SPRINGFIELD, Ohio – Over tea served in beer mugs alongside his co-workers, Kyle Bos described how dramatically his life is shifting.
Bos is raising two daughters and expects a third in January. At the supermarket, he said, five items can now cost what an entire cart once did. Then, on Wednesday, Bos and nearly 1,400 colleagues lost their jobs at the former Navistar truck plant in southwestern Ohio.
The mass layoffs came just three days before President Donald Trump was scheduled to rally at a nearby high school Saturday. Their scale effectively wiped out a year of job growth across the greater Dayton area. For Bos, 30, the cuts are also motivating him to spend the weeks before the November election knocking on doors for Democratic candidates.
Asked how many times he had voted for Trump, Bos raised three tattooed fingers. Now, he said, his support for the president is over.
“Something has to change politically in this country,” said Bos, a centrist and member of the United Auto Workers. “Seems like it just kept getting worse and worse and worse.”
Trump is campaigning in the Dayton area Saturday.
This year’s election is putting the working-class coalition that carried Trump to the White House and helped Republicans win control of Congress under pressure. The result will hinge in part on communities such as Dayton, a city of 137,000 that once led the nation in patents per capita and gave rise to inventions including the Wright brothers’ airplane, the cash register, the stepladder and the electric car starter.
Trump’s direct style and celebrity-businessman image initially resonated around Dayton, where many voters believed traditional politics had failed them. Republicans won across the broader metropolitan area, but the party now faces dissatisfaction over inflation, the war in Iran and a president some voters view as detached from their economic struggles.
An Ohio Senate contest could help decide which party controls the chamber. Republican Sen. Jon Husted is being challenged by former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is seeking a political comeback two years after losing his seat and is trying to capitalize on voter frustration.
Trump’s Dayton-area appearance is part of what he describes as a 32-day rally marathon aimed at persuading Americans that the economy is performing better than public sentiment suggests.
“All over the country, they’re building factories, plants — manufacturing’s coming back,” Trump said Thursday during a visit to a truck plant in Texas. “The only thing we’re doing badly at is public relations.”
Just 17% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the cost-of-living crisis, with an increasing share holding him responsible for high prices. Trump has largely dismissed affordability concerns, while promising $5,000 checks if Republicans capture the House and Senate next month. Bos said the proposal offended him.
“It feels like a bribe, a slap in the face, and, like, that we’re all ignorant,” Bos said.
Factory jobs moved overseas as Republicans gained ground
Since 1990, the Dayton region has lost roughly half of its 90,000 manufacturing jobs, federal data shows. The North American Free Trade Agreement helped move many positions to Mexico, where auto parts could be produced more cheaply, and the decline accelerated after China joined the World Trade Organization.
As reliable factory wages disappeared, drug addiction and crime rose. The region’s troubles appeared to reach their lowest point following the 2008 financial crisis, prompting Phil Plummer, then the Montgomery County sheriff, to seek elected office.
“My jail was 40% drug addicts, 50% mental health patients, 10% criminals,” said Plummer, a Republican state representative since 2019. “We got it upside down — that’s what drove me to the state house.”
Plummer, who chairs the Montgomery County Republican Party, is now running for the Ohio state Senate. He argues that Trump remains the force holding together the GOP’s alliance of business interests and working-class families.
The local economy has strengthened in recent years, partly because Wright-Patterson Air Force Base has expanded. The installation now employs 38,000 people directly, while its research and development work has drawn aerospace companies such as Joby Aviation, the Sierra Nevada Corporation and Electra to the region.
The White House cited Electra’s $850 million aircraft investment, along with job announcements from Honda, Stellantis and other companies in Ohio, as evidence that Trump’s policies are generating employment.
Dayton rebounded because Republicans and Democrats alike saw the value coming out of Wright-Patterson over the past two decades, said Jeff Hoagland, CEO of the Dayton Development Coalition.
“In economic development, it takes time, and you have got to give it a little bit of time to bake, and then once it does, then you’re going to have something special,” Hoagland said.
Even as Dayton recovers, its politicians say this election is about inflation
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Downtown Dayton has added lofts for housing, and the historic Dayton Arcade complex with its glass dome and mosaic-tiled floors has been renovated into shops, an art gallery and eateries.
On Monday, the gallery echoed with the sounds of an acoustic guitar and flute during a fundraiser for Rose Lounsbury, a former schoolteacher who, for the second time, is running as a Democrat for state representative.
The guests radiated optimism that Democrats might pick up a U.S. Senate seat, a governorship and enough spots in the Ohio House of Representatives to end a Republican supermajority.
“There is a gap between what people want and what they feel is available,” Lounsbury said. “People don’t want to live a life of subsistence. They want to live the middle-class dream and they feel it’s not available like it once was.”
Lounsbury’s Republican opponent, State Rep. Andrea White, was in the state capital, Columbus, during the past week, where she helped lead a push to pass a temporary suspension of the state gas tax of 38.5 cents per gallon to offer some relief at the pump.
White said the Republican-led state government has helped to cushion the blow of inflation by flattening the state income tax and reining in property tax hikes.
“The concept is, put it back in the hands of the people who pay the taxes — so they have more of their own money,” White said.
No tax on overtime doesn’t help these factory workers
The White House said Trump’s tax cuts and trade deals have helped Ohio. But the experiences at what had been the Navistar plant show that policies that were supposed to help the working class were not enough.
His broad tariffs failed to boost demand and the plant’s former owner, International Motors, chose to offload the facility. And Trump’s major legislative achievement — the One Big Beautiful Bill — contributed little to people’s take-home pay, even as it temporarily stripped taxes from tips and overtime.
“We weren’t getting a lot of overtime because of the economy,” said Marianne Donnelly, who drove a forklift at the factory. “There just wasn’t any to be had, very little to be had.”
Meanwhile, costs have kept climbing. Donnelly said she buys marked-down beef, pork and chicken and stows them in her freezer. She canceled her subscriptions to The Columbus Dispatch and The Washington Post newspapers, along with some streaming services.
Laid-off workers like Donnelly say they expect to be rehired in six to 12 months by Roshel, a Canadian manufacturer of armored vehicles that is buying the plant. Roshel said in a statement that it’s “working with everyone involved not only to protect the current workforce, but to more than double it over the coming years through a phased process.”
Laid-off workers are looking for hope
On the Monday before the layoffs, Morgan Hughes and JoJo Burkhard were knocking on doors in Kettering, a Dayton suburb named after the inventor of the electric car starter. They were trying to convince union members and retirees to vote for Democrats.
The Navistar job had helped Hughes, 35, buy a house at age 21 and work alongside her father.
When her hours were first cut, Hughes moonlighted for DoorDash and got a real estate license. On her wrist, she has a tattoo of a cross and the words “Be Still And Know,” a reference to Psalm 46:10, which speaks to how faith in God can overcome fear.
Hughes said that what union members and retirees want is to be heard after feeling ignored by politicians. Burkhard said inflation and the economy have made it easier to swing voters to their side.
“It isn’t a hard pitch at all,” she said. “And even if they don’t want to stay Democratic long-term, they’ll at least give the candidates a chance this election, which could be a turning point for us.”
After a morning of talking to voters, the pair settled down at a Chinese restaurant for some potstickers, and the weight of the week hit them.
Burkhard cracked open a fortune cookie and tears began to well up. The layoffs meant no work for her, her boyfriend and her mother — and the words in small print almost seemed prophetic. She said she needed the hope they conveyed.
Her fortune read: “You’ll find your inner strength to overcome challenges.”
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