SPRINGFIELD, OHIO — Donald Trump says he’s coming. Vivek Ramaswamy actually came. But for Republican leaders who are just standardly here, day-to-day life has been upended in a city under political siege.
On Thursday, the mayor activated emergency powers after more reported bomb threats at grocery stores the day before. Safety fears led to the cancellation of a planned political forum that would see local candidates for office face each other and answer questions before the general election. For at least the second time, Gov. Mike DeWine stepped before the cameras and said Trump’s claims about Haitian migrants in Springfield were not true. At a press conference, he and the mayor carefully suggested that a promised visit by Trump would be an unwelcome strain on already stretched local resources.
DeWine took his cause to a broader audience on Friday. In a New York Times op-ed, the Republican governor walked the line between standing by his party’s standard-bearer and calling out the recent rhetoric that has changed the political life of this city.
“As a supporter of former President Donald Trump and Senator JD Vance, I am saddened by how they and others continue to repeat claims that lack evidence and disparage the legal migrants living in Springfield,” DeWine wrote. “This rhetoric hurts the city and its people, and it hurts those who have spent their lives there.”
It has been “a year of hell” in Springfield, according to Charles Patterson, the former Clark County public health director who’s running as a Republican for a commission seat in the county that is home to Springfield. Misinformation about the Haitian migrants “has been burning for a year,” he said. “Trump and Vance are throwing gasoline on it.”
Taking down the temperature is not part of the Trumpworld agenda. Vivek Ramaswamy, who has at least one eye on Vance’s Senate seat, held a town hall Thursday night with several hundred people in attendance where he promised “unity through dialogue.” Though he said he had spent the day meeting with city officials and Haitian community leaders, none of them were in the room with him. He pushed back, just a little, on attendees’ claims that the local electeds were actively against them.
“I think they really do care, at least the subset I met with,” he said. “I think the reason that they’re not here tonight is not because they don’t care about this. It’s because they are scared, actually.”
Ramaswamy said it’s not the fault of the Haitians that many who showed up to the town hall were upset. It was federal policy, he said, an immigration system that allows legal status for people who will need government support and don’t speak English.
The former presidential candidate is from about an hour away from Springfield and had fond memories of growing up with his own immigrant parents in the area. His parents did it right, he said.
The Trump-friendly crowd got a Trump-coded message. But there were a couple of awkward moments.
“So I grew up here, a guy with brown skin and spent a lot of time in Springfield. You’re a Black woman who lives in Springfield,” Ramaswamy said to an attendee who took the mic for a mostly MAGA-friendly message, winding up what he appeared to think would be an easy pitch across home plate. “So that the rest of the country can hear you: Is Springfield a racist city?”
“To be honest with you, there are people,” she said, “but after they get to know you, that’s gone.”
Later, an attendee who said he was mixed race and had lived in Springfield for 20 years stood, another Ramaswamy fan. He said that in the weeks “since the story leaked” about Springfield into the national press, “the hateful language in this community has spiked.”
“It’s really, really bad,” he went on. “I can probably count on my hand how many times a racial slur has been said in my whole life. I’ve been called the N-word twice this week.” Maybe people are just grouping all Black people together, the man surmised. “I find it shameful, I find it inappropriate, whether I’m a Haitian or an American.”
Ramaswamy said the matter was “serious” and agreed in the “last nine to 12 months” there had been a “weird uptick in racial tension that did not exist 30 years ago.” He offered a “hard truth” to the crowd: The racism was caused by the Haitians and those who supported them.
“You take 20,000 people who are unprepared to integrate into a community, you dump them into a city of 50,000, you’re going to get a reactionary response,” he said. “Then you demonize the people who have the reactionary response who say, ‘Oh, you’re blaming me?’ They’re going to have ill will, in this case, toward the Haitian community.”
Springfield has been dealing with rhetoric like this from national politicians and the attendant circus it has created. A call placed to the county government was greeted with a heavy sigh when it was mentioned that a reporter was on the line. Local lawmakers’ voice mailboxes are full, and officials have begun limiting the number of attendees to open meetings which have turned into internet-fueled pile-ons. Beneath it all is the real issue of trying to support a large migrant population and also trying to elect new people to run the local government whose difficult job that is.
Ramaswamy had offered local Republicans VIP tickets to the town hall. Patterson stayed away. Why did he avoid a room full of Republican voters with one of the party’s stars with just weeks to go until the general election?
“If the people running for higher office would ask me, I would tell them the Republicans are already going to vote for you,” he said. “Stop playing to these folks. You need to highlight what you are going to do for people in the middle.”
Patterson has a lot of like-minded Republicans in Ohio. That includes DeWine: old-school members of the GOP trying to navigate the uncomfortable realities of their MAGA-controlled party. Patterson is bullish on his own election, but he is worried about what will come after this city has been turned into the place where online vitriol comes to life.
“It’s going to be like the fact that we can’t recruit police officers after ‘defund the police,’” he said. “Something’s going to happen with our city commission. Who’s going to want that job anymore?”
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Evan McMorris-Santoro is a reporter at NOTUS.