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 “He's a winner. He's made billions. He's dated beautiful women.
His wife is a model. That's not to sniff at. And a lot of people
believe he can bring that kind of success to the White House,” said
Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, 42, who shot to prominence during the
2008 campaign after then-Republican nominee John McCain seized on a
confrontation Wurzelbacher had with then-Democratic candidate Barack
Obama.
Sitting in his Ohio house, a Ruger handgun on a table next to him,
Wurzelbacher told Reuters he has yet to decide who to support but
says he understands why so many people are drawn to the caustic
Trump, a real-estate developer and former reality TV show host, and
is unhappy with the Republican Party establishment lining up against
him.
He said Trump's position as an insurgent candidate who is willing to
defy party leaders was a more important reason to vote for him than
his wealth and the model-looks of his wife Melania. But he said he
believed other voters were drawn to his larger-than-life image and
glamorous lifestyle.
 He also likes Ted Cruz, the conservative U.S. senator from Texas. He
is scathing about Marco Rubio, the senator from Florida and the
favorite of the Republican establishment to challenge Trump. And he
dislikes John Kasich, the Ohio governor who narrowly trails Trump in
his home state with less than two weeks until Ohio’s primary on
March 15.
Trump, 69, is the front-runner in the race for the Republican
nomination for the Nov. 8 election, but party leaders worry policies
that include building a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border and
temporarily banning Muslims from entering the United States will
turn off voters and upset U.S. allies.
QUINTESSENTIAL EVERYMAN
As a conservative, Wurzelbacher says he is willing to overlook
Trump's previous heresies on issues such as gun control, abortion,
gay marriage and even his past donations to Hillary Clinton, the
Democratic presidential front-runner. The Obama administration, he
says, is a miserable failure.
In the 2008 campaign, Wurzelbacher made headlines when he asked
Obama about his small business tax policy. During a videotaped
exchange, Obama answered in part by saying, "when you spread the
wealth around, it's good for everybody." Wurzelbacher had told Obama
he was interested in buying a plumbing business.
Two days later McCain, Obama's opponent, cited "Joe the Plumber" as
the quintessential American everyman who had exposed Obama as having
what McCain called a socialist, wealth-distributing economic world
view. It mattered little that “Joe” wasn’t his first name. He never
ultimately got a plumbing license in Ohio. But he says he was
honorably discharged from the U.S. Air Force as a journeyman
plumber.
Soon after, Wurzelbacher appeared at rallies with McCain and his
running mate, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin. He seemed enraged
at Obama's economic policies.
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'TRUMP SCARES THEM'
Today, he is highly critical of Senator McCain, deriding his
opposition to Trump as corrupt.
"They are not opposing Trump for the American people. They are doing
it for their party, and I don't like that. It's control, power,
greed. Trump scares them."
Wurzelbacher, who had assailed unions along with Obama's decision to
use taxpayer money to rescue the car manufacturers Chrysler and
General Motors from bankruptcy in 2009, drew much criticism when it
emerged that he took a job at a Chrysler plant in Toledo, Ohio, in
2014 - and joined a local union to get it.
"That was an experiment," Wurzelbacher said. He said he never
intended to work at Chrysler full-time. He wanted to see inside a
union factory so he could write about it, he said. He worked on the
paint line for three months, and then left.
He ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2012, winning the
Republican primary for Ohio's 9th congressional district but lost to
Democratic Marcy Kaptur by a landslide.
Wurzelbacher says his life has settled down since the madness of
2008. He got married five years ago. He has a three-year-old
daughter and one-year-old son, and a 20-year-old son living in
Kentucky. He now spends his time running two websites,
JoeforAmerica.com, and one his wife inspired, livingloving.com.
But he is disgusted by much of the debate in America.
"Political correctness is a huge issue. People are afraid to speak
their minds. They are afraid of being labeled a racist or a
homophobe."
On guns, Wurzelbacher says the more people who have guns, the safer
they will be. Asked how many guns he has, Wurzelbacher replied, "not
enough."
(Editing by Jason Szep and Howard Goller)
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