The Republican mayor of Sterling Heights, Michigan, the fourth-biggest city in the state, is abandoning his support of President Trump and endorsing former Vice President Joe Biden for president.
Michael Taylor, who cast his 2016 ballot for Trump, said that he felt “Biden is the candidate who can unify all of the Democrats” and “appeal to moderates and Republicans like me who don’t want to see four more years of Trump.”
He added in a tweet that he couldn’t look at his three kids and tell them that he supported Trump for reelection.
“Since announcing my endorsement of Joe Biden I have received an outpouring of encouraging messages and believe even more strongly that Joe Biden is the candidate who can defeat Donald Trump in Macomb County and the State of Michigan,” Taylor said in a statement.
While Taylor, a life-long Republican, voted for Trump in 2016, he said he would cast his ballot for Biden this year because Trump is “deranged.”
“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,” Taylor said, according to the Chicago Tribune on Monday.
“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.”
Sterling Heights lies within Macomb County, Michigan. During the 2016 presidential election, Trump won Macomb County by roughly 54 percent. Trump’s opponent Hillary Clinton received 42 percent of the popular vote.
Biden holds a wide lead over his progressive rival, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, in Michigan, according to recent polling from the Monmouth University Polling Institute. Biden has 51 percent of support from Michigan Democrats while Sanders has 36 percent. Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard, the only other remaining Democratic candidate for president, garnered one percent of Michigan voters’ support.
Biden’s campaign has been steadily gaining ground after his victories on Super Tuesday and endorsements from high-profile Democrats, including former presidential candidates New Jersey Senator Cory Booker and California Senator Kamala Harris.
Nationwide, there are 206 Obama-Trump counties, and voters in 85 of them already have cast ballots.
Biden has won 41, to 18 for Sanders.
Former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who since has exited the race, won 20, all in Iowa.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar won four, two in Iowa and two in her native Minnesota, while two other such counties remain too close to call.
More than half of the pivot counties are in the Midwest, including 12 in Michigan.
The counties are spread throughout the state, from suburban Detroit to the westernmost part of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Macomb County is the largest of the Obama-Trump counties in Michigan and the second most populous in the country (Pinellas County, Florida, is the first).
After Obama won Macomb County by 8 points in 2008 and by 4 points in 2012, Trump won it by nearly 12 points in 2016, thanks in large part to an America-first economic message that railed against bad trade deals abroad and vowed more manufacturing jobs at home.
Taylor described voters in his county as thinking “pretty highly of our work ethic here.”
He predicted it would go for Biden in November, not Trump.