REGIONAL— The United Steelworkers are pushing back against six Iron Range mayors who signed a joint letter endorsing President Donald Trump’s re-election last week. The Aug. 28 letter, signed by Ely Mayor Chuck Novak, Babbitt Mayor Andrea Zupancich, Virginia Mayor Larry Cuffe, and the mayors of Eveleth, Chisholm, and Two Harbors, was timed to coincide with the recent Duluth rally headlined by Vice President Mike Pence.
“Our union believes those mayors are misguided and don’t fully understand the nature of the economics of the industry or the Iron Range,” stated the letter, signed by Tom Conway, the union’s international president, District 11 Director Emil Ramirez, and Staff Rep. John Arbogast. The union provided the letter to the Timberjay this week.
The letter from the six mayors painted a rosy picture of the economy on the Iron Range, which they described as “roaring back to life,” under the economic policies of President Trump.
The mayors cited Trump’s tariffs against China, along with GOP-sponsored corporate tax cuts, as factors behind what they view as the region’s economic recovery.
They also took issue with Democratic candidate Joe Biden, who they argue did nothing to help the working class and has moved too far to the left. “We lost thousands of jobs, and generations of young people have left the Iron Range in order to provide for their families with good paying jobs elsewhere,” the mayors wrote. Since Trump’s election four years ago, the mayors say “locals are hopeful because of this President’s policies and willingness to fight for us.”
The letter was a bit too rosy even for some of the signatories. Ely Mayor Chuck Novak said he was contacted by the Pete Stauber campaign to sign onto the letter, but he never saw it prior to its release. He said his signature was added to the missive electronically and he doesn’t agree with everything in it. “I’m living on a Range that is not really thriving,” said Novak. “Especially Ely.”
Novak has been a forceful advocate for copper-nickel mining in the Ely area, which he has argued could bolster a local economy that he sees as continuing to struggle. The closure of Ely’s only car dealership this year was another reminder that the local economy continues to face headwinds. “Roaring back to life?” questioned Novak. “Do you think I’ve gone off my rocker?”
That’s a view that the representatives of United Steelworkers District 11 reiterated. “Just drive down the main streets of Virginia and Eveleth and count the shutdown businesses. It hardly seems like the “roaring back to life” that these mayors describe,” states their letter.
“Our nation is in the deepest crisis since the Great Depression and 74,257 people in Minnesota have tested positive for COVID-19; 1,814 have died. President Trump refused to acknowledge the threat posed by the coronavirus, mobilize resources or show leadership in the face of the global pandemic.”
The union also cites layoffs throughout the steel industry including on the Iron Range. While most area mineworkers are back on the job, workers at the U.S. Steel Keetac plant remain idled. Nationally, steel production is down 20 percent and steel prices are at their lowest level since Trump took office, according to the union officials.
“He [Trump] championed tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, increasing the federal deficit to record levels, but he’s failed to deliver the infrastructure program to rebuild our nation’s crumbling bridges and roads. He has worked to undermine collective bargaining, workplace safety, environmental safeguards, the Affordable Care Act, government ethics, congressional oversight and voting rights,” wrote the union officials.
While the six mayors signed the letter, it’s not clear that it represents the local groundswell it might suggest for the incumbent president. A number of the signatories had backed Trump in 2016, so it reflects a political change that occurred before Trump was even elected. Most mayors in the region declined to sign the letter. “I didn’t want to be part of a group of mayors endorsing anybody,” commented Tower Mayor Orlyn Kringstad, who said mayors should be focused on problem-solving in their communities rather than partisan politics.
The portrayal by the mayors suggests the degree to which impressions can be colored by political loyalties. While the mayors describe an Iron Range economy expanding under Trump, federal employment statistics paint a much more mixed picture. The mining and logging industries, which are tracked as a single job category by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, show fewer jobs today in Minnesota than when President Trump took office. By contrast, jobs in mining and logging rose from 4,300 at the height of the Great Recession, during the first few months of the Obama administration, to 6,500 in the final month of the Obama administration. In the three and a half years of the Trump administration, the sector has averaged 6,300 jobs, according to federal jobs numbers. A total of 5,100 Minnesotans were employed in the sector as of July, reflecting the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Meanwhile, current overall unemployment in St. Louis County is 8.6 percent, compared to 5.5 percent in the month before Trump took office. While the bulk of the increase in unemployment was due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump’s critics contend that the administration’s poor handling of the pandemic has contributed significantly to the economic fallout in the U.S.
Trump did preside over a period of very low unemployment in St. Louis County. The county’s unemployment rate dipped to just 2.7 percent in October of 2018, but unemployment had risen since then. It was 4.4 percent in February of this year, the last month before the outbreak of COVID-19 in Minnesota. Unemployment in the county peaked in May of this year, at 11.3 percent, but has ticked down modestly with the partial reopening of the economy.