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Buchanan fires them up in West Virginia
Tuesday, March 02, 1999 By James O'Toole, Politics Editor, Post-Gazette
WEIRTON, W. Va. -- As the hard-hatted man in the green mill jacket walked from the shadow of the blast furnaces, he was surrounded on cue.
Television cameras, microphones and reporters from at least three countries clotted around Pat Buchanan, straining to hear his denunciations of free trade and the Clinton administration over the muffled mill din of machinery and compressed air. On a cold, gray morning, the maverick Republican had come to the West Virginia panhandle for a dress rehearsal of the presidential campaign announcement he will make today in New Hampshire.
On the eve of his third bid for the White House, Buchanan's critique of unfair trade got a warm reception during a tour of Weirton Steel and a subsequent town meeting before an audience of more than 1,000. Residents of this layoff-battered town applauded his anti-import, America-first message on its own terms.
But some members of the crowd welcomed his visit on another level, as an opportunity to tell a story they feel has been drowned out by the constant sunny reports about the economy overall. In an increasingly media-savvy world, many who heard Buchanan were acutely aware of the figurative megaphone represented by the press corps that follows him. The Buchanan visit was the headline in one local paper, but its subhead noted in only slightly smaller type, "National media to be on hand."
Diane Battista, a human resources analyst at the sprawling Weirton plant, said she hadn't paid much attention to Buchanan in the past. But she looked on approvingly as the soon-to-be candidate fielded questions at the main gate.
"This will help get the message out, Any help we can get in that we appreciate."
"It's a big deal," said Dean Harris, Weirton's Democratic mayor. "Pat brings national attention to Weirton."
Jack Cassella, 65, retired after 28 years in the mill. But he hasn't retired from worries about layoffs. As he waited for Buchanan in the Milsop Community Center - named for a former president of the mill that dominates the town - he explained that a daughter fled to Texas during the steel economy's slough of the early 1980s.
She finally moved back three years ago when her husband found a job as an electrician at Weirton. But he has been on layoff for the last three months, another casualty of the import wave that produced red ink for the Weirton mill in the last two quarters of 1998.
"They have three daughters," Cassella said, fingering the "Save Our Valley" sign he carried into the Milsop Center. "They deserve a college education like anyone else."
Asked if he thought this visit would achieve anything, he demonstrated the same PR sense as many of his neighbors.,
"It's getting us national coverage. We had a march on Washington and it didn't get us this much coverage."
Constant national reports of job growth and soaring production strike a dissonant chord in a company town where nearly 800 steel workers have been furloughed in recent months due to competition from low-cost imports. The Clinton administration maintains that recent steel import agreements will blunt the damage to the American steel industry, but that claim is a tough sell with this crowd.
"The economy is great if you're willing to work for minimum wage," said Russ Welsh, as he stood at the mill gate, ignoring the fat snowflakes that flecked his hard hat and frayed mill jacket. "The economy is booming if you're working at McDonald's or in telemarketing."
During an hour-long town meeting, Buchanan elicited a robust chorus of boos when he noted that, "Another candidate came here in 1992."
On his way to winning his first term in the White House, President Clinton made a speech here in July 1992 in which he pledged strict enforcement of anti-dumping laws. His words, duplicated and circulated throughout the crowd, were quoted sarcastically by Buchanan, and in conversations afterward by several member of his audience. Signs denouncing the administration in general, and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin in particular, were on display throughout the hall.
The economic travails of Asia and Russia led to a significant increase in steel imports starting last year. Buchanan said the trend was the direct result of decisions by the government and the Internal Monetary Fund.
"The IMF said, 'Dump your steel in the U.S. and you'll have the money to pay back our loans."'
And he saw this as a replay of the mistakes of another generation.
Buchanan suggested that the Marshall Plan, heralded as the savior of post-war Europe, had come at the expense of American steel workers.
"[It] killed the jobs of the American boys who went to war and defeated Germany and Japan . . . that's not going to happen to Weirton Steel."
After his speech, members of the crowd, many wearing union windbreakers and "Stand Up for Steel," T-shirts, crowded around Buchanan demanding autographs for caps and "Go Pat Go" signs. The emptying hall was dotted by other members of the crowd, pausing to answer questions from, and sometimes offer lectures to, reporters from The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Associated Press and television outlets.
With his announcement today, the former columnist, commentator and presidential also-ran faces the formidable challenge of seeing whether his populist message will have the same resonance with Republican primary voters it did in this Democratic stronghold. The campaign's unannounced front-runner, Texas Gov. George Bush, has scheduled his own press conference for today, threatening to upstage Buchanan in the day's news just as he has in the early handicapping of the race.
But whatever happens to this messenger, some of those who heard him yesterday had taken advantage of his presence to send their own message.
As he walked though a lobby filled with Weirton Steel memorabilia, a man in a cap that read, "Independent Steelworkers Union," announced to a friend, "Hey, I was just interviewed on Japanese TV."
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