Swing State Michigan: Second Class America

LeeAnne Walters still has the rehearsal that started it all at home. She takes us to her kitchen in Flint, Michigan, where she first noticed that something was wrong with the drinking water in her hometown. That was ten years ago now. “We had put the kids to bed,” Walters remembers as she and her husband cleaned the kitchen after dinner. “We were loading the dishwasher – and suddenly just brown water came out of the tap.”

In the months that followed, she noticed hair loss and skin rashes in her children. Walters collected countless samples of leaded drinking water, exposing one of the greatest political failures in modern U.S. history. The scandal gave Flint notoriety and made it a symbol of a second-class America.

The city’s water crisis painted a sad picture of the United States apart from skyscrapers, cultural industries and scientific excellence. An America where people can be denied even basic needs. For many millions of citizens, the United States is not functioning. They seem all the more willing to break with the system in the swing state of Michigan. For many this means voting for Donald Trump.

How the lead got into the water

Until the 1980s, Flint was a thriving center of the automotive industry, particularly because of the General Motors brand and its proximity to the auto city of Detroit. But then the industry moved away, thousands lost their jobs and left the city.

With the decline, tax revenue also fell. One of the savings measures in 2014 included switching the water supply to a cheaper alternative: the local Flint River. Its water was corrosive, but there were no measures to protect the pipes. Lead was released from old pipes. People in Flint drank it, cooked with it, and showered with it for months without knowing that their water was dangerously contaminated.

It took a while for leaders from both major parties in city government and the state to admit there was even a problem. Instead of taking immediate action, they appeased the population and said the water was safe. But activists like LeeAnne Walters put pressure on the cause, after all, many children were found to have elevated lead concentrations in their blood. A number of people, especially older people, died in connection with the contamination.

Walters says today that Flint people’s trust in politics has been permanently shaken. Although the water in Flint is now perfect again, the idea that the low-income city is only a second-class place for politics is obvious to many residents. “I think what the government did was because Flint was Flint and it wasn’t booming anymore,” Walters says. “They thought they would get away with cutting corners and poisoning people because they thought we were all just stupid or because we only have a small income.”

In fact, in 2024, just weeks before the presidential election, Flint is as far from the American dream as imaginable. Many parts of the city outside of the still quite glamorous town center are deserted. Gangs are up to mischief and acts of violence are the order of the day. In the particularly precarious northwest of Flint, the words “Northwest needs help” are written in red on a boarded-up house facade. Someone has drawn a dollar sign next to it.

Democratic stronghold retired

The election results of the past twenty years show how voters in Flint and the surrounding area have turned away from the Democrats. In the Genesee district, more than 20 percent more people voted for Democrats than for Republicans in 2004. In 2012 it was even around 28 percent.

After the water crisis and the appearance of Donald Trump on the political stage, that changed: In the district in 2016, the Republican was only a good ten percent behind Hillary Clinton. In 2020, Trump was only a good nine percent behind future President Joe Biden.

Experts explain this with Trump’s great influence on those who benefit least from the immense wealth of the United States. Statistics show that from 1980 to the present, the income of white men without a college degree in the United States has fallen from being well above average to now being well below average.

It is those who see the 78-year-old Trump as an anti-system candidate who is most likely to change things. There is a saying in the USA that sometimes you just have to break eggs in order to fry an omelet.

The Democrats have been undefeated in presidential elections in Michigan since 1988 – until Trump’s sensational victory in 2016. Democrat Kamala Harris has to win Michigan, along with the two other swing states in the Midwest, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, to have a chance at the White House . Just a few days before the election, the forecasts show the two opponents practically neck and neck.

LeeAnne Walters says for her the Nov. 5 vote is about voting for the lesser evil. “This year is an extremely difficult year to vote,” Walters said. But she will cast her vote as always. She just didn’t do that in 2020. The reason: Your postal voting documents were delivered one day late.