Opinion: In Springfield, Ohio, the MAGA-Chamber Divide Over Immigration Is Personal
Fox News opinion writer David Marcus reports from Springfield, where business leaders and construction workers disagree about the 15,000 Haitian arrivals since 2020.
This is a summary of an opinion column. The views belong to its author, David Marcus, and to the people he interviews.
Marcus starts with a line Trump delivered at a recent Ohio rally: "Even if you hate John Husted, even if you hate Vivek Ramaswamy, you have to go vote for them." Husted is the GOP's Senate candidate and Ramaswamy its candidate for governor. Marcus says it was a blunt remark, but it points at something real. Ohio, he writes, is "the front line of the war between the traditional GOP and Trump's MAGA base," a fight that is largely about immigration.
To hear the business side, he talked with Jim Lagos, a 75-year-old lifelong Springfield resident who owns several downtown buildings and has spent decades trying to bring the city's downtown back. Lagos said he has been friendly with Democratic candidates Sherrod Brown and Amy Acton, but is "all in" for Husted and especially Ramaswamy, whom he hopes will cut regulations. He said temporary small-business tax cuts need extending and that big companies "got a permanent break."
The issue that divides Springfield's business leaders from Trump voters, Marcus writes, is the wave of 15,000 Haitian refugees who arrived between 2020 and 2025, which locals say overwhelmed schools, housing and even the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. Lagos acknowledged that messaging that Haitian migrants are better workers who "don't do drugs and want overtime" missed the mark and offended many longtime residents.
Construction worker Frank told Marcus he disagreed with the idea that immigrants make Americans better by competing with them: "I'd rather put Americans first." Investigative journalist Walter Curt told Marcus that after Trump's first term brought new factories, "as soon as Biden got in, he staffed them with Haitians, effectively," through tax breaks to temp companies. Curt blamed Gov. Mike DeWine, not the Haitians themselves, or Husted or Ramaswamy.
Marcus's conclusion is that the clash between MAGA and the Chamber of Commerce "is not just an Ohio story" and will be "the story of the next two years as Republicans seek a new standard bearer."
We did not read the full column past its midpoint, so this summary covers only the portions above. Read the original for the whole argument.