Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, now a likely Republican candidate for president, has never lived in Youngstown, Ohio, where his mother's family is from.
But the once-overwhelmingly Democratic corner of the industrial Midwest -- where the economic populism and social conservatism that realigned the Republican Party and helped elect Donald Trump have intersected after decades of despair — offers an instructive origin story.
Places such as Youngstown and Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, where his father also grew up in the shadows of now-shuttered steel mills, have become incubators for the kinds of cultural grievances that DeSantis nurtures.
Read more about the Midwest roots that shaped DeSantis' political values at NBCNews.com.
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