“Lemme show you the Trump truck!,” says Bob Belonzi, excitedly. He’s got the cutting Long Island accent of a man who’s lived out here his entire life and he just took the Ford F-150 in on a trade at Sayville Ford on Sunrise Highway, where he works.
The pickup had a “Trump 2016” decal on the back. This is where we would do our interview. But first one of his guys would need to peel the confederate flag sticker from above the Trump decal. This is New York after all.
The first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will be held tonight here in Suffolk County at Hofstra University.
Donald Trump, whose business empire grew out of neighborhoods an hour’s drive from where Belonzi grew up, got more votes in Suffolk County, Long Island, than anywhere else in New York. And while Suffolk has voted Democratic in every general election since 1992, the conservative resistance is mounting. More Republican primary votes were cast here in May than Democratic votes.
“I think it’s going to be a landslide,” Belonzi says.
Trump voters across the country trumpet the billionaire’s political incorrectness, his outsider status. They want change, and they see him as their change-maker. He’s going to send their message.
That’s true here in Suffolk County as well. But what’s perplexing is exactly why voters here want it. The median household income is $88,323 — 56 percent higher than the national figure. Unemployment sits at 4.4 percent — lower than both the statewide and national rates. Those income and employment levels would be welcomed in most parts of the country.
And yet uncertainty eclipses reality. Will our children be better off than us? Will we retire with dignity like our parents? These are the questions of the white working class.
According to a poll conducted by CNN and the Kaiser Family Foundation and released last week, a full 50% of working class white voters believe their children’s lives will be worse than theirs.
“I think drastic times need drastic changes,” Chris Cavanaugh, the owner of an eponymous Irish sports bar in Blue Point, said. “And it’s kind of a common-sense thing, that the way things are going, it’s not working and we need big changes.”
Cavanaugh looks like a middle-aged man on the verge of a peaceful retirement spent on a small boat in the waters off his town’s shoreline. In fact, he now works three days a week in his bar’s kitchen, just to save money.
“You would think after 30 years of doing this, it would get somewhat easier, but it seems I’m working harder now than I ever did — to make the same amount of money that I was making 20 years ago.”
The stories are the same across Suffolk County. As old industries die out or shift to cheaper states or countries, new industries come in, and so does a new pay scale.
“Folks that used to make $25, $35, $45 an hour on an assembly line may now be making $15 or $20 an hour working in the healthcare business,” said Lawrence Levy, the executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra.
“Many people have remained in the [same] houses they did when they were making more money — they just owe more,” Levy said. “They have had to scale back their retirement plans, their kid’s education.”
Artie Burke used to live in the relatively well-off town of Huntington Station. He left the New York City police force shortly after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and opened a pizza restaurant in Northport. Things were going well. He bought his parents a house in Florida.
But the economic downturn took a toll, and he and his wife consolidated and moved to the loft apartment above the restaurant. The financial stresses eventually unraveled their marriage.
“[I] live paycheck to paycheck, basically,” Burke said. “And then in the wintertime — this is a summer town — I have to juggle my money. Basically try to figure out, you know, take a loan here or whatever just to keep the place afloat until the summertime and then pay back all of those loans.”
“And then,” he laughs, “I’m back at the same position I was last year.”
Burke says he’s “51% leaning towards Trump,” but he’s just as unhappy with his choices this year as he was in 2012, when he just didn’t vote.
“I might not vote,” he says. “I’m not sure which way to go.”
Indeed, only 14% of working-class white voters believe the government in Washington represents the views of people like them, according to the CNN/Kaiser poll. And in a further indictment, 62% of them think the federal government deserves all or most of the blame for their economic woes.
Many perceive Trump voters — and specifically this subset of white working class folks who support him in droves — as angry. Trump says he’s “representing a lot of anger out there,” but not “angry people” — just people who are angry at the system.
If the white working class is made up of angry people, they’re reluctant to admit it. The CNN/Kaiser poll proves Trump may be correct: 79 percent of white working class voters describe themselves as happy. Just 18 percent say they’re angry. So what’s driving these voters to Trump on the far reaches of Long Island?
“It just doesn’t feel like there’s no spirit in the United States,” Cavanaugh said. “There’s no, I don’t want to say the word ‘fear,’ but we were always held up a pedestal and it’s not like that anymore. It’s not a good feeling.”