When Bob Czaplicki was growing up in Solvay, New York, decades ago, the local factories had so many workers that police had to direct traffic on the town’s main street at the end of every workday, Czaplicki said.

“Now you could throw a bowling ball down the street and you’re lucky if you hit anybody or anything,” he said.

Czaplicki, who has lived in central New York all his life, said he’s witnessed the steady decline of the region’s economy and its deindustrialization over the years. It’s part of what led him to vote for President-elect Donald Trump in November’s presidential election.

Trump will be inaugurated on Friday in Washington, D.C., becoming the 45th president of the United States. He was propelled to the presidency largely by voters in the country’s rural, economically-depressed regions that are similar in nature to parts of central New York. Though Trump didn’t win New York state in the election, experts say central New York is representative of the parts of the country that Trump was most successful in.

“The rural voters … have been Republican for a long time, but what happened in this election was that was exaggerated, as was the Democratic voting in the cities,” said Kristi Andersen, a professor emeritus of political science in Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. “So there was more of an obvious divide.”

Experts said voters in those rural regions were drawn to Trump because of his rhetoric on jobs, and that in many cases, their support for Trump also stemmed from a disdain for Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama’s outgoing administration.

Nationally, Trump claimed 62 percent of the vote in small towns and rural America, according to the Pew Research Center. In central New York, he won all of the counties that are dominated by rural towns, taking 57.8 percent of the vote in Oneida County, 54.4 percent of the vote in Madison County and 58.6 percent of the vote in Oswego County.

According to a November 2016 economic profile report by the Office of the New York State Comptroller, central New York’s economy is still recovering from the recession and the unemployment rate in most of the region is above the state’s overall rate.

Aaron Renn, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said voters in rural areas likely grew frustrated with legislation and politicians that threatened industries at the heart of those regions, such as fracking and industrial agriculture.

“It’s not like people out in the country are being left alone and then suddenly decided (to support Trump),” Renn said.

Jensen Stidham | Contributing Photographer

Czaplicki, who is the GOP chair for the town of Geddes in Onondaga County, said he hasn’t personally experienced economic hardship over the years but has witnessed it in his community and among friends.

The economic stagnation was most notable, he said, when his children were met with difficulties as they searched for jobs of their own.

“Before, you could literally graduate from high school on a Saturday and go to work in a factory here in central New York and be making $50,000, $60,000 a year,” he said. “A lot of college graduates would be happy making that today.”

Czaplicki said he supported Trump because he believes the president-elect will be able to bring some of those jobs back to rural America, but he added that his vote for Trump was as much of an anti-Clinton vote as it was a pro-Trump vote. Czaplicki called Clinton a “criminal” and said he likely would have voted for any of the other Republican candidates over her had someone else clinched the GOP nomination.

Steven Schier, a professor of political science at Carleton College, said Clinton likely struggled in rural areas because she didn’t do enough to appeal to those voters. She didn’t campaign often in rural America and didn’t address the concerns of rural America, he said.

“And so she opened herself for an unpleasant surprise on election night,” he said.

But some rural voters might not have considered voting for Clinton even if she had campaigned harder in their regions. William Tassone, the GOP chair for the town of Salina, said he was “scared to death” of the country’s politics remaining similar to what they have been during the Obama administration.

Tassone said he thinks the U.S. needs change, saying the country has taken a “terrible, terrible beating” in the jobs sector. Tassone also said Trump has already set a positive tone by striking deals with Carrier, Ford and General Motors to create jobs in the U.S., though some experts have downplayed the significance of those deals.

In regard to central New York’s economy, Tassone said he doesn’t expect changes overnight with a Trump presidency but believes it will help.

“If he has a good presidency and things start to happen positively, then it’ll have an effect,” Tassone said.

Published on January 18, 2017 at 9:47 pm

Contact Michael: mdburk01@syr.edu