WAUKEGAN, Ill. (AP) — On a table in the Waukegan Township Democrats’ office sits a box of postcards with Wisconsin addresses collected during a postcard-writing pizza party to attract voters. Homemade Harris Walz signs lean against the table.
“We know they are distributing these all over Wisconsin,” said Matt Muchowski, chairman of the Democratic Club. “Here in Waukegan, Harris signs have been harder to come by, so we print our own.”
One reason they’re lacking: Waukegan is in Illinois, which isn’t a presidential swing state. It’s right on the border of one.
Muchowski said this is emblematic of the confined attention given to cities outside swing states by presidential campaigns. The United States’ unique Electoral College system, which replaces the popular vote, places disproportionate voting power in the hands of a few states that are evenly divided politically, ensuring that the bulk of campaign money – and the attention of presidential candidates – goes there States.
The lack of attention leaves voters across much of the country feeling like they and the issues they care about have been marginalized. It’s a dividing line that is keenly felt in places like Waukegan, one of Chicago’s furthest suburbs.
The last time a presidential candidate set foot in the working-class, majority-Latino city was in 2020, when former President Donald Trump landed at the airport. Trump exited Air Force One, waved briefly and then immediately got into an SUV that drove over the border to Kenosha, Wisconsin.
“Lost in the national conversation”
In Racine, a similar-sized city in Wisconsin just 50 miles north of Waukegan, Trump held a rally in June near a harbor overlooking Lake Michigan where he raved about development along the lakefront and revitalization efforts in Racine and of the Milwaukee metropolis and emphasized the importance of its voters in his bid to return to the White House.
Just a month earlier, before dropping out of the race, President Joe Biden praised a fresh Microsoft center in Racine County during a campaign stop in the city. The city south of Milwaukee has become a common gathering spot for presidential candidates as Wisconsin, one of just seven battleground states likely to decide this year’s presidential election, remains heavily in the sights of the campaigns of Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Cities like Waukegan “got lost in the national conversation” during the presidential election, said Muchowski, who has lived in the area most of his life.
“It’s not so much about the candidates, but about the anti-democratic Electoral College,” he said. “…It’s frustrating that certain voters’ votes count more and they degrade and discredit the votes of more urban voters with more voters of color.”
Campaign visits to neighboring Wisconsin: 27
Illinois is a reliably Democratic state – it hasn’t elected a Republican presidential candidate since George HW Bush in 1988. This predictability is reflected in presidential election campaigns every four years.
Fundraising aside, the Republican and Democratic presidential tickets went to Illinois only twice this year – once for an appearance by Trump before a group representing black journalists and once for Harris when she came to Chicago for her party’s national convention. By comparison, they had visited Wisconsin 27 times as of Tuesday, including when Biden was the presumptive nominee.
This year’s battleground presidential states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — represent 18% of the country’s population but have drawn the attention of Democratic and Republican presidential candidates and their running mate.
As of Tuesday, they had made a total of just over 200 campaign stops – three-quarters of them in these seven states, according to a database of campaign events based on Associated Press reporting. Pennsylvania alone was visited 41 times, more than any state.
But it’s not just the state visits: Presidential campaigns are targeting their appearances at specific counties they believe are critical to their success. The AP’s database shows that their campaign events in the seven battleground states were concentrated in counties with 22.7 million registered voters – just 10% of all registered voters nationwide for this year’s presidential election.
Electoral College, a system of “neglect”
Many Waukegan residents wish it was on the candidates’ radar, too. They said they are proud of how multiculturalism has shaped their city, a place where nearly 60% of residents are Latino and more than 16% are Black, according to 2020 U.S. Census data.
The working-class community was largely based on factory jobs, which once offered residents a comfortable middle-class life. But after companies abandoned the city’s lakefront in the 1960s, tens of thousands of jobs disappeared.
Waukegan never fully recovered.
The poverty and unemployment rates are well above the state and national average. The school district is one of the worst funded in the county, struggles with staffing shortages and has dismal graduation rates. And its sloping lakefront is a reminder of the city’s heyday: an asbestos factory, a coal-fired power plant and a gypsum factory sit quietly on public beaches. Next to it stretches a criss-crossing network of abandoned railway tracks.
The industry brought with it another problem – a legacy of environmental damage. The city of about 86,000 residents has five federal Superfund sites. In 2019, the state’s Environmental Protection Agency ruled that the Waukegan coal-fired power plant was violating environmental regulations and contaminating groundwater, and three years later it was closed.
The scene in Waukegan contrasts with Racine’s pristine lakefront marina, where luxury condos sit alongside cafes, restaurants and hotels.
Thomas Maillard, Democratic State Central Committeeman for Illinois’ 10th Congressional District and a longtime Lake County resident, said the contrast between the two cities is clear. In Waukegan, he said he was concerned about gun violence and access to good-paying jobs, affordable housing, child care and health care.
“The story of Waukegan is, unfortunately, the story of this country’s neglect of these Rust Belt communities, particularly along the Great Lakes,” he said. “…People are struggling.”
Maillard pointed to the Electoral College system as the culprit, calling it “a system of potential neglect.”
“You have to hear us”
Sam Cunningham, a former mayor of Waukegan, said people feel forgotten in the city he has called home since elementary school. It is clear, he said, that the national agenda prioritizes some states over others.
“You’re probably thinking, ‘Why would we put money here when we need it in these battleground states?'” he said. “I understand the logic, but I understand how we feel. Do we feel insulted? Of course we do. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.”
Margaret Padilla Carrasco, who has lived in the Waukegan area all her life, drove to Milwaukee in August to see Harris speak. If Harris were to visit Waukegan, Carrasco said she would take her to the dilapidated homes on the city’s south side, to assisted living facilities where seniors struggle to pay their bills and to a homeless shelter near her home.
Her message to Harris was not to count on her votes, she said. With job losses and rising costs of living, people in Waukegan are frustrated, she said. While she still plans to vote for Harris, Carrasco hears more Waukegan voters are turning away from the Democratic Party, which has long won the lion’s share of the city’s vote.
“If you don’t spend the time with us, don’t expect us to vote for you,” said Carrasco, 65, who teaches teenage Latinas in Waukegan to ride horses in the established Mexican charro style. “You have to hear us. You need to talk to us.”
James Richard Wynn, a 35-year-old father of nine, said he feels doubly forgotten in Waukegan as a conservative in the overwhelmingly Democratic city. He said he and the issues he cares most about — homeschooling, abortion restrictions, Second Amendment rights and government spending — are often ignored by presidential candidates.
“There’s probably a mindset among a lot of conservatives, particularly in Illinois, that thinks there’s no point in saying anything,” he said.
“A city full of courage and imagination”
Despite the confined political attention, several residents praised Waukegan’s do-it-yourself spirit, which often translates into grassroots political organizing on issues such as housing and environmental justice.
On a recent clear Tuesday, Pastor Julie Contreras, who works to support fresh immigrants in the city, had a long to-do list. She gathered community members to rebuild the roof for an undocumented couple whose home was damaged in a storm. Then she had to collect diaper donations for a woman who had just given birth.
This is the Waukegan most people don’t see, said Contreras, an attorney for local nonprofit United Giving Hope. She chided the candidates for simply stopping by the city’s airport before traveling to Wisconsin without discussing their issues with voters there.
“You’re missing out on a wonderful community here,” she said.
Muchowski of the Waukegan Township Democrats said when the town feels ignored, its residents take care of each other. They had gotten used to it, he said.
“For many people, Waukegan is a city of courage and imagination,” Muchowski said. “I don’t know many people who say, ‘I want to move across the country to Waukegan.’ But the people who come here really see the potential.”
If only, he said, the candidates would also recognize the potential.
___
Kevin S. Vineys, Associated Press multimedia journalist in Washington, contributed to this report.
___
The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to improve its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. For more information about AP’s Democracy Initiative, click here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
