Posted on 05/06/2016 6:08:23 AM PDT by raccoonradio
The city of Revere gave Donald Trump his largest margin of victory in Massachusetts' March 1 Republican primary.
"I hate to say that I grew up not liking people. I mean, I like Americans. I just despise other people right now, non-Americans," said Anthony Paolini, 55, a disabled construction worker. "Just the way they act, they're taking over all the jobs. You can't even get a job. My niece went to school five years, she's working at McDonald's."
"I just believe that (Donald) Trump can change this country," Paolini said. "He talks from the heart. He's got balls."
Paolini is one of more than 2,000 voters in the city of Revere who supported Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Massachusetts' March 1 primary, which Trump won with 49 percent of the vote. Now that Trump is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Revere is a microcosm of the Republican voters who catapulted the brash, politically incorrect billionaire businessman to within striking distance of the U.S. presidency.
In Revere, a working-class, Democratic enclave on the coast north of Boston, Trump won the GOP primary with his largest margin in Massachusetts — 73 percent of the vote.
There is no question Trump got support from independent voters, and likely from some former Democrats. Revere has just 1,845 registered Republicans. Trump got 2,285 votes. No other Republican candidate got more than 300 votes.
Although the Democratic primary still attracted more than twice as many voters as the Republican primary, a flurry of voters switched parties before the election, many moving from Democrat to unenrolled or Republican, according to voter statistics.
Revere is a city facing economic and cultural changes. It is around three-quarters white, according to census figures, with a growing percentage of Hispanics and other diverse immigrant groups, including Vietnamese and Cambodians.
It is traditionally working class, filled with retail workers, airport employees and union laborers who work in construction and other trades. Household income and housing values remain lower than in the surrounding areas. But new development, much of it along the beachfront, combined with good schools, is attracting higher-income young professionals and driving up the cost of housing.
Although Revere is still heavily Democratic — one of its state representatives is Democratic House Speaker Robert DeLeo — the number of unenrolled voters is growing. Revere voters chose Republican Scott Brown over Democrat Martha Coakley in the 2010 U.S. Senate special election.
Revere's budget struggles with a lack of commercial development. A defunct greyhound racing park takes up prime real estate across from the Wonderland MTBA stop. The city's efforts to attract a casino failed, after the Massachusetts Gaming Commission chose a proposal in nearby Everett.
"(President Barack) Obama has really killed this town," said Vin Conte, 56, the owner of Vin's Auto Service, a family-run auto repair shop that opened in Revere in 1961.
Conte, who grew up in Revere but lives in Marblehead, sees the city from his repair shop, which is covered with New England Patriots memorabilia.
"There used to be a lot of workers in this town. Now I don't see them. I see a lot of transients in this town," Conte said. "This was a good blue-collar town that did work.... They're not here anymore. People are just sitting home. People don't even want to work because they could get (welfare)."
Conte, an unenrolled voter, blames Obama for creating an over-dependency on welfare. He's upset about "the demoralization and the weakening of the military." He reads about bombings and conflicts worldwide and remembers the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.
"It's time to take America back." - Anthony Wallace, Revere voter and Trump supporter
"The world's in a total chaotic situation, and I think a lot of it has to do with the Obama administration," Conte said.
Though Conte voted for Republican John Kasich in the primary, he would choose Trump over Democrat Hillary Clinton in the general election. Trump, Conte said, has "hit a core of people who are fed up with the way things are going.... They're totally disgusted with the idea of Clinton coming in and making it worse."
Anthony Wallace, 34, a lifelong Revere resident who works for his brother's junk removal company, has been a Trump supporter from the start.
"I agree with everything he's saying about the wall. It's time to take America back," Wallace said. "There's no guarantees, but if he wins, I feel that America will be a better place."
Wallace likes Trump's emphasis on bringing jobs back to the U.S. and building a wall along the Mexican border.
"There's a lot of immigrants that come here and take over businesses and jobs," Wallace said. Wallace said the country needs more jobs "for people that are from America."
"I hate to be racist about it, but we're the minority. White people are the minority nowadays," Wallace said. "All the immigrants come here, take the jobs, they get small business loans, they have kids. I just don't think it's fair."
Joseph Carrigan, 40, a disabled mason from Revere, and his wife Gina Carrigan, 40, a home health aide, like Trump's proposal to build a wall because they believe it would reduce the flow of illegal drugs into the U.S. Joseph Carrigan's sister died at age 42 of a drug overdose, and he sees the epidemic of opioid addiction as one of society's biggest problems.
"Closing the borders so the drugs aren't going to be able to get back in ... will help a lot," Gina Carrigan said.
The Carrigans are generally apolitical, but they like Trump because he is a businessman, not a politician.
"When you've got people ... blowing up people at the marathon, and you have people walking up on cops and shooting them, a change needs to be made," Joseph Carrigan said. "Whether Trump makes a change or not, he has the know-how to say it. He'll say what other politicians won't, about the borders and about health care and about the elderly. He just ain't a politician."
Bill Ash, sitting with a group of retired men in a Revere deli midday, called Trump "our savior." A retiree eating nearby who gave his name only as Vic said the Obama administration has turned the U.S. into "apologists" and denigrated "the American way," while Trump will bring change.
Freddie Battista, owner of Majestic Motors, a Revere auto body shop, is a Democrat who loved Hillary Clinton's husband, former President Bill Clinton. He did not vote in the primary, but he is leaning toward Trump in the general election, because he trusts Trump more than Clinton.
"He doesn't hide anything. If he has something to say, he's going to say it. I don't think he's afraid to tell you how he feels," Battista said. "She's a typical politician. He isn't."
Howie Carr list ping
Clearly he is a racist. /sarc
It isn't racism if you hate everyone equally.
Revere is a tough city. Most of MA is Republican, it’s only the cities that vote Democrat.
Baker won by winning the entire state except the cities but winning enough of them to cinch it.
His stances lately are alienating him from the voters that elected him.
I predict he will only serve one term.
Revere makes Lynn and Brockton look nice.
Yet, if I'm not mistaken, Massachusetts voted TWICE for the kenyan bastard, and is probably expected to vote for Madam Benghazi.
Lynn, Lynn, the city of sin. You never come out the way you went in.
I think Brockton is the worst. Haverhill isn’t much better.
“A defunct greyhound racing park takes up prime real estate across from the Wonderland”
I loved going to Wonderland.
The dems/liberals had to make Greyhound racing illegal, to save the dogs from such cruelty.
Now they’re killing all excess the greyhounds.
Voices from Re-veee-ah...:)
Yes, the cities overwhelm the suburban and rural voters unfortunately. If you look at the number of towns that go GOP the state looks overwhelmingly red.
Wretched hives of scum and villainy.
One nice thing about Revere is that it offers a good alternative for parking if you’re flying out of Logan.
I live up here, and I don’t know if your comment about a majority being Republican is true, but there are more conservatives here than outsiders think.
It is, however, a political machine state. A BIG political machine state.
This is the narrative that gives Trump a shot at Ohio,Penn,Michigan, and Wisconsin. Trump will spend 50% of his time in this region.
It looks red for the same reason, if you look at a map of the political affiliation of the entire map of the USA, that it looks red. Large, relatively populated areas are generally conservative and will cover more area visually than the densely populated urban areas...
The Clintons are coming! The Clintons are coming!
Oh yeah, big time. What cracked me up was how Baker tried to run the delegate convention against Trump and failed miserably. He tried the same with the state Republican committee. I don’t recall how that turned out.
Ya gauwd dam right!
That was not bright of Baker to do that the other day.
We have lived up and down the east coast, from Northeast urban areas to east Coast Central Florida, as well as some years outside the USA.
Now happily living in rural NWGA, deep in the heart of Dixie where there are Virginia Battle Flag ("Confederate") rallys almost every weekend in the Wal*Mart parking lot.
The most racist place I have ever lived was in Boston, hands-down.
Add a third dimension, population density, and you see where the Democrat votes come from...
One thing a lot ‘direct election’ and ‘get rid of the electoral college’ types miss is that the electoral collage helps prevent the urban areas from dominating the rest of the country.
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