GOP Mayor Who Voted for Trump Endorses Biden Ahead of Michigan Primary

A Republican mayor in Michigan has shifted his support from President Donald Trump to former vice president Joe Biden ahead of that state’s primary on Tuesday.

Sterling Heights Mayor Michael Taylor, a supporter of then-candidate Trump in the 2016 election who has never voted for a Democrat, endorsed Biden on Monday.

“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 told the Chicago Tribune.

Taylor, who leads Michigan’s fourth largest city, said he believes Biden would best benefit the area’s blue collar workers, many of whom sided with Trump in the 2016 election. Sterling Heights is in Macomb County, one of twelve counties that went for former President Barack Obama in 2012 and then Trump four years later, marking a rightward shift in nation’s the Rust Belt.

“I slowly talked myself into it,” Taylor recalled of his 2016 vote. “‘[Trump] can’t seriously be this deranged once he gets in there.'”

But the former tea party favorite acknowledged that Trump is “even more deranged now than I thought then.”