2024 Election, Democrats, elections, Organizing, Pittsburgh, Youth and students

College Dems Energized, Republicans Seek ‘Safe Spaces’ Amid Consequential Election Season

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Photo: Thomas Ross (left) and Austin Wise give a tutorial to students who have never canvassed before on Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024, at Schenley Plaza in Oakland. (Photo by Anastasia Busby/PublicSource)

Democratic organizers say student political engagement has soared since Kamala Harris took over their party’s presidential ticket. Their Republican counterparts report backlash for supporting candidates and views they say are controversial on campuses.


By Spencer Levering

Public Source

October 3, 2024 – Thomas Ross didn’t realize that the political interest on Pitt’s campus was “electric,” as he characterized it, until the semester’s first door-knocking event for Pitt Students for Harris brought 34 volunteers — more than double the number he expected.

“Having 34 volunteers on our first canvass literally blew my mind,” said Ross, a University of Pittsburgh junior studying history and political science. “Everyone that I’ve spoken with has been very excited about the election.” Other Democratic students echoed this, saying they’re seeing new levels of excitement from their peers.

Just up Forbes Avenue, Anthony Cacciato is aiming to make the Carnegie Mellon University College Republicans a space where students can speak freely about their conservative values. Cacciato, president of the chapter, said with election season sparking student’s political intrigue, he’s preparing for a “barrage of negative backlash.”

At colleges around Pittsburgh, political clubs are organizing students to gear up for the upcoming November elections. Club leaders cited Pennsylvania’s influence on national politics as a key reason why they’re trying to mobilize the youth vote as Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris vie for Electoral College votes.

Organizing through socializing

As on-campus political groups look to activate students this fall, many said they are trying to mix political outreach efforts with social events to appeal to young voters.

Cacciato said group outings, such as seeing the new movie “Reagan,” help prevent students from burning out over organizing.

“We’re a space where you can feel comfortable with talking about who you are, but also feel comfortable in knowing that you’re surrounded by friends,” Cacciato said.

The club’s membership increased by 20% this semester, according to Cacciato, because of Pennsylvania’s outsize impact on national politics.

“When you have that knives-edge margin, any little bit of outreach can mean the difference between 10,000 people staying home and not voting and them going out and voting and flipping a precinct, flipping a state House seat, flipping the state, and flipping the country,” Cacciato said.

At Pitt, Sam Podnar, co-president of the Pitt College Democrats, said she creates an environment in which students can meet new people and break out of political apathy.

“We want to let people know that getting involved doesn’t have to be hard, it doesn’t have to be stressful. We just want them to keep showing up,” Podnar said.

She said President Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the race and endorse Vice President Harris has energized students to get involved in Democratic organizing. General body meetings, weekend canvasses and the club’s presidential debate watch party have all drawn new participants.

“We’ve seen a really, really big surge in membership that just has honestly blown everyone away,” Podnar said.

Avalon Sueiro, president of the CMU College Democrats, said finding a balance between doing work and building a community helps draw students to attend the club’s events. When election day gets nearer, she plans on bringing therapy dogs to campus to calm students’ nerves.

Making it pop

Among Democratic student organizers, leaders are leaning into memes and pop culture as they try to energize college voters. When the semester began, the Instagram pages for Pitt Students for Harris and Pitt College Democrats both had profile photos referencing Charli XCX’s “brat” album. The pop star’s viral summer tweet calling the vice president “brat” spawned a flurry of online memes, which the Harris campaign embraced as an early branding strategy.

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2024 Election, African-Americans, Democrats, elections, Fascism, Pittsburgh, Voting Rights, Women, Youth and students

Summer Lee and AOC Rally Pittsburgh College Students To Get Involved In 2024 Election

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By Abigail Hakas

Pennsylvania Capitol-Star

September 22, 2024 – PITTSBURGH — With just 44 days until the 2024 election, U.S. Reps. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) rallied young voters for the Harris-Walz ticket at Carnegie Mellon University on Sunday.

Young people, Lee told the audience “are not the voices of the future,” but rather “the voices of right now.”

“We are all in the most powerful room in the country,” she said. “This is the most powerful room because we are in Western Pennsylvania, we’re in Western Pennsylvania, and the road to the White House, the road to the Senate and the road to the House all leads right here through y’all’s campuses.”

Pennsylvania is key for both Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ nominee, and former President Donald Trump, the GOP nominee. With its 19 electoral votes, the Keystone State is the biggest prize of the “blue wall” battleground states for either candidate.

According to the Pew Research Center, about two-thirds of registered voters ages 18 to 24 align with Democrats. In 2023, the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement estimated around 41 million members of Gen Z would be eligible to vote in the 2024 election.

Sunday’s event was co-hosted by College Democrats at Pitt, the CMU College Democrats and the Young Democrats of Allegheny County.

“When I talk about what our job is in the next 40-something days, your job is to take care of each other because that’s who I’m voting for,” Lee said. “I’m going to go and vote for the most marginalized person in my life. Because it’s my job, it’s my responsibility, to make sure that I’m creating the conditions that we all can survive in, not just survive, that we can all thrive in.”

Ocasio-Cortez followed Lee with a list of the issues that young voters might be most concerned with: climate change, school shootings and the cost of rent and healthcare.

“We have been aging and growing in a world that our predecessors have left to us,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Respectfully, a lot of what has been left to us is messed up, is really messed up, and it’s messed up not even on a partisan basis, it’s messed up generationally.”

Ocasio-Cortez told a story of her time at Boston University when Barack Obama began his candidacy, and her absentee ballot did not arrive in time. She said she took a bus back home to New York City to cast her vote for the future president.

She not only encouraged students to register to vote in Pennsylvania with their on-campus address, but also to sign up for a shift with the Harris-Walz campaign, go door-to-door and ensure a Democratic victory at every level in the election.

Those calls-to-action were the theme of the speakers at Sunday’s event, with Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato, CMU College Democrats President Avalon Sueiro and Harris-Walz campus organizer Agatha Prairie all taking the stage.

Prairie encouraged attendees to convince five friends to vote and Sueiro said to knock on classmates’ doors and “have those tough conversations” about the stakes of the election.

Gainey took a more somber approach.

“We should all be tired. I’m tired of someone that can stand on the stage in a debate and say to the American people and the world that immigrants that are here in our country eat dogs and cats,” he said in reference to former President Donald Trump’s false claim that Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. “I’m tired of that level of hate.”

Trump’s running mate, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) campaigned in Berks County on Saturday, and mentioned Springfield in his remarks. His job “as the United States Senator representing the people of Ohio is to listen to American citizens and fight for them,” Vance said.

“So our message to Kamala Harris and Democrats is we’re going to keep on complaining about their politics because this is America and we have the right to speak our minds,” he added.

Innamorato pointed out that a satellite voting location at the Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall in Oakland will be open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. from Oct. 15-17. Satellite locations offer residents the ability to register to vote, request a mail-in ballot, complete and return it in one place.

“A Pennsylvania victory runs through Allegheny County, and it runs through young people,” Innamorato said. “I’m asking for all of you to do what you can, to knock doors, to volunteer, to make phone calls, to talk to your weird cousin, to get your classmates on board, because we got a lot of work to do over the next 44 days.”

2024 Election, Democrats, elections, Organizing, Voting Rights, Women

Harris Campaigns In Johnstown And Wilkes-Barre: ‘Listening As Much As We Are Talking’

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 Photo: Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris takes a selfie with Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) and his wife Gisele Barreto Fetterman after greeting supporters at John Murtha Johnstown-Cambria Airport on September 13, 2024 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)    

By: Patrick Abdalla and Kim Lyons

Penn-Capital Star

September 13, 2024 – WILKES-BARRE —  Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, has spent most of the last two weeks in Pennsylvania starting with a Labor Day rally in Pittsburgh, where she returned a few days later to hunker down for debate prep. She debated former President Donald Trump, the GOP nominee for president, in Philadelphia on Tuesday, and on Friday she campaigned in Johnstown and Wilkes-Barre, two areas that have swung Republican in recent elections.

“I will be continuing to travel around the state to make sure that I’m listening as much as we are talking,” Harris said during the Johnstown visit, according to pool reports. “And ultimately I feel very strongly that you’ve got to earn every vote, and that means spending time with folks in the communities where they live. And so that’s why I’m here and we’re going to be spending a lot more time in Pennsylvania.”

Luzerne County, where Wilkes-Barre is located. was once a Democratic stronghold, and is near President Joe Biden’s childhood hometown of Scranton. But Hillary Clinton lost the county by nearly 20 points in 2016, and  Trump beat Biden but nearly 15  points in 2020.

Harris touched on familiar themes in her address to the audience at the McHale Athletic Center at Wilkes University, praising small business owners as the “backbone of America’s economy,” pledging to protect reproductive rights, and reiterating that her campaign for president was informed by her middle-class background. 

“People sometimes just need the opportunity, because we as Americans do not lack for ambition, for aspiration, for dreams, for the preparedness to do hard work,” Harris said. She said if elected, her economic plan calls for building 3 million new homes by the end of her first term, and said she would take on corporate price-gouging, and expand the child tax credit. 

Harris also said she would “get rid of unnecessary degree requirements for federal jobs to increase jobs for folks without a four year degree” and would “challenge the private sector to do the same.”

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Kamala Harris Breaks From Debate Prep In Pittsburgh To Make Campaign Stop

Kamala in Strip District

Vice President Kamala Harris makes a campaign stop Saturday at Penzeys Spices on Penn Avenue in Pittsburgh’s Strip District.

By Ryan Deto

TribLive

Sept. 7, 2024 – After spending several days in Pittsburgh this week, Vice President Kamala Harris ventured out Saturday afternoon for a quick campaign stop in the Strip District. She was greeted by emotional supporters.

Harris departed the Omni William Penn Hotel in Downtown around 1 p.m. Security was high around and inside the historic hotel. Secret Service closed off a block of William Penn Place to traffic in front of the Omni, and guests had to pass through a metal detector in the lobby.

The vice president traveled just up the road into the city’s Strip District, making a stop at Penzeys Spices on Penn Avenue.

Upon entering, a woman became overwhelmed when looking at Harris and started to cry. The woman told the vice president, “I appreciate you, just so you should know.”

Harris embraced her.

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Vice President Kamala Harris shares a hug with a woman overcome with emotion during a campaign stop Saturday at Penzeys Spices on Penn Avenue in Pittsburgh’s Strip District.

“We are gonna be fine, we are gonna be fine,” Harris told her. “We are all in this together.”

Harris then greeted other customers in the spice shop and posed for pictures.

One girl Harris spoke to, named Charlotte, said she is from Freeport and attends school in the Freeport Area School District. The girl asked for a hug. Harris posed for photos with the girl and her entire family — including her father, a seventh grade geography teacher.

Harris thanked him for being a teacher.

“We are counting on your leadership, OK?” Harris told Charlotte, who nodded in approval. “Really I am serious, I am really counting on you.

“Go Yellowjackets,” Harris said, referencing Freeport’s mascot, as she high-fived Charlotte.

Harris then met with some other customers briefly and discussed cooking with a Penzeys staffer and picked out a few spices.

Shortly after, Harris fielded some questions from the press, first about the endorsement from former Vice President Dick Cheney.

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elections

Republican-Led Group Launches $11.5 Million Swing States Campaign Against Trump

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By Ian Karbal
Penncapital-Star

Sept 3, 2024 – Pennsylvania drivers might begin seeing more billboards featuring ordinary people, like a white-haired, red-shirt wearing man named “Mike,” and a simple message: “I’m a former Trump voter. I’m a patriot. I’m voting for Harris.”

The billboards are paid for by a group called Republican Voters Against Trump, a project of the Republican Accountability PAC, that is hoping the voices of ordinary voters will sway conservatives and independents to support Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, in November.

On Tuesday, the group announced a new $11.5 million campaign that will feature voters like Mike on billboards, online ads and tv and radio commercials in Pennsylvania and other swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona.

But the bulk of the spending, $4.5 million, will target Pennsylvania, which could end up being the decisive state in the 2024 election.

John Conway, the D.C.-based director of strategy for Republican Voters Against Trump, is leading the campaign (He claims no relation to perhaps the most famous never-Trumper, George Conway).

“Our campaign is built on the idea that you need to establish permission structures in order to get voters who have historically identified as Republican to vote against their party’s nominee,” Conway said. “The ads themselves are coming right from the same people we’re targeting with these campaigns: center-right former Trump voters who don’t want to vote for him again.”

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Conway says the group has collected the testimonies of roughly 300 voters who previously cast ballots for former President Donald Trump, but who no longer support him. They constitute the heart of the new advertisements.

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elections

Kamala Harris Steps Up Campaign In Make-or-Break Pennsylvania

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By Lauren Fedor and James Politi

Financial Times Gift Link

Kamala Harris will make her second visit to western Pennsylvania in less than a week on Thursday, as the Democratic candidate focuses her presidential campaign on voters at both ends of the battleground state.

Harris appeared at a union hall in Pittsburgh on Monday alongside US President Joe Biden, but will be back in the city on Thursday, days before she heads to a debate with Donald Trump in Philadelphia. Campaign officials say she will remain in the state throughout the weekend as she prepares for the debate.

Harris’s trip comes at a pivotal point, with polls putting her and Trump neck and neck in the race to secure Pennsylvania’s 19 Electoral College votes — more than in any other swing state.

“The state is in play, and the path to 270 for either candidate can run through Pennsylvania,” said Kristen Coopie, a political-science professor at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, referring to the number of Electoral College votes needed to win the White House in November.

“[The campaigns] know the state is important. They know there is a wide representation of citizens just within one state . . . it is pretty representative of the country at large.”

Harris also arrives amid an escalating political fight over the ownership of US Steel, an iconic American manufacturer and major employer in Pittsburgh, whose future has become an electoral issue. Harris and Trump have both come out against a proposed $15bn takeover of US Steel by Japan’s Nippon Steel — a protectionist stance designed to court blue-collar votes in the state. On Wednesday, the Financial Times reported that Biden was preparing to block the deal on national security grounds.

US Steel has said that if the merger fails it could close plants, raising the stakes ahead of Harris’s Pennsylvania trip, her 10th visit to the state this year.

Trump — who narrowly survived an assassination attempt in July in Butler county, just north of Pittsburgh — has also made the state a focus of his campaign.

On Wednesday night, the former president, was interviewed by Fox News host Sean Hannity in front of a live audience in Harrisburg, the state capital. After vowing to “heal our world”, invoking the praise he had received from Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, Trump expressed confidence in his chances to win the election and touted his “love” for Pennsylvania. “We’re going to be very well set up to do a great job,” he said.

Both campaigns have spent more on advertising in Pennsylvania than in any other state, according to FT analysis of AdImpact data, with the Harris campaign and allied groups spending nearly $146mn to date and the Trump team almost $132mn.

The winner of Pennsylvania — whose population spans diverse, urban areas such as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, highly educated affluent suburbs and poorer rural areas — has won the White House in 10 of the past 12 presidential elections.

Margins of victory in Pennsylvania have been small. In 2020, Biden defeated Trump by about 80,000 votes. Four years earlier, Trump beat Hillary Clinton by about 44,000 votes, or less than a percentage point.

Patrick Murphy, a former Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania, said the state remained a “toss-up” with just two months to go in the race, but insisted it was an “absolutely, positively, must win” for Harris.

A CNN poll from Pennsylvania published on Wednesday found the two candidates tied, each with support from 47 per cent of likely voters. An FT average of statewide polls in Pennsylvania also shows Harris and Trump in a statistical tie, with Harris enjoying an edge of just 0.4 points.

Charlie Dent, a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania and Trump critic, said that given the former president’s tendency to over-perform polling in past elections, he may already have an advantage over Harris.

But he added Harris was still better positioned than Biden had been to defeat Trump this time.

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2024 Election, African-Americans, Democrats, elections, labor, Pittsburgh, Right Wing

Pennsylvania Democrats Had a Good Week at the DNC. What’s Next?

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 U.S. Rep. Summer Lee (D-12th District) speaks to the Pennsylvania delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago Aug. 22, 2024 (Capital-Star photo by Kim Lyons)


Delegates and candidates turn to the work of keeping the battleground state blue


By: Kim Lyons

Penn-Capital Star

August 25, 2024 – CHICAGO — Pennsylvania was the most popular kid in the class at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, and the battleground state and its 19 electoral votes were well represented in Chicago and on the convention’s nightly broadcasts. Each night featured a speaker from the Keystone State, with Lt. Gov. Austin Davis on Monday; state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta on Tuesday; Gov. Josh Shapiro on Wednesday and U.S. Sen. Bob Casey on Thursday. 

Shapiro was unquestionably the biggest Pennsylvania presence at the DNC, due in part to his status as a runner-up to be presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate. He was constantly booked during the week, speaking at numerous state delegations’ breakfasts, attracting the ire of GOP nominee former President Donald Trump, and appearing regularly on cable news channels. 

Project 2025 played a key role at the convention, as Democrats continued to try to link the conservative policy plan to reshape the federal government and increase presidential authority with Trump.

Kenyatta, a candidate for state Auditor General held the giant Project 2025 book on stage Tuesday night,, and told the audience it was a “radical plan to drag us backwards, bankrupt the middle class and raise prices on working families like yours and mine.”

Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025 but several members of his administration were involved with helping to craft it. 

“It’s a big, heavy book full of bad ideas, and it was one of these moments where we’re able to really get people to understand with the visual how serious Trump and this administration are about doubling down on his flawed theory of the case,” Kenyatta told the Capital-Star on the final day of the convention. 

Our vote is the highest demonstration of the collective power we have… The purpose of this moment is to use our collective power to elect somebody who gives a damn about us, and then to work side by side with her to help implement the things that she’s talking about.

He added Project 2025 should serve as a warning to Democrats about what they believe a second Trump term would look like.

 “When Trump burst onto the political scene, he did so with the thesis that ‘America sucks,’ and that it sucks in large part because our neighbors, the people in our community, people we don’t know — they’re somehow a part of bringing America down,” Kenyatta said, “and the only way we fix it is if we give him all the power.” 

While Trump’s first term saw the former president “flailing around,” Kenyatta said, the architects of Project 2025 mapped out a plan for how to reach some of the goals of the far-right wing of the party, such as a national abortion ban and abolishing the U.S. Department of Education.

Kenyatta added he doesn’t believe in the political concept of giving all the power to one person to fix everything. 

“Our vote is the highest demonstration of the collective power we have,” he said. “If we elect Kamala Harris in November and then say, ‘OK, we’ll see you in four years at the next convention. Hope you fix all the problems!’ then we’ve missed the thread. The purpose of this moment is to use our collective power to elect somebody who gives a damn about us, and then to work side by side with her to help implement the things that she’s talking about.”

At the final Pennsylvania delegates’ breakfast on Thursday, U.S. Rep. Summer Lee (D-12th District) urged the battleground state delegates to keep up the convention’s momentum. 

“We’re here honing our tools so that we can go out and do the very hard work, not for Kamala Harris. We’re not doing hard work for Summer Lee or any of my colleagues,” Lee said, but rather for marginalized and vulnerable people. “Think about that person whose name is in that book over the hundreds and hundreds of pages of Project 2025, who do we see there that we need to make sure is not touched by the evil and the horrors that they have lined up and ready for them.”

Davis, Pennsylvania’s youngest and first-ever Black lieutenant governor, addressed the convention on Monday night and spoke about the importance of building bridges. He appeared on stage with Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Sarah Rodriguez, Harris County, Texas Executive Lena Hidalgo, and California Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, all of whom shared stories about how Harris had made an impact on their communities. 

“I grew up with working class parents in a small steel town in southwestern Pennsylvania, and to have the opportunity to speak on a national stage like that was incredibly humbling,” Davis told the Capital-Star.  “It was just an example of how someone can live the American dream,  so I hope folks who saw me saw that America should be a place where every person has that same opportunity.”

https://penncapital-star.com/briefs/pennsylvania-lt-gov-austin-davis-speaks-at-dnc-on-importance-of-building-bridges/embed/#?secret=dvE4HAFAjU#?secret=1U3QjmQcR8

Davis said the question he heard most often over the course of the convention was whether Democrats can win Pennsylvania. “And I tell them, absolutely, we just have to keep showing up everywhere, competing in places that sometimes it’s not easy to be a Democrat,” he said. 

Asked if there were “red” areas of the state he saw as possible to flip blue, he pointed to central Pennsylvania as having the most potential, particularly the race in the 10th Congressional District between former WGAL anchor Janelle Stelson and Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Perry. 

“I think we have a great candidate in Janelle Stelson,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of energy also with [state Rep.] Patty Kim running for state Senate. So I think Dauphin, Lancaster, Cumberland — an area Governor Shapiro won when we were running on the ballot.”

Davis said not everyone was completely impressed with his star turn on television, however. His daughter Harper, whose 1st birthday is next month, was asleep by the time he appeared Monday night. “We’re going to replay it for her but she doesn’t care,” he said. “She only cares when I FaceTime her and she’s like, ‘Daddy, when are you coming home?’” 

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New Poll of Older Voters in Six Battleground States Shows Tight Race Between Harris and Trump

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Photo: Walz and Harris talking with Aliquppa’s football team, as part of several stops in Western PA three days ago.

However Democrats Must Communicate Their Positions on Medicare and Social Security with this Critical Voting Bloc 

From Retired Americans PAC

Aug 20, 2024

Chicago – A new survey of likely voters ages 65 and up in six key swing states shows Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are in an extremely close race to win the pivotal senior vote in the most contested battleground states. Harris holds 47% of the total senior vote in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, while Donald Trump is supported by 49%. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has just 3 percent of the senior vote in those states.

Four years ago, national exit polls found that voters over 65 voted for Trump over Biden by 5%. In each of these states, voters over the age of 65 comprise at least 23% of the electorate.

When asked which party would be best at handling key issues, the poll found that Democrats held a slim 2% advantage on Social Security and Medicare, issues Democrats have led on. On prescription drug costs, Democrats held an 8% advantage over Republicans. However, Republicans held an advantage over Democrats on the issues of inflation, at 9%, and immigration, 18%.

“Harris’ strong showing in the survey with a group that went for Trump four years ago is encouraging,” said Richard Fiesta, an expert on retirement security issues and Treasurer of Retired Americans PAC. “However candidates who want to win must engage older voters directly on the issues that matter most to them now.

“There are stark differences between the two parties on the future of Social Security, Medicare, and prescription drugs – it’s incumbent on Democrats to communicate that they will strengthen and protect these programs, not privatize or cut them,” Fiesta continued.

The poll of 1,200 likely voters ages 65 and up in the November general election was conducted by GBAO between July 23-30, 2024, in AZ, GA, MI, NV, PA and WI on behalf of Retired Americans PAC.*

Harris led Trump among seniors by 3 percentage points in Arizona (49%-46%) and Michigan (50%-47%) and by 4 in Wisconsin (49%-45%). Trump led by 3 in Nevada (48%-45%), by 6 in Pennsylvania (51%-45%) and by 12 in Georgia (55%-43%).

Complete results and charts are available here.

*Two hundred respondents were reached in each state and the results were weighted proportionally. Respondents were reached by live dialers and through text-to-web interviews and the results carry a margin of error of +/- 2.8 percentage points at a 95 percent confidence interval.

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Pennsylvania Is Slipping From Donald Trump’s Grasp

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Photo: Matt Tuerk, the mayor of Allentown, right, talks to a resident. He is trying to set up a direct flight between San Juan, Puerto Rico’s capital and Allentown © Jennifer Huxta/FT

Kamala Harris gains ground with crucial Hispanic voters in swing state that could decide 2024 US election

By Edward Luce
Financial Times

Kamala Harris gains ground with crucial Hispanic voters in swing state that could decide 2024 US election

By Edward Luce

The Financial Times, gift link

In 2000, Hispanics — a term used for Spanish-speakers, while “Latino” includes those with a heritage in all Latin American countries — accounted for less than a quarter of Allentown’s population. Now the city is majority Hispanic, chiefly Puerto Rican and Dominican. With similar alacrity, the nearby city of Reading turned 70 per cent Hispanic.

On a walk through a heavily Puerto Rican neighbourhood, Matt Tuerk, Allentown’s mayor, was greeted every few yards by residents lounging on the stoops of neighbourhood bodegas. Tuerk, a bicycling mayor who speaks fluent Spanish, is trying to set up a direct flight between San Juan, Puerto Rico’s capital, and Allentown. He and Susan Wild, the Democratic congresswoman for the area, recently slept on the floor of San Juan’s airport.

“Hispanics won’t automatically vote for either party — and many won’t vote at all,” Tuerk said. “But you won’t get anywhere unless you meet them halfway.” The Harris campaign has 15 campaign offices across the state. Trump has just one, in northern Philadelphia. “Trump doesn’t seem to be making a serious effort,” said Charlie Dent, a former Republican congressman who until 2018 represented the district that includes Allentown. “The focus is still all about Maga [Make America Great Again]. But I’m sceptical that the Maga base will be large enough to win.”

Dent adds that Trump is on his own version of “a Grateful Dead tour” — replaying his big hits from the glory years. Trump may also be drawing confidence from his victory in Pennsylvania in 2016 after a campaign in which he routinely denigrated Hispanic people. He defeated Hillary Clinton in the state by 45,000 votes — a margin of just 0.72 per cent. The eight years since then have seen rapid population change. Large numbers of Hispanics have arrived to work in the booming logistics hub of the Lehigh Valley, which is close enough to East Coast metropolises like New York and Philadelphia to put 100mn Amazon and Walmart customers one truck shift away.

Many affluent New Yorkers, who tend to be Democrats, also relocated to the area during the pandemic. With its German and Czech-Moravian settler roots, the Lehigh Valley county of Northampton was once described by an eminent historian as the most conservative region in America. Now it is a mosaic. Trump was the first Republican to win Pennsylvania since George HW Bush in 1988. In historic terms, his win may have been a fluke.

Could Trump pull off another shock? Only in spite of himself, said Christopher Borick, a pollster at Allentown’s Muhlenberg College. Borick concedes that polling has not fully caught up with anecdotal evidence of Harris’s lightning switch in momentum. A month ago, polls showed Biden also losing Wisconsin and Michigan, the other two must-win swing states.

The surge in enthusiasm for Harris has brought new states, including North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia back into play. Recommended US presidential election 2024 Trump or Harris: Who’s ahead in the polls? A registered independent, Borick lives in Nazareth, a few miles from Allentown, and one of the most hotly contested townships in America. A reminder of the region’s bible-suffused early days, Nazareth is 10 miles down the road from Bethlehem, a former steel hub. In 2020, Biden won Borick’s ward, with its population of 1,000, by just three votes. This time he and his neighbours have been bombarded by Democratic door-knocking and campaign mail.

“The Trump campaign is so far missing in action,” said Borick. By the conventional calendar, Trump has 80 days to make up for lost ground in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. But in practice, early voting starts in mid-September. Roughly a third of Pennsylvanians are expected to vote by mail. If the 2022 midterm elections are any guide, these will veer strongly Democratic.

Here again, Trump is trampling on his campaign’s priorities. Republicans are trying to educate their voters about the benefits of the mail-in ballot. On the stump, however, Trump often repeats his claim that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election via mail-in fraud. In the next 30 days Republicans must somehow enthuse their foot soldiers to vote early without contradicting their leader’s stolen election theory — and his warning that 2024 will also be rigged. For true believers, this requires semantic acrobatics. Traditional Republicans can put it more bluntly. “That’s malarkey,” Montero, the lawyer based in Allentown, tells conservative voters when they express suspicion of postal votes. “We can only win by voting.”

Penn State, trade unions, Youth and students
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Penn State Reaches Tentative Deal With Union Days After Teamsters OK Strike

7496245_web1_PTR-BRANCH1-062523

Photo: LOUIS B. RUEDIGER | TRIBUNE-REVIEW Unions representing workers at Penn State University’s main and branch campuses, including New Kensington, seen here, said they have reached a tentative four-year labor pact.

By BILL SCHACKNER

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Monday, July 1, 2024 – Union members will vote in the coming weeks on a tentative contract agreement with management covering 2,500 employees on Penn State University branches statewide and the main University Park campus.

The deal, if ratified, could offer a measure of labor peace at a time of heightened workplace anxiety across Penn State generally, and its branches in particular, over university-wide budget cuts and a 10% faculty and staff reduction through buyouts this spring on those branches, where enrollment has fallen sharply since 2010.

Teamsters Local 8 represents employees in custodial service, emergency medical response, food service, housing service, trades, science, athletics, agriculture, research, printing, engineering, transportation, airport services, information technology and media.

Its members on Wednesday had authorized leaders to call a strike if necessary.

The previous contract with Teamsters Local 8 was due to expire Sunday. The union announced the tentative four-year contract on social media Saturday night.

“The new deal includes 20% wage increases (21.79% compounded) over the life of the contract. More details will be shared during the forthcoming ratification meetings,” it read. “This effort was only made possible by the nearly 1,900 members who authorized strike action and showed the University that WE WERE READY!”

The contract would run through June 30, 2028, and will be retroactive to Monday.

Jonathan Light, president of Teamsters Local 8, could not immediately be reached Monday for additional comment on the agreement.

Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi welcomed the tentative pact, and in a statement, said pay raises included are comparable to deals recently reached by Penn State with Service Employees International Union Local 668 and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 13.

“These are the employees who keep Penn State operational,” said Jennifer Wilkes, vice president for human resources and chief human resources officer. “They maintain our facilities and grounds, provide food and services for our students, and clear the snow and ice during weather emergencies. During the COVID-19 pandemic, they were essential workers, serving on the front lines while the rest of the university was working remotely ….”

The branches statewide covered by the tentative agreement include Penn State New Kensington, Greater Allegheny, Beaver, Fayette and Shenango in Southwestern Pennsylvania.

Collectively, most of the branches have faced enrollment losses between 16% and 50% the last 10 years, officials said. They were expected to bear the brunt of $94 million in cuts announced in January to further reduce a university-wide deficit that at one point was $140 million.

Leadership on a number of those branches, which Penn State calls its Commonwealth system, is also being restructured. Multiple campuses will report to one chancellor under those changes.

On Wednesday, 91% of the 2,053 Teamsters who cast ballots on the strike authorization measure voted to approve it, said Light.

Union members will vote in the coming weeks on a tentative contract agreement with management covering 2,500 employees on Penn State University branches statewide and the main University Park campus.

The deal, if ratified, could offer a measure of labor peace at a time of heightened workplace anxiety across Penn State generally, and its branches in particular, over university-wide budget cuts and a 10% faculty and staff reduction through buyouts this spring on those branches, where enrollment has fallen sharply since 2010.

Teamsters Local 8 represents employees in custodial service, emergency medical response, food service, housing service, trades, science, athletics, agriculture, research, printing, engineering, transportation, airport services, information technology and media.

Its members on Wednesday had authorized leaders to call a strike if necessary.

The previous contract with Teamsters Local 8 was due to expire Sunday. The union announced the tentative four-year contract on social media Saturday night.

“The new deal includes 20% wage increases (21.79% compounded) over the life of the contract. More details will be shared during the forthcoming ratification meetings,” it read. “This effort was only made possible by the nearly 1,900 members who authorized strike action and showed the University that WE WERE READY!”

The contract would run through June 30, 2028, and will be retroactive to Monday.

Jonathan Light, president of Teamsters Local 8, could not immediately be reached Monday for additional comment on the agreement.

Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi welcomed the tentative pact, and in a statement, said pay raises included are comparable to deals recently reached by Penn State with Service Employees International Union Local 668 and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 13.

“These are the employees who keep Penn State operational,” said Jennifer Wilkes, vice president for human resources and chief human resources officer. “They maintain our facilities and grounds, provide food and services for our students, and clear the snow and ice during weather emergencies. During the COVID-19 pandemic, they were essential workers, serving on the front lines while the rest of the university was working remotely ….”

The branches statewide covered by the tentative agreement include Penn State New Kensington, Greater Allegheny, Beaver, Fayette and Shenango in Southwestern Pennsylvania.

Collectively, most of the branches have faced enrollment losses between 16% and 50% the last 10 years, officials said. They were expected to bear the brunt of $94 million in cuts announced in January to further reduce a university-wide deficit that at one point was $140 million.

Leadership on a number of those branches, which Penn State calls its Commonwealth system, is also being restructured. Multiple campuses will report to one chancellor under those changes.

On Wednesday, 91% of the 2,053 Teamsters who cast ballots on the strike authorization measure voted to approve it, said Light.

Bill Schackner is a TribLive reporter covering higher education. Raised in New England, he joined the Trib in 2022 after 29 years at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where he was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team. He can be reached at bschackner@triblive.com.

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Bill Schackner is a TribLive reporter covering higher education. Raised in New England, he joined the Trib in 2022 after 29 years at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where he was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team. Previously, he has written for newspapers in Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. He can be reached at bschackner@triblive.com.