To this lifelong Valley Dem, Hillary equaled Jeb Bush, but Trump 'talked like me'

YOUNGSTOWN

When the voice on the other end of the phone said the president of the United States wanted to meet him, Geno DiFabio, a 54-year-old lifelong resident of the South Side, was skeptical.

It wasn’t a completely unreasonable possibility. Just that morning, DiFabio had appeared on a Fox News show to discuss why he, a lifelong Democrat, switched parties to throw his support fully behind then-candidate Donald Trump.

The voice – a White House communications official – convinced DiFabio that the call was legitimate, and they set a time to meet ahead of the president’s rally at the Covelli Centre Tuesday.

DiFabio voted Democrat for as long as he could remember. He was a Democrat because Youngstown was a blue city and everyone he knew voted blue.

Despite identifying as a Democrat, DiFabio wasn’t ideologically liberal, at least not in regard to social and cultural issues.

“I’m a big Second Amendment guy, I’m very pro-life, I’m conservative,” DiFabio said. “And you know that’s how this whole Valley was. We were always Democrats, but we still cared about the sanctity of life and family values. We went to church. I thought we were losing that.”

In 2015, DiFabio was largely unimpressed by the likely presidential candidates who were bubbling to the surface. In his mind there was little difference between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush; both were going to talk, and neither was going to deliver, he reasoned. Politics as usual, in his mind.

Then Trump came along, and DiFabio was sold.

“I was looking for an outsider, and that was Trump. He talked about jobs and bad trade deals. He talked like me,” he said.

Read more of his opinions in Friday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.