Debra Ell opened her Trump Shoppe in a dingy Saginaw strip mall back when establishment Republicans and TV pundits were still scoffing at the man who was about to remake US politics.
Ell latched on to Donald Trump as a winner not long after he declared his run for the presidency in 2015. But she understood that the key to his success in her corner of swing state Michigan was to keep a distance from the local Republican party, which Ell regarded with almost as much hostility as she did the Democrats.
