Aug 31, 2020 2 min read

John Golomb has been losing friends for the past week.

The goodbyes started after the retired Monessen steelworker began appearing frequently and prominently in television ads supporting Joe Biden’s presidential bid.

“They say they’re not my friend anymore,” Golomb said. “The phone has been ringing off the hook.”

His story became public after the lifelong Democrat was invited to appear two years ago on ABC’s “Nightline” to talk about how disappointed he was in President Trump after voting for him in 2016.

Trump campaigned in this struggling Mon Valley in June 2016, standing before a mountain of crushed aluminum at the Alumisource recycling plant and promising to return steel to its former glory.

This plant was once one of the most modern rail mills in the world where Golomb, 68, worked until the collapse of steel in 1986. Trump gave him hope that things were about to improve in the industry and Monessen.

“I fell for him hook, line and sinker,” he said.

Newspapers on the East Coast were soon reaching out to Golomb in addition to CNN to hear why he changed his heart about the president.

Then the liberal super PAC American Bridge invited him to appear in the attack ads that also featured Monessen and its struggling economy and blight.

Golomb is shown on his living room couch with his Monessen Greyhounds jacket and Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel coat resting behind him. He is later shown walking with a cane past one of the vacant mill buildings in the downtown.

He said the anger now directed at him is another example of how far Americans are deeply separated from each other in their political views.

“There is still a great divide in this country,” he said.

The ad may be the first time a presidential campaign was filmed in the Mon Valley, where Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel once employed thousands of workers.

“I may be the first and only,” he said.