“We came here four decades ago chasing a dream, but we lost hope,” whispers Tanya Jo, dark circles etched beneath her eyes as she holds a pumpkin-shaped decoration. Halloween is only a few weeks away, and she is getting her house ready in Fort Madison, a small town in Lee County, in southeastern Iowa. The state, known for its vast cornfields, is one of the battlegrounds in this year’s fiercely contested midterm elections, which will be held on the first Tuesday of November.
Residents of this neighborhood of detached wooden homes, set between the Mississippi River and the interstate railway line, are skeptical about U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement that he will build the country’s largest steel plant in Lee County, where Fort Madison is located, with a $15 billion investment. According to the president, the project will create 6,000 jobs during construction and employ 1,700 workers once operational. He unveiled the plan with great fanfare a couple of weeks ago, right in the middle of the election campaign.
But Trump’s biggest economic announcement has been met with indifference.
“Republicans are close to being swept out in the upcoming elections. An announcement like this is the sort of thing they thought would boost their chances,” says Jess Mazour, an activist with the environmental group Sierra Club. “People in Iowa aren’t falling for this anymore. We’ve seen this before. Big promises where they don’t deliver,” she says from a park on the outskirts of Des Moines, the state capital.
A blonde girl dressed in pink pedals around Tanya on her pink bicycle. “She’s my granddaughter. My daughter died six months ago. She’s in my care now,” Tanya says resignedly as she recounts a story familiar to hundreds of local residents. It is the story of the people who arrived in town in the 1970s from Minneapolis and northern Iowa.
At the time, several factories set up operations in the surrounding area: a fertilizer plant, a chemical manufacturer and a facility producing shells and heavy ammunition. Lee County became the industrial heartland of a state better known as America’s breadbasket. Iowa is synonymous with vast expanses of corn and soybean fields. It is, above all, a farming state.
A struggling region
But over time, factories either shut down or scaled back their operations. Today, Fort Madison is one of the poorest areas in the United States, and its population has fallen by 10% over the past decade while the rest of the country has grown.
“Iowa is known as an agricultural state, but manufacturing has been a central part of its economy for many decades,” recalls Jeff Bremer, a history professor at Iowa State University.
He explains that the state once had a significant industrial sector, with tractor factories like John Deere, and even a Ford Motor plant in Des Moines in the 1920s that closed in 1932. Winnebago Motorhomes, the well-known RV maker founded in 1958 in Forest City, in northern Iowa, also operated several factories across the state. But the company has since closed some of those facilities and today employs roughly half as many people as it did in 1980.
“But the state did not have the large, sprawling factories you would expect in Pittsburgh or Detroit,” he adds.
Manufacturing jobs helped farm families get by; income earned off the farm helped many farmers make ends meet, Bremer explains. Today, however, those jobs are scarce and are concentrated largely in the service sector, he says.
Tanya carries on as best she can, dividing her time between the Casey’s gas station where she works and the home where she cares for her granddaughter.
“If you’re a journalist, you already know this is one of the most disadvantaged areas in the country,” she says. She remains skeptical about the steel mill promised by Trump. “I pray things will change, but prices go up, gas goes up, things aren’t easy around here, but I don’t complain because I just get on with it,” she says, adding that her name has Russian origins.
The state government has recently approved legislation granting up to $1.4 billion in tax incentives over the next decade to Mesabi Metallics, the company set to build the plant. “We shouldn’t tell people they have to choose between rebuilding our economy and solving our cancer problem. We can do both,” says Rob Sand, the Democratic candidate for Iowa governor who, according to polls, could beat the Republicans.
‘It won’t change anyone’s vote’
Ted Summers is 50 years old and his hands are stained with grease. He is tuning up an old Mustang in his auto repair shop. It is midday, and the town is deserted. It is a public holiday, Columbus Day, and Fort Madison feels almost like a ghost town, were it not for Ted, who has chosen to spend the day working in his small garage rather than taking time off like everyone else.
“The announcement changes nothing. People have been voting for Trump for over 10 years, and things don’t change. It’s always bad for the lower and middle classes. The rich, you know, always win,” he says kindly, displaying the trademark friendliness of the Midwest.
Behind the steel mill project stands the Indian group Mesabi Metallics, which has secured a license to operate an open-pit mine in Minnesota and has announced it will invest $2.5 billion in the state. The materials extracted from that mine would be processed at the Lee County plant when it is completed, not before 2030.
A few streets away, a couple scrapes paint from a house façade with a putty knife. The man seems absorbed in the work. It is almost 86ºF and sweat runs down his forehead. Beside him is his wife, 46-year-old Shelley Pfeiffer, who keeps up the pace. “I don’t think Trump’s announcement will change anyone’s vote. People are tired of campaign promises. Tired of nothing changing. We’ll have to see if the plant is actually built,” says Pfeiffer, who is unconvinced.
Jess Mazour from the Sierra Club wears a yellow sweater, the color most closely associated with the Corn State. “I don’t think anyone can make a wise decision about whether we should support the steel mill because we don’t have the information,” she says. “Everything has been done behind closed doors with confidentiality agreements. So they tell us this is great and we’re giving our tax dollars to a large foreign corporation that doesn’t deserve it. I think that’s the big problem: we can’t make an informed decision if we don’t know the details.”
Mazour wants to keep the announcement of the new plant from the election campaign. She says her main concerns are where the project’s water supply will come from, how it will be powered and whether expropriations will be required. “They’re going to propose building this on a floodplain, which would require certain federal approvals to build a levy. We’re talking about huge problems,” she says.
Mesabi Metallics belongs to the Indian Essar Group. The industrial conglomerate has a long history of financial troubles and project failures. Nearly 20 years ago, Essar planned an iron mine in Minnesota, which is home to some of the largest deposits in the United States. But after years of licensing and financing problems, the company abandoned the project. Essar Minnesota declared bankruptcy and left hundreds of local contractors in the lurch. A few years ago it changed its name to Mesabi, but people still remember it.
Henry leaves his house wearing a yellow T-shirt with the message: “Iowa strong.” He is in his sixties. He is in a hurry but stops for a second to talk. “The steel mill announcement has pros and cons,” he says. “Politicians always make promises when elections come, but if this time the plant brings wealth to the county, it’s welcome. Still, we’ll have to see,” he adds as his wife, waiting in a running car by the porch, calls on him to get moving.
In West Point, another town in Lee County, Deina Merschbrock runs a small grocery store where a steady stream of customers stop by for last-minute purchases. Deina knows them all. “Fortunately — that means they’re coming,” she says. Asked about the factory announced by Trump, she says she is not qualified to comment, but adds: “As a business owner, if it helps improve our community, brings more businesses and improves people’s lives, then that will be good.”
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