If Roseanne Conner — the loud, lovable, Trump-supporting protagonist of the recently revived “Roseanne” — were to visit this working-class city that serves as the basis for the show’s fictional setting, she wouldn’t recognize it.
She wouldn’t see the predominantly white, Republican city 40 miles northwest of downtown Chicago with a devastated economy that was the inspiration for Lanford, Ill., during the first “Roseanne” run from 1988 to 1997.
Today, she would find a majority Hispanic city — Spanish is commonly heard on the streets — in a county that went Democratic in the last three presidential elections, with a diversified and rebounding economy, boosted by a huge riverboat casino.
And, inside the Dutch Inn West, a dusty, windowless bar on Elgin’s west side, she’d find Hillary Clinton and Trump voters of various ethnic backgrounds intermingling over $2 beers, watching the latest episode of her show — back on the air 21 years after its first run — talking about how the show’s namesake character’s allegiance to our current divisive president isn’t what they know.
“It doesn’t get Elgin right, when it comes to diversity,” Joshua Roman, 36, who is Puerto Rican and has lived in Elgin for 15 years and works as a commercial kitchen installer, told NBC News at the bar. “I don’t see that in Lanford at all. It’s about a white family. … How many Latinos you see on that show?”
The fictional community of Lanford is in many ways the same as it was when “Roseanne” signed off. It’s white, working class and a secure home-base for a Trump-lover like the show’s protagonist.
Elgin, however, a city of about 112,000 people nestled in the Fox River Valley, has changed drastically.
During the first run of “Roseanne,” Kane County, where most of Elgin is, went solidly Republican in presidential elections. Back then, Elgin was majority white.
But starting prominently in the late 1990s, things began to change. Young urbanites and commuters fleeing high Chicago prices moved to the city’s beautiful old housing stock; Latinos, long a staple in the Windy City, also moved west, too, seeking work and a lower cost of living.
Those migrations transformed the political landscape here, making it a less likely place for Trump supporters like Roseanne Conner. Kane County went solidly for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, and for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election; in fact, by 2015, Elgin was majority Hispanic, and the median income had risen substantially, too.
In other words, Lanford hasn’t changed much, while Elgin, like many other parts of the U.S., has — politically, socially and demographically.
But that hasn’t at all harmed the popularity of the “Roseanne” revival: The show’s new season kicked off with sky-high ratings and was quickly picked up for another season.
“It may be kind of ironic that Elgin now is not the Elgin it used to be, but Lanford is. Lanford is still the town it used to be,” Tim Brooks, a former network television executive and TV historian, told NBC News.
“But as long as the characters in the show seem to be good and funny people who you’d want to invite into your own home, the show will succeed,” Brooks added. “Likable characters enable viewers to put up with pretty much anything. Even Trump.
“But difficult political conversations can come up in the show, because they come up in real life, and families go on. It’s what viewers see in their own lives, and they get that and they like seeing it on television.”
Inside the Dutch Inn West, Elizabeth Gospodarek, 48, a lifelong Elginite who works at an oil and gas testing company, said Elgin residents still love the show, even if it doesn’t portray their city accurately.
“The honesty of the show is spot-on,” Gospodarek said, referring to the program’s approach to tough family conversations about politics, in between sips of Budweiser.