control her own body,<u+201d> she said. mr. trump energized plenty of hard-core supporters in erie county. but others who voted for him said they did not much like him and had cast their votes reluctantly. their ambivalence suggests they could turn against mr. trump if he does not deliver quickly on his promises. <u+201c>i agonized over this decision,<u+201d> said mark miller, 53, who voted for mr. trump but faulted the president-elect<u+2019>s <u+201c>inability to think before he speaks.<u+201d> he parted ways with mr. trump over his call to bar refugees and deport undocumented immigrants en masse. <u+201c>i<u+2019>d like to see these people integrated into the system,<u+201d> said mr. miller, who owns a john deere dealership. <u+201c>a lot of them are good, hard-working people.<u+201d> they live in erie<u+2019>s old residential blocks of modest bungalow-style homes, and they buy chain saws and lawn mowers from mr. miller. local officials said mr. trump<u+2019>s dire warnings about refugees during his visit here (<u+201c>take a look at what<u+2019>s happening,<u+201d> the candidate said) hit a nerve in rural parts of the county where voters, mostly white, have less exposure to the newcomers from nepal, bhutan, bosnia and, yes, iraq and syria. in the borough of wesleyville, nearby the enormous general electric locomotive plant, jennie and jack chilcott, retirees, were sharing a booth at russ<u+2019> dinor, a homey eatery that adopts the local spelling of <u+201c>diner.<u+201d> both are democrats who voted for mr. obama four years ago. <u+201c>i voted for trump because i didn<u+2019>t like the democrat,<u+201d> said ms. chilcott, who retired from general electric after 40 years. <u+201c>the lies. benghazi. the email. i just waited for her to get up there and justify everything, and she just beat around the bush about it.<u+201d> mr. chilcott told his wife: <u+201c>she actually did apologize. i still think she thought she was above the law.<u+201d> mr. chilcott, who wore an army veteran<u+2019>s cap, chose mr. trump <u+201c>for a change,<u+201d> he said. <u+201c>that<u+2019>s why i voted for obama,<u+201d> he said. <u+201c>i thought he was going to do something. he didn<u+2019>t do anything.<u+201d> mr. chilcott was laid off after 32 years when erie city iron works shut its doors in 1995, one of numerous plant closings that had more to do with the city<u+2019>s aging, inefficient industry than global trade deals. <u+201c>i was 49 and had to start all over again,<u+201d> he said. <u+201c>i worked for half the wages and no vacation.<u+201d> he said he was <u+201c>shocked<u+201d> that mr. trump won. he attributes it to blue-collar voters like himself, working and retired, who fear for their economic security. but he echoed the caveat a number of republican officials uttered this year about mr. trump, suggesting his support from democrats in traditional blue counties is provisional. <u+201c>we didn<u+2019>t support him,<u+201d> mr. chilcott said. <u+201c>we did vote for him.<u+201d> a version of this article appears in print on november 13, 2016, on page a27 of the new york edition with the headline: how erie went red: a democratic bastion undone by job losses. order reprints | today's paper | subscribe
how erie went red: the economy sank, and trump rose
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