Nikki Haley may have endorsed Donald Trump but her campaign lieutenant Jimmy Greene, a fixture in the local Michigan party since Ronald Reagan, has not.
So when Donald Trump took the stage in his hometown of Saginaw on Thursday, the 62-year-old was nowhere to be seen. He was at home watching ‘Gray’s Anatomy.’
‘In years past, the party was a little bit of everything under Bush, McCain, Romney, we really were the big tent,’ he told DailyMail.com
‘There is no big tent right now. It’s a MAGA tent. And if you ain’t under it, you ain’t in it.’
Greene was on Nikki Haley’s Michigan leadership team when she was the last candidate standing against Trump in the Republican primary.
He along with another key Haley supporter announced last week that they would be voting for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, even though Haley had endorsed Trump for president.
He thinks that thousands of Republicans who cannot stomach Trump’s chaotic campaign and his embrace of policies than run counter to conservative norms, such as swingeing tariffs on imports, are secretly planning to do the same.
His location, in one of the swingiest counties in a swing state, make his opinion worth listening to.
In 2016, Trump claimed Saginaw county by barely 1000 votes (or 1.1 percent) over Hillary Clinton on his way to taking Michigan by just 11,000 votes.
(Clinton even namechecked the place in her memoir, ‘What Happened,’ as she defended her strategy. ‘Some critics have said that everything hinged on me campaigning enough in the Midwest,’ she wrote. ‘And I suppose it is possible that a few more trips to Saginaw or a few more ads on the air in Waukesha (Wis.) could have tipped a couple thousand votes here and there.’)
It flipped to Joe Biden in 2020, by 303 votes, as he went on to win the state back.
Its economy and its politics are Michigan’s economy and politics writ small. The area was closely linked to the state’s auto industry. Parts manufactured here would be assembled into cars in Detroit.
But the industry’s decline brought decline to Saginaw.
And the Trump takeover of the Republican Party is more obvious here than almost anywhere else in the country. ‘The Trump Shoppe,’ selling MAGA-branded merchandise—from T-shirts and hats to Donald Trump profile cookie cutters and ‘Deplorable coffee’—serves as county G.O.P. headquarters.
On any given day, recruits are signing up to volunteer for election work alongside visitors paying for MAGA caps ahead of the rally.
Debra Ell opened the store almost a decade ago when Trump was just another of more than a dozen runners chasing the Republican nomination.
Last year she led a Trumpian takeover of the party, recruiting likeminded populists to the board. Her husband took over as chairman of the county party.
It was a bad-tempered affair. Opponents accused her of intimidation and of chasing out moderate conservatives who showed any sign of dissent.
Greene said the result was a party that was out of step with Saginaw.
‘It’s liberal on one side of the river and it’s conservative on the other side of the river, and then the rest of that is all just pretty much moderate,’ he said.
‘And so we do look like America.’
Nonsense, said Colleen Ribble, outreach chair of the local party and an ally of Ell. She said the party was more united than their critics made out.
‘They don’t step in our shop, but they sit back and criticize,’ she said, outside the store, as supporters came and went.
‘I think we have accomplished so much. I think we’re close to record breaking donations that have gone to our local candidates.’
The presidential race in Saginaw, she added, was too close to call.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s going to be that close.’
Just like Michigan, where the RealClearPolitics polling average has Harris ahead by just 0.7 percentage points.
Robert Schwartz, Michigan director of Haley Voters for Harris, said Republicans disenchanted with Trump could be the key to the election.
It could only take a small proportion of the 300,000 people who backed Haley in the primary to vote Harris or not vote at all to swing the state into the blue column.
‘We’re saying, fine, even if she were further to the left, there’s likely going to be a Republican Senate, and so would you rather have Trump with the Republican Senate in complete control, or Harris and a divided government?’ he said.
Greene, who is planning to vote for down-ballot Republicans, said he knew what he was getting with Harris. Less so with Trump.
‘Bottom line is, I can live with her, and I’ve lived under Democratic rule here in Michigan,’ he said.
‘So while the shoes may be a little tight, I can still walk in them.’