The Rust Belt manufacturing collapse devastated their communities. Two men explain who they’re supporting for president

Driving through the streets of Saginaw, Michigan, with Hurley Coleman III, the raw tension between what was and what could be in his community runs deeper than what can be seen through the passenger windows.

Driving through the streets of Saginaw, Michigan, with Hurley Coleman III, the raw tension between what was and what could be in his community runs deeper than what can be seen through the passenger windows. It’s a feeling that comes through in his every word passing through the streets where he grew up. “Our region has been screaming and crying out, ‘Hey, we’re here. We’re trying to change. We’re trying to grow. Look at all the thing we’re doing,’” he says. “And yet nobody truly paid attention until we became a battleground county.” Politicians and their campaigns are paying attention now, that much is clear. Just as they have zeroed in on a Pennsylvania county about 350 miles away, where we sat at Phil Kerner’s dining room table around fresh pepperoni balls – an Erie County delicacy, his wife informs us – a few days later. “You’d drive down that industrial corridor on 12th Street, just full shops. Just full shops. Amazing,” Kerner recounted, inviting the obvious follow-up.