People may know parts of the Big Picture story: On Sept. 19. 1977, the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., then one of the nation’s largest steel producers, said it’d shut down its Campbell Works, which adjoined Youngstown.
Result: The permanent layoff of 5,000 unionized steelworkers, a body blow to the local economy. Youngstown’s population in 1970: About 140,000; in 2023: About 59,000.
Local officeholders, part of one of Ohio’s then-strongest Democratic machines, proved clueless in the face of what was a community catastrophe. So religious leaders stepped up. They were led by the late Bishop James W. Malone, of the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown – a steelworker’s son – and the late Bishop John H. Burt, of the Cleveland-based Episcopal Diocese of Ohio. The bishops and many other Northeast Ohioans formed the Ecumenical Coalition of the Mahoning Valley.
The coalition fashioned a plan to reopen the Campbell Works, to be managed by a new, worker-owned company. That required federal loan guarantees. In seeking them, the coalition had dealt directly with a key Carter presidential aide, Jack H. Watson Jr.
In 1976, Mahoning County had cast 60.5% of its presidential vote for Carter – the greatest pro-Carter percentage cast by any of Ohio’s 88 counties that year. That really meant something, because Carter’s statewide victory was only about 11,000 votes.
Lot of good that did Youngstown: On March 30, 1979, in a letter rubber-stamped-signed by a Commerce Department official, Carter’s administration rejected the Ecumenical Coalition’s request for a $245 million federal loan guarantee to revive the Campbell Works.
Stated reason: The amount requested exceeded a $100 million ceiling on such guarantees – and Carter underlings weren’t confident the proposed worker-owned plant could make money. (Meanwhile, Carter’s administration had asked Congress for $3.8 billion to spend on foreign aid.)
True, Mahoning’s voters backed Carter’s re-election in 1980, but only with 50.1% of the vote. Long-term, though, in 2020 and 2024, Mahoning backed Donald Trump; in 2022, supported Vice President-elect J.D. Vance for the Senate, not the area’s ex-congressman, Warren-area Democrat Tim Ryan; and Mahoning now sends a Republican to Congress, U.S. Rep. Michael Rulli, of Salem.
Taking for granted then-Democratic heartland didn’t cost Carter the presidency: Besides an awful economy, he was destined to lose when Iranian fanatics took American diplomats hostage. Carter was warned hostage-taking would likely result if he let Iran’s ex-monarch into America. And it did, after David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger lobbied Carter to admit the former shah.
Then there was inflation: 13.5% in 1980. (It’s now 2.7%.) Fumbling result: Carter appointed an anti-inflation czar (annual salary, $57,500, while median U.S. household income was $16,530). That same supremo, Cornell economist Alfred E. Kahn, oversaw U.S. airline deregulation under Carter; few today likely consider airline service even remotely pleasant.
Yes, Jimmy Carter was a great person. He earnestly lived his Baptist faith and was a beloved husband to the late Rosalynn Smith Carter and fine father to their sons and daughter. But Jimmy Carter, a great president? No. Look around Northeast Ohio and you’ll see.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. You can reach him at tsuddes@gmail.com.
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