Buchanan Seems to Be Losing Fight for Working Voters

It once seemed such fertile territory, but as Patrick J. Buchanan goes through the desultory paces of a spent campaign here, donning union caps and Windbreakers for news brights, his hoarse appeals to the anxieties of “our working men and women” appear oddly out of place.

Voicing his support for striking auto workers, marching with an electrical workers local in a South Chicago St. Patrick’s Day parade, Buchanan has artfully converted from union-buster to union-brother. But the vein of blue-collar vulnerability he hoped to mine in today’s Midwestern primaries is submerged and hard to exploit, even for a political animal who prides himself on a tuning-fork sensitivity to subtle changes in the American psyche.

Buchanan’s predicted poor showing among working voters in Illinois, Ohio and Wisconsin would only continue his string of primary losses. But devastation in Michigan, where Democrats and independents are allowed to vote in the Republican primary, would be a telling blow to Buchanan’s attempt to bring laborers into his populist cause, leaving only abortion foes and bitter patriots as his shrunken constituency.

Long the most oxidized corner of the Rust Belt, Michigan is a state where a decade of job layoffs snuffed out the middle-class aspirations of 250,000 auto workers. But it is on the rebound these days, making it a trickier proving ground for Buchanan’s waning populist conservative uprising.

Well aware that Michigan voters gave segregationist hero George C. Wallace an upset Democratic primary win in 1972, Buchanan told supporters at a weekend rally here that he needed a strong performance in Michigan to “show a stronger hand” at the Republican national convention in San Diego.

Economic angst still runs deep here, particularly among older auto workers with raw memories of the epidemic plant shutdowns and unemployment lines of the 1980s. The lingering resentment from that era is a factor in the mushrooming work stoppage of 126,000 auto workers that has idled 40 General Motors car assembly and part factories nationwide in the last week.

But it is a narrower sort of worry than the acute job fears of the 1980s, aimed more at the future than the present. Buchanan has “hit the chord” about lower-skilled workers being “pushed out of the job market,” said Diane Swonk, senior regional economist for First Chicago NBD Corp. But he has entirely “missed the Midwest renaissance. He should have been here in 1985.”

The unemployment rate in Michigan is now 5.5%--the lowest level since 1976. The auto industry is primed to hire 250,000 workers in the next decade. And presidential hopefuls have come and gone down to defeat since Wallace’s protest win, each posing in vain as the workingman’s friend.

“Michigan workers have seen a lot of wolves dressed in union hats,” said Frank Joyce, spokesman for the United Auto Workers. “Since when does Buchanan suddenly believe in the right to strike?”

Buchanan doffed a UAW cap with 40 rebel workers in Flint last week, admitting he was not always a “friend to unions,” but insisting that the GM work stoppage was the result of the nation’s trade imbalance with Japan.

“You know there’s no way that’s fair trade,” he said to a chorus of anti-Japan boos.

On Sunday, he played both professional Irishman and working Joe. Decked out in tartan cap, green pullover, gnarled shillelagh and a black electrical worker’s jacket, Buchanan strutted with Local 150 of the International Union of Operating Engineers.

Under a gently pelting rain, he won as many jeers as waves. “Ahhh, go on home!” bayed Jackie Feeney, 36, a portly pipe-fitter with a shamrock decal on his forehead. “He may be Irish, but who’s he kiddin’ about walkin’ with a union? Sheesh.”

In Kalamazoo, where plastics and medical manufacturing plants have hired by the hundreds in the last several years, workers are more concerned with long-term job stability than the need to find employment--a crucial difference that has tamped down the anger Buchanan’s crusade feeds on.

“Things are coming back up,” said Jason Byrd, 21, a graduating Kalamazoo Valley student who came to a Buchanan rally out of curiosity. “You can’t come in here anymore and just talk economic misery.”

“He’s a good man, but he’s not going anywhere,” said Bill Westra, 31, a trucking company worker in Harley-Davidson leathers who wandered into the rally. “He can’t fix the future any more than the rest of these politicians.”

Buchanan’s Michigan faithful appear to be dwindling more and more to hard-core antiabortion activists and patriots obsessed with what the conservative commentator describes as the “loss of national sovereignty” to international trade groups like the World Trade Organization. Members of the right-wing paramilitary group the Michigan Militia attended rallies last week in Warren and Kalamazoo, some in anonymous garb, others instantly recognizable in militia caps and fatigues.

In the midst of the Kalamazoo throng, two men in camouflage outfits clapped silently as Buchanan ridiculed the growth of the “New World Order.” One of the ersatz soldiers was Paul Gritten, 26, a Kalamazoo County man who identified himself as a member of the Michigan Militia.

“Tenth brigade, Wolverines,” he said, reciting his unit as if under interrogation. “There’s a bunch more of us here, but most of the guys came in street clothes.”

“Look,” Gritten said, eyeing the crowd around him warily. “Dole and Clinton are both part of the Trilateral Commission. You know what that means. At least this guy [Buchanan] is behind the restoration of the Constitution. He’s got my vote.”