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    • How Springfield, Ohio residents are reacting to Trump’s election
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    How Springfield, Ohio residents are reacting to Trump’s election

    Sakege Posted on

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    It wasn’t long ago that Springfield, Ohio, an industrial city about 45 miles west of Columbus, was making national political headlines.

    In September, President-elect Donald Trump, a Republican, and his running mate, Vice President-elect JD Vance, spread unfounded rumors that Haitian immigrants in Springfield ate dogs and cats.

    The furor peaked during Trump’s only debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.

    “They’re eating the dogs in Springfield,” Trump said. “The people who came in were eating the cats. They were eating the pets of the people who lived there.”

    Local officials were quick to refute the rumors, but that didn’t stop the country’s political attention from turning to the city of about 58,000 residents, including between 15,000 and 20,000 Haitian immigrants. Schools, government buildings and local businesses were welcomed. dozens of bomb threats.

    Trump later reflected that he planned deport migrants from the city to Venezuela.

    Springfield’s Haitian residents are in the country legally as beneficiaries of Temporary Protected Status, a Department of Homeland Security program that allows people from unsafe countries to live and work in the U.S. During the election campaign, Trump said he would revoke this status.

    Following the November 5 presidential election, in which Donald Trump decisively won the electoral college to return to the White House for a second term, residents of the city and the area reacted with a variety of emotions: fear, happiness, indifference. and anger.

    ‘We’ll see what happens’

    Pastor Andrew Mobley, 65, who helps run the Family Needs Inc. food pantry just south of downtown Springfield, said some of his Haitian immigrant clients had already called him the morning after the election to ask what would pass.

    Haitian immigrants are their food pantry’s primary clientele, making up about 50% of all entrants. He told his callers that it was too early to know what would happen, to wait and see.

    “We’ll see what happens. I mean, you have to rescind the temporary protected status, and if you rescind it, are you going to send everyone back? Who pays for all that? They came all the way here. I don’t think they’re going to come back.” . So it will be difficult,” he said.

    Mobley, a native of Chicago, first came to Springfield in 2005 to be with his son. He still misses Chicago, but Springfield has been his home for 19 years. If the Trump administration deports the city’s immigrant population, the entire landscape would change, he said.

    His initial reaction to Trump’s victory: “It’s going to be what it’s going to be.”

    “I’ve been through enough elections to say it is what it is, and let’s move on. Our mission here is to help those who have a need. Therefore, I can’t get involved in a political part of this. “We have to get involved to help help people get over whatever they’re going through,” he said.

    ‘We have no choice’

    Rolmy Benjamin visited a grocery store in Springfield with his neighbors Wednesday afternoon. He is not a resident of Springfield (he lives in Dayton, just 25 miles away), but he has something in common with many of its residents: he is an immigrant from Haiti.

    He was not worried about the outcome of Tuesday’s election and said Trump would “do his job.”

    “We have no choice because Trump is our president. If (he is asking us) to return (to Haiti), we have no choice. We will return,” he said.

    Bejamain has a wife and three children in Haiti.

    “It’s like Ohio State winning the national championship”

    The negative attention focused on Springfield did little to change the situation for either party. Trump won Clark County with 39,636 votes or 64.2% of the total votes. Harris received 21,494 votes or 34.8% of the total votes.

    By comparison, Trump won Clark County in 2020 by a similar vote margin, 39,032, or 60.8% of the total votes. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, received 24,076 votes, or 37.5% of the total votes. according to 2020 election data from Politico.

    Independent voter Gay Harris, 72, emerged from a parking lot in downtown Springfield on Wednesday, wearing a red jacket and multiple pieces of red, white and blue jewelry. Harris, out to lunch with her retired teacher friends (she used to be president of a local teachers association), said she was “very happy” Trump won.

    “It’s like Ohio State winning the national championship. It’s that exciting. I mean, it’s just amazing. “I’m looking forward to it,” he said.

    His support for Trump has remained stable over the years; She voted for him in every general election she participated in, but once voted against him in a primary, she said.

    Meanwhile, she has distanced herself from the Democratic Party.

    “They are not the Democratic Party I used to know. I would vote for who I think did the best job,” he said. “But in the last 15 years, this has changed, and I just don’t like the liberal policies they’ve been leaning toward.”

    “I got angry”

    Cindy Redman, 62, of Springfield, started her day Wednesday sitting with her cats and watching television. When he saw that Trump had won the presidency, he became “very angry.”

    “I screamed, I cursed,” he said. “My cats look at me like, ‘Oh my God. Mom’s so angry.’ But no, because I didn’t want him in office.”

    Redman has been unable to vote since the 1980s due to a nonviolent felony conviction, but said he would have supported Kamala Harris for president. He is concerned that the future Trump administration will eliminate Social Security and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps.

    Without them, he worries he will end up on the streets.

    He’s also old enough to remember when Roe v. Wade first went into effect in 1973. Abortion rights saved her life, she said.

    “Now all of that is going to disappear, and that’s not right. Why don’t women have the right to say what we want done with our own bodies?” she said. “Why does it have to be a man to say it?”[email protected]

    @NathanRHart

    Sakege
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