The Republican mayor of Michigan’s fourth-largest city, who previously voted for President Trump, endorsed Joe Biden ahead of the state’s Democratic primary.
“I think Joe Biden is the candidate who can unify all of the Democrats, and he’s the candidate who can appeal to moderates and Republicans like me who don’t want to see four more years of President Trump,” Mayor Michael Taylor of Sterling Heights, Mich., told the Chicago Tribune.
If Democrats choose Biden as their nominee, Taylor will, for the first time in his life, be voting for a Democrat. Taylor’s city is in Macomb County, the most populous of the Michigan counties that voted for Barack Obama but flipped to Trump in the 2016 election.
“I remember thinking this Trump thing is insane, but when it was down to him and Hillary, I kind of said, ‘Well, you are a Republican, and yeah he’s nuts, but maybe he’ll get better and you know he’s going to lower taxes,'” Taylor said. “I slowly talked myself into it. ‘He can’t seriously be this deranged once he gets in there,’ and he’s even more deranged now than I thought then. So, I take the blame. I voted for him.”
Taylor told the Tribune he thinks Biden could win Macomb County, if he convinces the county’s working-class voters that a Biden presidency would benefit them in real economic terms more than another four years with Trump.
Michigan Democrats head to the polls today (Tuesday) to cast ballots in what has become a two-way race between Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.). Polling averages currently give Biden a 21-point lead over Sanders.
In the 2016 Michigan Democratic primary, polls predicted a win for Hillary Clinton over Sanders by a wide margin. However, Sanders ultimately won the state primary by a margin of just over 1 percent.