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Brook Park Mayor Tom Coyne: Trump 'has transformed the Republican Party'

Donald Trump speaking at the RNC in Cleveland. (Tony Ganzer / ideastream)

Republican Donald Trump clinched his victory in Ohio yesterday with broad support.
    
Trump garnered 60 percent support in 67 of Ohio's 88 counties.
    
Hillary Clinton won only seven counties, with her support strongest in Cleveland, Toledo and Columbus. 

She won blue-collar Mahoning County by less than 3,400 votes, while losing Trumbull, Portage and Stark Counties.

Late Tuesday night ideastream's Tony Ganzer spoke about the results with Tom Coyne, a one-time Democrat now Independent mayor of Brook Park.  He supported Donald Trump.

Coyne: “Folks have been very aggravated, they’re not angry—they’re disappointed, they’re frustrated, in seeing that Washington has failed them.  So this has been sitting there for a long time. The problems of the nation just bled through in this election like nothing I’ve ever seen before, except for the Ronald Reagan landslide.”

Ganzer: “I have spoken to a number of people from the Democratic party, and there’s genuine fear for a Donald Trump presidency, especially based on some of the rhetoric that we’ve heard during the campaign.  What do you say to people who are worried?”

Coyne: “You know what, how shallow is that. The corruption of the Clintons, I think, is what the people really have seen. That, who cares about me.  The Democrats who represented the people that I love my whole career, they represent the rich now.  They don’t represent the working people in this country. There’s nothing to fear from Donald Trump.  And I’m suggesting to you this: he has transformed the Republican Party into the working families, working class, middle class of America. He’s done it.  That’s who voted for him in overwhelming numbers, and that will be his constituency as president.”

 

Tony Ganzer has reported from Phoenix to Cairo, and was the host of 90.3's "All Things Considered." He was previously a correspondent with the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, covering issues like Swiss banks, Parliament, and refugees. He earned an M.A. in International Relations (University of Leicester); and a B.Sc. in Journalism (University of Idaho.) He speaks German, and a bit of French.