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Fox News Analyst Chris Stirewalt Says Ohio Valley’s Mood Mirrors America During Wheeling Chamber of Commerce Dinner

WHEELING – When fellow Fox News political journalists wondered why Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s message seemed to resonate with working-class voters when he entered the race, Chris Stirewalt drew upon his Wheeling roots to provide the answer.

“I said, ‘I know these voters. They are mad. They are really mad because they got (a raw deal),'” Stirewalt, Fox News digital politics editor, told the hundreds of guests gathered at Wheeling Park’s White Palace Wednesday for the Wheeling Area Chamber of Commerce’s 50th annual dinner.

A Wheeling native and 1993 graduate of The Linsly School, Stirewalt said he began his journalism career at age 17 by writing baseball box scores for The Intelligencer. After working at his hometown newspaper, Stirewalt moved on to work for publications in Charleston and Washington, D.C., before attaining his position with Fox News.

During the last several decades, the working-class voters of the Upper Ohio Valley have watched as plants have closed. Stirewalt acknowledged politicians of both major political parties have watched this happen.

“For 40 years, in places like Wheeling, politicians have come here to say they will save the plants,” he said, adding these efforts seem to have failed. “For 40 or 50 years, people have had the same complaints – the system is not working.”

Consequently, Stirewalt predicts Trump to win the May 10 West Virginia Republican primary election over Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

“Your state is going to vote for Donald Trump like a house afire,” Stirewalt said.

Trump currently leads Cruz in the race for Republican delegates, with Kasich trailing both by a sizable amount.

However, Stirewalt said current polls suggest former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would defeat Trump by a wide margin in the November general election.

“You start to look like 1984, in reverse,” Stirewalt said of a Trump-Clinton race.

In 1984, incumbent Republican President Ronald Reagan defeated Democratic challenger Walter Mondale by an electoral vote count of 525-13, with Mondale winning only his home state of Minnesota. Stirewalt acknowledged, however, that polls can change over time – and that Clinton may still be dogged by her Benghazi email controversy.

“Democrats and Republicans in the intelligence community are angry with what she did,” Stirewalt said of Clinton. “Do I think it is unlikely that Hillary Clinton will be prosecuted? Yes.”

Stirewalt said in his travels around the U.S., he sees the emergence of “two Americas,” with one being prosperous and the other being left behind. Stirewalt said this helps explain the popularity of both Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who continues challenging Clinton for the Democratic nomination, but trails by a substantial margin in the delegate count.

“We have about 20 or 30 percent of the country who feel it is too late, or it is about to be too late,” Stirewalt said.

Also during the Wednesday dinner, chamber President Erikka Storch presented local arts champion Susan Hogan with the Kathy Fortunato Service Award. The honor is given annually to a person giving much of his or her time and effort to improving the Wheeling area.

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