The campaign to collect more delegates on the road to the Republican nomination for U.S. president winds its way through the state of Wisconsin, home of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s appeal to working-class voters is easy to see in the industrial town of Janesville, which is also Ryan’s hometown. Standing in line among thousands hoping to see Donald Trump at the Janesville Conference Center was a last-minute decision for accountant William Collett. The presidential candidate he’ll vote for in the Wisconsin primary April 5 also will be a late decision. “Well, as of this morning I’ll be voting for Trump,” said Collett. One of the biggest reasons is Trump’s views on curbing foreign trade agreements. “Look at the NAFTA program that was voted in by politicians," Collett said of the North American Free Trade Agreement, signed into law in 1993. "And they darn well knew that jobs were going to jump the borders.” This is a primary concern for many in Janesville, home to a massive General Motors assembly plant that has been idle for almost a decade. The plant's closure put thousands out of well-paying jobs and changed the lives of many in this working-class town of roughly 64,000, which reflects a large part of the Republican electorate. “Many of them were once Democrats. Their fathers worked on the line in industrial America. They had a nice house in the suburbs. They make the kind of money the upper working class used to make in the '50s and '60s. They look back on that life and they wonder where it went,” said John Sharpless, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. |