LORDSTOWN, Ohio CNN —
For this long-struggling region of northeast Ohio, the gleaming new 2.8 million-square-foot manufacturing plant represents something that has been missing in recent years: hope.
Hopefully, the promises that have been repeatedly broken and postponed over the years have been replaced by action by the 2,200 workers at the Ultium Cells electric vehicle battery factory, which is at the forefront of cutting-edge green technology and manufacturing.
There is hope in the shadows of the massive former General Motors Lordstown plant, which closed in 2019, forcing workers like George Golanitis to leave the only job and home they knew.
“All the sawmills and packing houses are closing down. General Motors Lordstown is the last place you can get a good paying job here,” Golanitis said.
The collapse of the manufacturing powerhouse’s only remaining cornerstone has traumatized a proud community.
“People couldn’t process some of the news,” Golanitis recalled, “and the situation led some to take their own lives. There were divorces. Families were torn apart.”
Talk of the closure of the GM plant in northeast Ohio’s Mahoning Valley is not new.
Nor is it the story of how Donald Trump responded to the anxieties of these communities with bold promises to restore their old manufacturing might.
Trumbull County has been a union-heavy, Democratic stronghold for decades, but in 2012 President Barack Obama defeated Republican candidate Mitt Romney by 23 points.
Four years later, Trump carried the county, the first victory for a Republican in more than four decades and a dramatic display of the power of white, blue-collar voters in the industrial Midwest.
He won Trumbull County by an even larger margin in 2020, and Ohio, once a top benchmark state, has shifted firmly into Republican hands.
Trump is once again the Republican nominee.
And he’s once again made a big promise of reviving manufacturing in the Midwest the centerpiece of his campaign.
“We’re going to bring many, many auto plants to our country,” Trump said at an event in Michigan this month. “It’s going to be as big as we were 50 years ago, and maybe even bigger.”
It’s an assertion that demonstrates his keen awareness that union voters, especially autoworkers, hold the key to the White House in key states that form a political firewall through Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
It’s also an event that highlights why the story of Lordstown, and the new electric vehicle battery factory being built there, is an important window into our political moment.
Today, Lordstown represents a single convergence of broken and fulfilled political promises, the pain and potential of economic transition, and developing turmoil within labor unions across the country, as rank-and-file members experience clear victories at the same time they are moving away from their longstanding support for the Democratic Party.
“Let’s be honest, our plant is a Trump plant,” Golanitis, who has led the organizing effort at the new Altium plant where he now works, said of his unionized coworkers in a wide-ranging interview behind UAW Local 1112 near Warren.
When Trump arrived in nearby Youngstown during his first year in office, the Lordstown GM plant was already showing clear signs of stress, making his bold declarations even more resonant in the community.
“Don’t move,” Trump said, promising to bring jobs back to the area. “Don’t sell your house.”
David Green, who served as UAW local president during Trump’s presidency, said many workers at the plant took Trump’s words literally.
Seventeen months later, GM announced it was closing the plant. Employees who wanted to keep their pensions would have to relocate to other GM facilities. Homes were sold and many moved. Some employees were forced to leave their families behind and commute every week to a new location.
President Trump lashed out at GM management on Twitter and called for a deal to be made to reopen the plant.
But Greene said his letters pleading for help to the White House were ignored — at least until he appeared on Fox News to make his case.
Trump was watching.
Shortly after, he posted a tweet aimed directly at Greene.
“David Green, Democratic President of UAW Local 1112, needs to get his act together and get results,” the president wrote. “GM has let our country down, but other, far superior auto companies are coming to America in droves. We need immediate action on Lordstown. Stop complaining and get the job done!”
It was an emotional moment for Green, who, like many others, followed his father to GM’s Lordstown plant and spent his entire career there until the plant closed.
“I ignored it because my mom was like, ‘Don’t believe it, nothing’s going to happen,'” Green said. “The fact is, my daughter was bullied about it. And I didn’t know about it until a couple of years ago when she told me about it. She was a senior in high school and kids were blaming me and getting mad at her and bullying her.”
Trump then enthusiastically promoted a new company, Lordstown Motors, as his personal savior.
In 2020, he sent Vice President Mike Pence on a camera-toting tour of the facility.
A few months before the election that fall, Trump held a major public relations event on the South Lawn of the White House, flanked by a prototype of what the company promised would be the first all-electric commercial pickup truck.
“This area was devastated when General Motors left, then we came together and we got a contract to build a factory here,” Trump said, standing next to the company’s CEO.
The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection three years later.
The executive, who was close to President Trump, eventually settled with federal regulators over allegations that he misled investors about demand for the company’s first all-electric commercial pickup truck. He did not admit to wrongdoing.
Given the circumstances of the past few years, there was understandable skepticism in the community when a new joint venture between GM and South Korea’s LG began construction on an electric vehicle battery manufacturing plant scheduled to open in 2022.
Standing inside the factory this summer, Josh Ayers spoke candidly about when he first began to believe in what the future could hold.
“Probably when they actually break ground, to be honest with you,” Ayers said. When he left the GM plant and his hometown, he never thought he’d have the opportunity to return to either.
“This gives the people of the Valley another chance,” Ayers said, listing off all the reasons why people here care so much about their community, from friends and family to familiar (and highly recommended) local restaurants like Wedgwood Pizza and the Hot Dog Shop.
It’s one thing for Ayers to be standing inside a cutting-edge technology factory like Ultium.
Another reason was that he was standing next to Kareem Maine, the plant manager who had sat across from him for months during the intense negotiations over the plant’s union contract.
The ratification of the agreement in June marked the latest significant development within the plant, which in many ways has laid the foundation for industrial expansion.
“When you look around you, it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day, but you really need to take a moment to step back and say, ‘Hey, we’ve accomplished a lot in a short amount of time,'” Main said.
These accomplishments have been noted by the current president, who congratulated Ayers and his team shortly after the agreement was reached.
“Five years ago, the previous Administration made false promises to the workers of Lordstown and then sat back and watched as the community lost jobs and was economically ruined,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. “Today, Lordstown is experiencing a revival, and it didn’t happen by accident.”
The Ultium plant began production just two weeks after President Biden signed a comprehensive clean energy investment package into law.
The Biden administration has leveraged key legislative victories to bolster Ultium’s efforts through billions of dollars in grants and funding.
Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are also openly pro-union, with Biden frequently touting the view that he is the “most pro-union president in history.”
“I agree with that,” Green said.
Throughout the past few years of negotiations, national and local UAW leaders had been pressuring Biden and Harris to take more aggressive action on behalf of the union, but their role in the final outcome prompted strong support nationwide.
And the results were real, strengthening UAW President Sean Fain’s strike strategy and leading to a historic agreement with the Big Three automakers.
But the inclusion of the Altium facility in the deal, which was never once considered a bargaining chip, is what really changed the game here in Northeast Ohio.
Overall, factory workers’ wages nearly doubled over the life of the agreement.
Safety standards have been finalized that will serve as the basis for all future agreements.
Most importantly, GM Lordstown employees who were forced to relocate in 2019 had a clear path back home.
“There were many tears in my eyes as I talked to my brothers and sisters who worked with me at Lordstown,” said Golanitis, who joined GM after high school and spearheaded the organizing effort at the new plant. “They never thought something like this would happen.”
Fain was given a major speaking role at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where the Lordstown story was featured.
The UAW endorsed Harris, aggressively promoting videos of her on picket lines as a 2019 senatorial and Democratic presidential candidate and showing her support for the union.
But on the ground, the record of success has not had a dramatic impact on ordinary workers.
“Many of the members I spoke to said that when Trump was president, the economy was doing well, jobs were strong and business was booming,” Golanitis said.
Golanitis assumed his leadership position after years of hard work and is now grappling with the complex issues facing many in the UAW leadership in the months leading up to Election Day.
He’s not trying to tell party members how they should vote, but he is trying to explain his view that Harris and the Democratic Party have delivered better results for party members — results that are clear, at least on the surface.
nevertheless.
“It’s a tough time right now, you know? You know, unions have always supported Democrats,” Golanitis said. “It’s always been that way. And it looks like we’re reaching a tipping point now.”
