Nikki Haley may have endorsed Donald Trump, but her campaign lieutenant, Jimmy Greene, a fixture in Michigan’s local party since Ronald Reagan, did not.
So when Donald Trump took the stage in his hometown of Saginaw on Thursday, the 62-year-old was nowhere to be seen. I was at home watching ‘Grey’s Anatomy’.
“In years past, the party was a bit of everything under Bush, McCain, Romney, we really were the big tent,” he told DailyMail.com.
‘There are no big tents at the moment. It’s a MAGA store. And if you’re not under this, you’re not in.”
Greene was on Nikki Haley’s leadership team in Michigan when she was the last candidate to oppose Trump in the Republican primary.
Former President Donald Trump appeared in Saginaw, Michigan, on Thursday. It is one of the most dynamic counties in the country. Joe Biden won by 101 votes in 2020
He, along with another key Haley supporter, announced last week that they would vote for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, even though Haley had endorsed Trump for president.
He thinks thousands of Republicans who can’t stand Trump’s chaotic campaign and his adoption of policies that go against conservative norms, such as import tariffs, are secretly planning to do the same.
Its location, in one of the most dynamic counties in a swing state, makes it worth listening to your opinion.
In 2016, Trump claimed Saginaw County by just 1,000 votes (or 1.1 percent) over Hillary Clinton on his way to taking Michigan by just 11,000 votes.
(Clinton even named the place in his memoir, ‘What Happened,’ while defending his strategy. ‘Some critics have said that it all depended on me campaigning enough in the Midwest,’ he wrote. ‘And I suppose it’s possible that a A few more trips to Saginaw or a few more on-air ads in Waukesha, Wisconsin, might have netted a couple thousand votes here and there.’)
It passed to Joe Biden in 2020, by 303 votes, while he regained the state.
Its economics and politics are Michigan economics and politics on a small scale. The area was closely linked to the state’s automotive industry. Parts manufactured here would be assembled into cars in Detroit.
But the decline of the industry brought with it the decline of Saginaw.
And Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party is more obvious here than almost anywhere else in the country. ‘The Trump Shoppe,’ which sells MAGA-branded merchandise from t-shirts and hats to cookie cutters featuring Donald Trump and ‘Café Deplorable,’ serves as the county’s Republican Party headquarters.
Jimmy Greene has been a Republican since 1980 but says he can’t vote for Trump this year
The Trump Shoppe occupies a spot in a shopping center next to a nail salon
Trump merchandise for sale at the store includes Deplorable coffee and #45 Blend
On any given day, recruits sign up to volunteer for election work alongside visitors who pay for MAGA hats before the rally.
Debra Ell opened the store nearly a decade ago, when Trump was just one of more than a dozen candidates pursuing the Republican nomination.
Last year he led a takeover of the party by Trump, recruiting like-minded populists to his board of directors. Her husband took over as county party chairman.
It was a moody affair. Her opponents accused her of intimidation and expelling moderate conservatives who showed any signs of dissent.
Greene said the result was a game that was out of step with Saginaw.
“It’s liberal on one side of the river and conservative on the other side of the river, and then the rest is pretty moderate,” he said.
“And that’s why we look like the United States.”
Colleen Ribble is a member of the county Republican Party executive board.
Trump made a speech about the auto industry to Michigan voters, promising to restore auto manufacturing to the state with a combination of threats and tariffs.
Nonsense, said Colleen Ribble, local party outreach chair and an Ell ally. He said the party was more united than its critics pretended.
“They don’t come into our store, but they sit and criticize,” he said, outside the store, as his followers came and went.
‘I think we have achieved a lot. I think we’re close to breaking records for donations to our local candidates.’
The presidential race in Saginaw, he added, was too close to call.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s going to be this close.”
As is Michigan, where the RealClearPolitics polling average has Harris ahead by just 0.7 percentage points.
Kamala Harris only needs a few thousand Nikki Haley fans to support her and she could win the key state of Michigan in the November election.
Early voting has already begun in Michigan
Robert Schwartz, director of Haley Voters for Harris in Michigan, said Republicans disenchanted with Trump could be the key to the election.
It might only take a small proportion of the 300,000 people who backed Haley in the primary to vote for Harris or not vote at all for the state to move into the blue column.
“We’re saying, well, even if she were further to the left, there’s probably going to be a Republican Senate, so would you rather have Trump with the Republican Senate in full control, or Harris and divided government?” said.
Greene, who plans to vote for Republicans who did not vote against it, said she knew what she was in for with Harris. Except with Trump.
“The bottom line is I can live with it and I have lived under Democratic rule here in Michigan,” he said.
“So even though the shoes are a little tight, I can still walk in them.”