a Local law prohibits residents of Saginaw Township, Michigan, from publicly displaying political signs supporting a presidential candidate, even in their own yards, until 30 days before the U.S. presidential election.
But you’d never know it driving through this pretty Midwestern town, which borders a town of the same name (simply Saginaw) and sits in the closest county, also called Saginaw, a battleground state that Donald Trump won by taking the White House in 2016, then lost in 2020 when Joe Biden stole control.
With more than six weeks until what many Americans consider to be the most important U.S. presidential election in decades, some Saginaw Township residents are ignoring the ban to demonstrate their loyalty to their neighbors. There are more Trump campaign posters than Kamala Harris, some of which proclaim that the former U.S. president is a convicted felon who should be in jail, not the Oval Office.
One Saginaw Township resident said he interpreted local officials’ reluctance to independently enforce the political sign ban as a desire to avoid confrontation during a politically charged time.
For Saginaw County residents, the instability of the Electoral College system further underscores the fact that not all votes in the United States are equal and that their vote carries more weight than most. The county is crucial in determining the winner of Michigan, and the state is likely to be pivotal in deciding the next occupant of the White House.
In 2016, Trump won Michigan by fewer than 11,000 votes, beating Hillary Clinton in Saginaw County by just 1.1% of the vote. Four years later, Biden won the county back to Democrats by just 303 votes, putting the state back in Democratic favor.
This year, Harris’ campaign sees Michigan as a key part of its clearest path to victory, along with other Rust Belt states Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Saginaw County will be a test of whether the Democratic candidate can pull it off and thwart a second term for Trump, who many observers fear poses a risk to American authoritarianism.
So Saginaw is an ideal place to watch this epic US presidential election, with Trump running for a third consecutive term, and not just because the votes have been so close in the past: the situation in the county reflects many of the issues facing other places that will decide this election.
Saginaw has a once-thriving industrial base that, while long in decline, remains significant. It has one of the highest crime rates in the country, and poverty is widespread alongside thriving suburbs. Its racial makeup is changing, leaving many people feeling adrift with no clear plan for the future.
In major Democratic cities like New York, Los Angeles and Seattle, it’s not uncommon for Americans to wonder why this year’s election was so close, given Trump’s political and criminal record. Many still seem to be grappling with the same questions that arose eight years ago when Trump stunned the nation by defeating Hillary Clinton. At times, places like Saginaw County can feel like a faraway foreign land.
But from Saginaw, the election may look very different.
To understand the area and its place in the election, the Guardian asked people living in the county where to go, who to talk to and what to look out for.
Among those who responded was former teacher Jordy Wilson, who wrote: “Saginaw is perhaps the most economically and racially divided community in the country. This is the epicenter of national division.”
Several people expressed concern about the future of American democracy if Trump returns to the White House, including Jamie Forbes, who recently got married and works for local public transportation. Forbes also spoke about the economy, a common theme both nationally and locally. He said he wants to see “the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share of taxes.”
“Saginaw’s issues: continued efforts to recover the economy from job-stealing by automakers, attracting and diversifying new industries, crime and successful small businesses,” he wrote.
Valerie Silvernail, a medical procedure scheduler, said it’s important to protect workers’ rights in the industries that remain.
“Unions are important here, and we need candidates who aren’t going to destroy unions,” she said.
One middle-aged man said he had never voted before but planned to vote for Trump this year: “Food prices, safety, jobs. Trump has spoken to me about all of these issues through his statements and through his website.”
“You can visit the whole of America in just 20 miles along I-46, the east-west highway that runs through the county,” wrote Michael Colucci, a chemical engineer who has lived in Saginaw Township for 40 years.
“Most Americans live in communities where most people think like them, and because Saginaw is small, everyone has the opportunity to interact with everyone else,” he said.
Colucci, who lives in a district where Trump and Hillary Clinton each won 49.5% of the vote in 2016, took The Guardian on a road trip to explain what he meant, starting in Saginaw, a city Colucci calls a “mini-Detroit” for its abandoned factories and homes.
In 1968, Saginaw was one of 10 cities in the nation to be awarded the title of “All-American City” by the American Civic League. Those were booming times.
Since then, as jobs disappeared and residents left, the city’s population has more than halved to less than 45,000. This has also led to a change in Saginaw’s demographics: 25 years ago, Saginaw was roughly equal in white and black residents, with a minority Latino population. The white population has declined sharply, to less than 35%.
Colucci pointed to the mansions built by lumber barons whose sawmills drove the city’s growth in the 19th century as demand for lumber from Michigan’s pine forests soared as the U.S. colonized the West, but often there was just grassy land where auto factories and shopping malls once stood.
Some of the first automobiles manufactured in America were assembled in Saginaw. For decades, the factory attracted workers from around the country to make gearboxes and steering assemblies for Detroit cars. There were 12 General Motors plants in and around Saginaw.
sign up The Stakes — U.S. Elections Edition
The Guardian guides you through the chaos of a crucial presidential election
Privacy Notice: Our newsletter may contain information about charities, online advertising and externally funded content. For more information, please see our privacy policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and are subject to the Google privacy policy and terms of use.
After newsletter promotion
By the 1980s, the industry was rapidly withdrawing from Saginaw. The last GM plant, today called Saginaw Metal Casting Operations, employed 7,000 people in 1970. Today, it employs fewer than 350 people.
The Biden administration funded the demolition of factories that had sat abandoned for years, symbols of lost prosperity. As the jobs disappeared, so did the shops and hotels. In the downtown core, department stores were replaced by public services, including employment agencies, universities and health centers for low-income families.
A new school opened on the riverfront this month, but it’s another sign of decline after enrollment at the city’s two main high schools, once fierce sports rivals, fell so much that they were closed and merged.
Simon & Garfunkel’s 1960s classic “America” was written here, and includes the lyrics, “It takes four days to hitchhike from Saginaw.” Fifteen years ago, the artist collective Paint Saginaw painted the song’s lyrics on dozens of abandoned factories, bridges and vacant buildings as a tribute to the people who were leaving the city, including the line, “They’ve gone off looking for America.” But rather than go looking for America, the residents stumbled for miles around.
Colucci drove west, through the city, past the sprawling golf course of the Saginaw Country Club, and into the outskirts of Saginaw Township.
In 1980, the city was nearly four times the size of the township. Today, with many of the residents of one having moved to the other, they are roughly the same size. But the township’s median income is nearly twice as high and it is 89 percent white.
Housing quality changes rapidly as you move from one neighborhood to another, and so do voting patterns.
Saginaw voted overwhelmingly against Trump in both of his presidential elections, with Clinton winning 76% of the vote in 2016 and Biden garnering a similar amount four years later.
Saginaw Township is a different story: Trump beat Clinton by 3 points in 2016. Four years later, Trump lost to Biden by a similar margin.
In other words, it wasn’t Saginaw’s poorest neighborhoods that once supported Trump, but one of its most prosperous. Colucci explains why.
“Trump is promising to stop the world from changing,” he said.
And he sneers: “He promised to stop coal from disappearing, but coal literally disappeared while he was president.”
The outcome of this election will likely depend on voter turnout: Though Trump’s vote share in Michigan increased in 2020, he lost because many Democrats who didn’t vote in the state four years ago rose up to try to keep him out of the White House.
Colucci, who volunteered for Clinton’s campaign, lamented that campaign organizers relied too heavily on data, failed to listen to local opinion and failed miserably to mobilize Democratic supporters on Election Day — a complaint that Clinton should have won, a recurring, often bitter, complaint heard in Rust Belt states over the past few years.
The Biden campaign is clearly doing better, and there are clear signs that Harris has learned her lessons, but challenges remain.
About 75% of Saginaw Township voters cast ballots in the 2020 presidential election. Fewer than 50% of voters in the city of Saginaw cast ballots.
Turnout was 82% in other Trump strongholds, including Frankenmuth, a small town in the southeastern county known as Little Bavaria. This weekend, Frankenmuth celebrates its German heritage with architecture and its own Oktoberfest, and twice voted overwhelmingly for Trump and his anti-immigration policies.
Still, nothing is set in stone.
Among those who contacted the Guardian was Marc Paredes, a former US diplomat and lifelong conservative who said he would never vote for Trump and is therefore supporting Harris.
“If you’d told me 10 years ago that I’d be doing this, I would have been pretty amused,” he wrote.
