‘Forgotten’ Pennsylvania region holds key to Trump’s fate

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In the wake of the 2016 election, a little-known county in northeastern Pennsylvania emerged as a national symbol of Donald Trump’s unexpected victory, seeming to epitomize the political forces that explained the stunning outcome.

“Why Did Donald Trump Win? Just Visit Luzerne County, Pennsylvania” read one headline. The Wall Street Journal reported that “a decline in manufacturing, shrinking populations, a fraying of social cohesion and a rise in immigration” made the area a perfect fit for Trump’s message. Journalist Ben Bradlee, Jr. wrote a whole book about the county of 317,000.

Four years later, Trump is the underdog in his reelection campaign. And his ability to repeat — or expand on — his performance in Luzerne County is essential to his hopes of achieving an upset victory in this critical battleground state.

“The Luzerne County voter was the definition of the forgotten men and women. Nobody in Washington was standing up for them. They’d lost hope,” said former GOP Rep. Lou Barletta, a top Trump ally in Pennsylvania who represented a Luzerne-based district. “I don’t believe the president lost any support from 2016 here. If anything, he may have even gained more.”

Trump won working-class Luzerne by 26,000 votes in 2016 — nearly 60 percent of his margin of victory in a state that he narrowly carried. As part of his strategy to win Pennsylvania again, his campaign is betting on increased turnout in the small cities and rural reaches of the northeast.

For Biden, who was born in neighboring Lackawanna County, the region is also critical: His campaign wants to cut its losses in Luzerne County to a significant degree or perhaps, in the best-case scenario, flip it. Even some of Biden’s biggest supporters doubt he can pull that off — Trump beat Hillary Clinton there by nearly 20 percentage points — but they’re nonetheless looking for him to make serious inroads.

“He won’t carry it, but he’ll lose it by a lot less than Hillary did,” said former Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell. “It’s changed over time. The demographics have changed. Trump is popular in Luzerne. But Joe has got some fans in Luzerne.”

A historic coal region, Luzerne County was a longtime Democratic stronghold with a proud labor tradition. Residents are predominantly white and the vast majority do not have college degrees. The county supported President Barack Obama twice, but in recent years, has been moving sharply toward the Republican Party.

Much like Democrats have spent the last four years turning red seats in the state’s suburbs blue, Republicans have seized power in ancestrally Democratic areas in northeastern Pennsylvania over the same period. Local GOP leaders said Democrats are dreaming if they think that Luzerne County is in play this year.

“This is a blue-collar, hard working area, and they just want to vote for someone who's going to give them jobs and someone who's speaking their language,” said Justin Behrens, chair of the Luzerne County Republican Party. “And the Democratic Party is no longer speaking that language. They’ve left them. And now we have a president who is speaking that language.”

Trump is trailing Biden by 7 points in Pennsylvania, according to RealClearPolitics’ polling average. His allies in the state said that it is critical for him to run up the score in northeastern Pennsylvania to offset the large gains Biden is expected to make in the suburbs surrounding Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The Republican National Committee has boasted that it invested $350 million to upgrade its data program, which is expected to help Trump locate scores of first-time or irregular voters in such areas.

As of September, the GOP had registered nearly 12,000 additional net voters in Luzerne County since 2016, whereas Democrats have lost more than 1,000. Even Barletta, the GOP Senate nominee in 2018, won the county despite losing the state overall by 13 percentage points. A year later, Republicans flipped party control of the county council in Luzerne and received the most votes there in a state superior court race.

“The president has a record to run on now,” said Ted Christian, Trump’s senior adviser in Pennsylvania, explaining why he thinks he’ll perform more strongly in the northeastern part of the state this year. “Some of the proposals by the vice president and his campaign, such as hurting the fossil fuel industry in the northeast and southwest ... it just does not play well.”

Vice President Mike Pence has stumped in Luzerne County, and Rudy Giuliani is campaigning there Saturday. Biden’s wife, Jill, did a virtual town hall with local educators.

Trump last month also seized on the case of a few ballots that were cast for him in the county but allegedly discarded, another indication how important Luzerne is to his campaign and the heightened scrutiny it is receiving this year. Election officials said he was politicizing an investigation that had not yet been completed.

In a sign of the shifting political tides in the area, state Sen. John Yudichak, who represents Luzerne, switched his party registration from Democrat to independent in 2019. He now caucuses with the Republican Party in Harrisburg.

“It appears [Trump’s] support has grown in northeastern Pennsylvania,” said Yudichak. “Even in Lackawanna County — Scranton, the hometown of Joe Biden — Trump’s supporters are growing in numbers. The Republican Party has closed the gap in the voter registration edge in Luzerne County and statewide. And I think a big part of that is that Democrats are not speaking to working-class voters.”

But Yudichak himself is a sign of why many Democrats believe Biden is a better fit for the area than Clinton: He endorsed Biden when he was a Democrat and has not dropped his support since. He applauded Biden for “[stepping] up to the extreme left of the Democratic Party and saying, ‘I’m not going to stand for banning fracking.’”

If Biden somehow managed to take back Luzerne County, it would make it virtually impossible for Trump to win Pennsylvania — and likely the presidency. It would also signal that Democrats had loosened the GOP’s grip on blue-collar white voters, something that could have ramifications for years to come. In fact, even if Biden simply cut back the size of Trump’s victory in the region, it would make Trump’s path to victory in the state very difficult.

Despite the GOP’s triumphs in recent years, there are a few reasons to believe Biden could be competitive. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf won Luzerne County by almost 5 percentage points in 2018. Recent New York Times/Siena surveys found that Trump is underperforming in northeastern Pennsylvania relative to 2016.

Multiple surveys have also shown that Trump is winning white working-class voters by a smaller margin than he did in 2016, both nationwide and in Pennsylvania. And the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has pulled its ad bookings in the market where Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright, who represents parts of Luzerne County and whose district voted for Trump in 2016, is running for reelection — a “big sign of confidence in Cartwright's chances,” said Brendan Welch, communications director for Pennsylvania’s Democratic Party.

Asked if he thinks Biden can win Luzerne County, Cartwright said, “Yes.”

The reason, he said, is that Biden is the candidate who is promising a new direction this time around.

“What do Presidents Obama and Trump have in common? It’s not a long list. They were both the change candidates,” he said. “And here’s the thing: When things aren't working out that well in life, you almost always vote for the change candidate.”