DOOR COUNTY, Wis. — Imelda Delchambre used to offer her spare bedroom to fellow Latinos looking for work in this corner of northeast Wisconsin, but these days, she said, there are too many newcomers to host.
The number of people calling the Hispanic Resource Center to ask about a job or a housing lead has surged threefold over the past year, she estimated — the highest level of interest since she began steering the nonprofit nearly two decades ago.
It’s more evidence, she said, of the shifting demographics on the overwhelmingly White peninsula between Green Bay and Lake Michigan known as the “Cape Cod of the Midwest.” Residents once joked that “diversity” meant a variety of Scandinavian heritages. Then the 2020 Census found that the area’s modest Hispanic population had climbed by almost 70 percent over the previous 10 years, a figure Delchambre suspects is an undercount.
“I can’t keep up with everyone moving here anymore,” she said.
The influx of job seekers from Mexico and other Latin American countries, she thinks, could help ease what officials say is one of the area’s most urgent problems: a labor shortage so severe that a coffee shop, convenience store and gym in her area, among other establishments, are prone to closing early.
Some of her neighbors, however, say they perceive migrants as lawbreakers who could be dangerous. When worries about “the border” come up, people aren’t talking about the boundary just north with Canada.
The discussions are playing out in a region where the stark political split offers a telling gauge of the national mood: Situated in what is expected to be a key 2024 battleground state, Door is one of nine counties across the country that have backed the presidential winner in every election since 2000.
“We voted for Bush twice, Obama twice, the other guy and Joe Biden — hopefully Joe Biden twice,” Kris Sadur, chair of the Door County Democrats, said at a May pie-auction fundraiser, prompting chuckles. “All eyes are on Wisconsin, and it’s a very exciting time to be in Door County.”
In interviews this spring, 18 months before the 2024 election, residents across the political spectrum said they harbored doubts about the front-runners. Democrats expressed concerns about President Biden’s age and his handling of the rising prices of everyday goods. Republicans, irked by former president Donald Trump’s erratic behavior, said they desired a more even-keeled candidate.
These sentiments squared with the latest national survey from Marquette Law School, which found that although Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) had slight leads over Biden, more Americans held negative than positive views of all three candidates, and most Democrats said they didn’t want to see Biden run again.
While lukewarm about the candidates, Door County residents were animated by issues closer to home — a persistent labor shortage, an affordable-housing crunch and demographic change in this community of about 30,000. Conservatives said inflation and border security have worsened under Biden, asserting that unvetted outsiders could bring drugs and violence. Liberals said the administration hasn’t done enough to create legal pathways for migrants to work in the United States, stifling opportunity and industry.
The tensions brewing here reflect a broader national debate on how the United States should address its overwhelmed immigration system, especially at a time when there are nearly twice as many open jobs as unemployed people looking for work.
How many times has your county picked the winner of the presidential election?
Door County, Wis., has voted for the winning presidential candidate undefined times since 2000.
Delchambre, a Democrat who voted for Biden in 2020, isn’t sure whether she’ll back him a second time — and if she does, it wouldn’t be enthusiastically. Everything seems more expensive, she lamented, and what has he accomplished for people trying to make it in America?
Many newcomers reaching out to her could barely afford the basics, and topping the list of needs was shelter. She had just heard that a proposal for workforce housing in Door County had been shot down — even though officials said a dearth of starter homes was scaring away younger prospective hires and blue-collar families. Too often, the options were budget-crushing rent, an hour-plus commute or rough conditions.
“Hola,” Delchambre said, picking up her iPhone.
A woman who had come last year from Mexico was seven months pregnant. She needed her help.
Shaped by new arrivals
Farming, manufacturing and tourism — all fields bolstered by newcomers — have shaped Door County. Over the years, seasonal laborers transformed the region into one of the country’s biggest cherry suppliers. Out-of-town recruits have filled shipyards in Sturgeon Bay, the county seat, constructing military vessels during World War II and, more recently, a superyacht that Italy confiscated last year from a Russian oligarch. The peninsula’s quaint beach towns and forest trails draw admirers from Milwaukee, Chicago and other blue cities — many of whom have snapped up vacation homes or opted to retire here.
The result: a reliably purple region.
About our Bellwether County series
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In 2020, Biden beat Trump in Door County by 292 votes. Four years earlier, Trump bested Hillary Clinton by 558 votes, and four years before that, President Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney by 1,229 votes. (While The Post’s analysis of bellwether counties focused on election results since 2000, Door’s streak goes back to 1996, when the county voted for President Bill Clinton.)
The county’s bellwether status has applied to state races, too. A majority of voters in April supported Democratic-backed judge Janet Protasiewicz, whose victory flipped control of the state Supreme Court to liberals. In the 2022 midterms, Gov. Tony Evers (D) and Sen. Ron Johnson (R) both prevailed by slim margins here and in the state overall.
“We’re kind of an indicator of what’s going to happen,” said Stephanie Soucek, chairwoman of the Republican Party of Door County. “It makes me nervous to see the results here. More pressure on us.”
Door County is about 93 percent White, according to the latest census data, with Hispanics, the second-largest ethnic group, representing 4 percent of the population. There’s no decisive political majority, and independents command significant sway.
In conversations this spring, residents debated the factors driving inflation and the fate of Wisconsin’s near-total ban on abortion, which, thanks to the newly elected judge’s tiebreaking vote, could now be overturned as early as next year.
As the weather warmed, signaling the start of prime tourist season, job postings proliferated online: condo repairman, dishwasher, food runner, busser, boat tour guide — the list stretched on.
Wisconsin’s unemployment rate, now at 2.4 percent, hit record lows from February to April, intensifying the competition for workers statewide. And around here, more folks are nearing retirement age than filling out applications, said Michelle Lawrie, the county’s top economic official.
Even after boosting paychecks, she said, employers struggled to find staff.
“What we want to do is try to attract talent here for all of you to be able to have your workforce strong,” Lawrie, 49, told hundreds of business leaders gathered for a mid-May luncheon at a Sturgeon Bay resort. “Housing is our number one impediment.”
More than 80 percent of residents own their homes, which have a median value of roughly $242,000, census data show. The remaining real estate is mostly higher-end apartments and vacation rentals. The county had greenlighted hundreds of “attainable” units, Lawrie said, but hundreds more were needed.
Making life easier for migrants, whether they had legal status or not, came up repeatedly in focus groups of employers, she said. Business owners had discussed offering translation services and connecting people with immigration lawyers.
The keynote speaker she had invited that day, Mike Ward, a state economic development veteran, concluded his remarks with a question that went unanswered in the room: “Is there some population or community that we are leaving behind?”
‘We need good people’
Gary Federwitz, a sales engineer in the crowd, chewed his luncheon chicken at Table 7 and considered that query.
Yes, his industrial firm could no longer rely on the local talent pool. Recruiters now post billboards and visit high schools across the state, which had helped pad the employee roster.
Federwitz, 64, had no issue with migrant laborers, he said, as long as they had the proper documents. Door County had long relied on foreign workers. What he had seen on the news about the southern border, though — probably Fox News, he guessed — had spooked him. There was an interview with a Texas woman who said Mexican smugglers were showing up at people’s doors and demanding to use their phone charger.
“It’s way too easy to get into this country right now,” Federwitz said. “It makes me feel unsafe.”
He feared for his grandchildren.
“With all the child trafficking and whatever,” he said. “The drugs. The guns.”
No one had demanded to use his phone here, but Federwitz worried the threat could reach Door County. Trump would be better than Biden at blocking the bad guys, he thought. His business would welcome good people, people with legal status.
“Good people — anyone who is non-cartel — they all work hard,” he said. “We need good people.”
Across town, Dennis Statz, 69, was in the middle of another 14-hour shift at the White Lace Inn, the bed-and-breakfast he opened in 1982. Even after he had raised wages by 50 percent over the past three years, his too-small team was strained.
“I don’t bother putting up the ‘Help Wanted’ sign anymore,” said the Sturgeon Bay Common Council member. His only two hires since January were baby boomers who had gotten bored in retirement.
On top of that, the grocery bills had soared, making it pricier to bake his guests strawberry rhubarb muffins and cherry apple crisps.
Maybe it was the war in Ukraine hampering food staples, he thought. Or maybe it was the labor shortage pushing employers like him to offset worker-luring raises with steeper price tags. He had increased room rates by 15 percent.
Whatever the reason, Statz, who describes his politics as “center right” and voted for Trump in 2020, blames the Biden administration.
“They certainly aren’t doing anything to help the situation,” he said.
Statz said he refused to budge, however, when — five times in recent years — a job applicant without a visa to work in the United States asked if he could pay wages in cash.
The innkeeper had read that 5,000 to 10,000 migrants were crossing the southern border daily without visas. The nation needed a border wall, he thought, and if Trump had stayed longer in office, he might have fulfilled that promise to build one.
Trump’s demeanor was grating, though — “I’m done with the belligerence,” Statz said — so he had been looking into Republican alternatives. He liked Vivek Ramaswamy, an Ohio entrepreneur who has floated transporting undocumented migrants “humanely and respectfully” back to their countries, and Perry Johnson, a Michigan businessman who has argued that, if worker visas were more accessible, fewer foreigners would sneak onto U.S. soil.
“They’re coming in so rapidly, we have no idea who is coming in,” Statz said. “I find that more than a little bothersome. Lord knows it’s all tied into the fentanyl issue. The drug issue.” (U.S. Customs and Border Protection screens migrants who might be eligible for release, including conducting criminal background checks.)
‘My tribe, your tribe’
When he flipped on the news — Fox, CNN, all of it — Mike Niss got sick of hearing the same message.
“Breaking news alert! The whole world is coming to an end,” said the 61-year-old developer, who moved to Door County four years ago from central Wisconsin. “The worst-case scenarios. The polarization. The ‘my tribe, your tribe.’”
So, weeks before the last presidential election, he canceled his DISH subscription, reduced his internet consumption and pledged to spend more time in nature. Specifically, Lake Michigan.
Most days, he waded into the chilly water — “dopamine release,” he told friends — to take the edge off life’s nuisances, which lately included another brush with “my tribe, your tribe.”
Niss hadn’t expected so much resistance when he proposed in April to convert 4.9 acres of public woodland in the northern bayside community of Fish Creek into “workforce housing.” He had envisioned seven apartment buildings with a total of four dozen 544-square-foot units. They would be sold to business owners who had agreed to rent them cheaply to employees who couldn’t afford to live there.
“Don’t people want the coffee shop to stay open?” Niss asked. “Don’t people want to be able to get their mocha whenever?”
Residents, however, wrote letters to Door County’s weekly newspaper, saying the project would “diminish the market value of our homes” and intensify traffic when “parents are trying to get their kids to school.”
They started an online petition, collecting 165 signatures against a project they said would “intrude upon a large area of single-family and rural family homes.”
“These types of units will open their doors to additional friends, family and bar buddies etc,” someone commented.
By early May, the government agency that owned the land, the Fish Creek Sanitary District, had shut down Niss’s proposal.
“The district understands the need for workforce housing and the housing shortage,” the agency said in a statement, “but land owned by the public should have public backing and this project does not.”
To Niss, dread of change was clouding people’s judgment.
“People think the worst when it comes to these types of developments — worst-case scenarios,” he said, “and whether they were right or wrong, the louder voices won out.”
Politics, in his view, suffered from the same dysfunction. An independent voter who has backed both Republicans and Democrats, Niss said he wanted to see “new blood.” Trump and Biden, he said, were too old, too polarizing and too set in their ways.
“If it’s between them, I’m not sure if I’m going to vote,” Niss said. “I’m just going to go soak in the water.”
Trying to make it in ‘God’s country’
Delchambre, 70, came here for a job, too.
When her Mexican American family moved to Door County from Texas in the 1970s, they picked cherries all day and slept on hay mattresses in barracks without running water. Still, as a teenager, she fell in love with the glittering shorelines and trees that burst each spring with pink and white flowers.
Now, she drove through the land she calls “God’s country” to see Isela May Alcocer, 29, who got the Hispanic Resource Center’s number from a friend and told Delchambre that she was pregnant, due in June. Did she know a doctor who would see her?
Ever since, Delchambre has served as her interpreter at prenatal visits.
The expectant mother shared a three-room trailer with eight roommates. Their monthly rent, plus electricity, ran between $1,200 and $1,550 — depending on what the landlord calculated that month.
She had followed her former sister-in-law here because, she said, people kept getting kidnapped in their small hometown in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. They had hoped to land somewhere safer with job opportunities. Among their friends, Door County had a reputation for checking those boxes.
“I can’t wait to start working,” Alcocer said. “I’m bored.”
After giving birth, she planned to try to pick up $12-an-hour shifts at a pizzeria. Or maybe she could join her other roommates cleaning vacation cottages. They were all paid in checks, and they all cashed those checks at a Mexican grocery store 60 miles southwest that usually charged between $15 and $20 for the no-questions-asked service.
Delchambre said she knew plenty of employers, Democrats and Republicans, who were happy to accommodate an informal arrangement.
The migrants were clearly needed, she thought, yet few could obtain legal status. The disconnect made her so angry, she said, that her cardiologist had told her to calm down. She had already had one heart attack.
“All the politicians promise to do something, and they don’t do a damn thing,” she said. “So what’s the point of voting for you?”
Her friends were also stewing in disillusionment, she said — like Suri Saray Gutierrez, 35, who had moved here four years ago from Louisiana into another trailer nearby.
She and her husband, a contractor, had scrimped and saved and replaced the floors with HGTV-worthy wood. They bought a new air-conditioning unit and an iPad for their 5-year-old daughter.
Gutierrez expected to be happier under Biden, who, she said, seemed “less racist” than his predecessor. One welcome change since 2020: Her Walmart began stocking Mexican soda and the corn flour she uses to make tortillas — perhaps because practically half the shoppers she sees in the aisles now are Latino, up from the handful Gutierrez would notice back when she arrived.
Yet the price she pays for a gallon of milk has doubled. It feels like she can afford less and less stuff. Overall, she said, “I think things were better under Trump.”
Alcocer, too, worried about food. She pointed to dwindling supplies atop the roommates’ fridge: Cheerios, saltine crackers, canned shortening powder.
“We’ll get you money for groceries,” Delchambre told her.
She would give Alcocer a $100 check the next day, and wished she could give her a lot more. The trailer was so cramped, there was hardly room for a crib.
Alcocer’s roommates had been asking around for leads: Had anyone seen something else for rent? No one wanted to stay there much longer.
Delchambre told her she would look around, too. But lately, she didn’t have any leads, either.
Dan Keating and Scott Clement in Washington contributed to this report.