‘Deranged’ Donald Trump Loses Vote Of Republican Michigan Mayor, Who Says He Will Support Joe Biden Instead
As the state of Michigan, along with five other states, goes to the polls on Tuesday, Democratic front-runner Joe Biden has won at least one vote from a Republican. Michael Taylor, the GOP mayor of Sterling Heights, Michigan, who voted for Trump in 2016, said he cannot vote for him again because he considers Trump to be “deranged,” as quoted by The Washington Post.
Taylor, mayor of a city with a population of about 130,000, said he voted not only for Trump but for Republicans Mitt Romney in 2012 and John McCain in 2008. However, he will vote for Biden in the Michigan primary Tuesday and in November as well. The state holds “open” primaries, meaning that Republicans may vote in Democratic primary elections and vice versa.
Sterling Heights is part of Macomb County, Michigan, which is considered a “Trump stronghold,” according to The Post. But Trump won Michigan by only 0.3 of a percentage point, his narrowest win in any state in the 2016 general election against Hillary Clinton.
Taylor said that he voted for Trump even though he felt that “this Trump thing is insane” in 2016, as quoted by Newsweek. Yet, “he’s even more deranged now than I thought then,” the Republican mayor said.
The mayor told The Post that he expects “suburban, middle-class families like mine with children” to join him in switching from Trump to Biden in Macomb County because they want to see “sanity and adult leadership in the White House.”
Taylor also posted his Biden endorsement to Twitter.
“How could I look at those three kids and tell them I’m proud to support Donald Trump? I can’t. I won’t.”
Biden may not need Taylor’s help in Michigan today, however. A new poll released on Tuesday by Data for Progress shows the former vice president leading his sole remaining rival for the Democratic nomination, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, by 21 percentage points. Additionally, the Real Clear Politics average of all Michigan polls shows Biden leading by 22.4 percentage points over Sanders.
Offering some hope for Sanders, however, is the fact that in 2016 Clinton led Sanders by more than 20 points in most polls, but ended up losing to the self-described “democratic socialist” by a 1.5-point margin.
Biden also leads in the state of Washington, which goes to the polls in the Democratic primary on Tuesday as well. In 2016, Sanders handily defeated Clinton in Washington, which held a caucus rather than a primary election that year, by 45 points. Yet, polls show Biden with a narrow lead of about three points heading into the March 10 vote.
