United States | News & Politics

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Yet somehow Kokomo produced a union leader whose rhetoric is aimed at toppling the conservative and moneyed classes — a rebel who rejects the niceties of an earlier era in favor of a sharp-edged confrontation.

“Billionaires in my opinion don’t have a right to exist,” says Shawn Fain, who is leading the United Automobile Workers in a multifront labor battle against the Big Three carmakers that has little precedent and is making a lot of noise.

“I don’t think Kokomo was a breeding ground for radicals,” said Paul Nicodemus, another member of the class of 1987, adding that the city was “known for having the biggest tree trunk and the largest stuffed bull,” two longtime local tourist attractions.

A closer look, however, reveals how Mr. Fain’s upbringing may have played a role in creating a confrontational figure who vilifies the automakers while alarming Wall Street.

The police protested low wages by driving past the mayor’s house with sirens blaring and similar antics, according to a 2014 history of law enforcement in the county.

He pledged not only to end corruption but also to jettison a go-along, get-along approach that he denounced as “company unionism.” One of his first public acts was to decline the traditional handshake with the automakers at the start of negotiations in July.

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