Rural voters came out for Fetterman and Shapiro, what happens next for them?

Analysts with The New York Times on Election Night tracked county by Pennsylvania county the shift in party votes between the 2020 presidential contest and the 2022 races for Senate and governor.

When it ended, Pennsylvania's deep red "T" — the conservative, Republican-dominated counties filling the state's northern tier and center — stood awash in an unbroken field of blue left-pointing arrows as John Fetterman and Josh Shapiro powered past the 2020 rural vote margins that helped Joe Biden defeat Donald Trump.

Party registration disparities, often two-to-one or more, made flipping most rural Pennsylvania counties into the Democratic column virtually impossible. What mattered were the consequential margins shaved as a result of the disciplined and principled statewide campaigns run by Fetterman and Shapiro.

As the state's new U.S. senator and governor prepare to lead, let that not get lost in the churn of transition, because it matters in terms of substance, not just strategy.

Democrats rightly campaigned on the threat posed to our democracy by Republican proponents of the Big Lie of a stolen 2020 election.

As important is what I witnessed from my home base in Venango County in the months leading up to the election: High-profile Democratic candidates putting democracy into action by engaging all they hope to lead. Shapiro and Fetterman mined not just vote-rich densely populated urban and suburban regions; they campaigned statewide, no matter the scant return on the long miles logged and modest crowds engaged. In doing so, as that map showed, they managed to confront and soften the dangerous, hardening walls between rural and urban Pennsylvanians.

That work can't end with Election Day.

Democracy dies without debate

Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York in 2016 (in)famously discounted the need to seek support from rural Pennsylvania voters as if elections were merely a matter of math, detached from the people and their needs: "For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia."

Schumer's calculation was not sound math, as Hillary Clinton's failure to reach out even in Erie County, let alone Pennsylvania's rural voters, cost her the state in 2016. Beyond that, the approach is terrible for effective government, which relies on the clash of competing ideas to arrive at the best outcomes for all.

State and congressional Republican lawmakers cruise to what can function as lifetime appointments in places like Venango County. No matter the competence of the leaders, it takes a toll on engagement.

The liveliest recent civic debate I can recall in Oil City occurred a couple of years ago when a businessman from New Jersey bought up several key downtown buildings and hosted brainstorming sessions for the city's future complete with Russian caviar. People packed the meetings and his Facebook feed with both nostalgia for the city's flush oil industry heydays and new ideas for its changed present. He has since largely retreated from public view and the buildings appear idle. If only that energy had been harnessed and that conversation continued with those elected to lead.

But on that front Republicans are correct, without competition, there is little incentive to deliver results.

A toxic brand?

National and state media spoke of rural Democrats as an endangered breed and called the party's brand toxic in the 2022 primary season.

No question, given the polarization, people take care discussing their political beliefs lest it backfire on their livelihoods or the ability to share a drama-free night out with friends. But also at work? The deluge of partisan media. Radicalized Republican Party leaders and enabling pundits amplify demonization and phony culture wars rather than appealing to Republican policies and records and it is no wonder. It is not as though rural communities and small towns disrupted by globalization, retail flight and the addiction crisis could point to a lasting revival delivered by any leader or party.

With few real-life representatives of the opposition to engage with, people are left to form opinions based on information silos that stoke rage and shadow-box cartoon villains. That is why the lone Democratic Venango County commissioner, Chip Abramovic, makes sure people know he rides rodeo and is a Democrat.

"I tell them I am not a Fox News Democrat," he said, i.e. not a caricature.

Snowflakes, socialists? No, pragmatic candidates with relevant ideas

This campaign season, residents in rural communities across the state got to meet other real-life Democrats.

Pre-primary, candidates for state and federal office, including Fetterman, lieutenant governor candidate Austin Davis and Erie's Congressional candidate, Dan Pastore, gathered for petition-signings in Oil City's 1890 National Transit building, former hub of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company.

On a brilliant July afternoon, Shapiro delivered a lengthy stump speech in the Transit's back garden overlooking Oil Creek. He addressed with nuance real-life, practical concerns — opioids, public safety and support for police, rural broadband, education, health care, energy, freedom and democracy. He launched his campaign in Johnstown, not Philadelphia or Pittsburgh, and criss-crossed the state making regular stops in rural communities, including a barnstorming 21-county tour in the final days that carried him to places like Clarion and Clearfield.

More: Josh Shapiro launched his governor bid in Johnstown? Why that might help the Democrat win

In late August, hundreds of Democrats from rural counties throughout western Pennsylvania converged on the Venango County Fairgrounds for Demstock, a festival of food, music and speeches by U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, congressional candidates and state and local party leaders. Fetterman, newly emerged from stroke convalescence, spoke briefly and was met with a standing ovation.

Mitch Kates, a senior adviser for the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, said at Demstock that this new rural momentum and party leaders' awareness of the need to engage rural Democrats was a credit to rural Pennsylvania Democrats who mobilized, especially in the wake of 2016. What state party leaders from Pennsylvania and the Northeast saw during the 2020 campaign was a new fighting spirit, he said, that in turn inspired suburban and urban activists. Now he sees the momentum created in rural Pennsylvania in 2020 echoed in a renewed national focus on rural organizing, he said.

"Local folks in rural Pennsylvania had had enough, and they started to fight back and stand strong and speak up," he said, pointing to people like Warren County Commissioner Jeff Eggleston, who in 2020 earned national attention for his work delivering thousands of Biden signs to the region. Eggleston now leads the state party's growing Rural Caucus.

The party's focus on down-ballot races and winning Democratic control of the House in 2022 were an extension of renewed attention to rural areas, Kates said.

"We are here to talk about the things that the Democrats have done for rural Pennsylvania and will continue to do," he said.

"Toxic brand" media narratives aside, the rural Democrats at these events were not cowed but clear on their values and their sense of urgency.

"Our lives are on the line," Bobbi Erickson of Brockway said at Demstock. She and her friend, Allison Hulings, got actively involved in politics for the first time after the fall of Roe v. Wade.

"We could not watch our daughters grow up in a world with less rights than we did," Erickson said.

Robert Hines, who attended the Shapiro rally in Oil City, named protection of voting rights and democracy as his chief concern given the anti-democratic turn taken by the Republican Party. Shapiro's opponent Doug Mastriano, as one example, had talked about his ability as governor to decertify voting machines with the stroke of a pen. Neither the Legislature nor the governor should control the outcome of elections, Hines said. The voters should.

"We are tired of the middle class being ignored," said Indiana County Democrat and farmer Barbara Peace, who also traveled to Demstock. Her husband, a doctor, sees patients who can't get their medicine or care they need due to the power wielded by insurance companies, she said.

She and longtime Venango County Democratic Committeeman Ed Scurry said Republican politicians too often distract voters from such real-life concerns by stoking fear, especially about gun control. The daughter of a police officer, Peace carries a gun. Her family hunts, and, as she likes to remind her Republican friends, President Barack Obama never came and took their guns away. In the meantime, Scurry, also a hunter, said, the rural economic losses continue under the watch of Republican lawmakers who voters, riveted more by cultural issues, reflexively return to office.

Elk County Commissioner Matthew G. Quesenberry Sr. and Ashley Smith, vice chairwoman of the Venango County Democratic Party, said values of kindness and inclusion drew them to the party. "It is putting people first," Smith said, starting with strong schools to prepare children for good jobs.

Fetterman blazed the trail

Fetterman's winning "every county, every vote" strategy this cycle was not new. Long before 2022, western Pennsylvania voters knew him as the man who put his Harvard Kennedy School degree to work as mayor of Braddock. "Mayor John" became a subject of interest not just because of his tattoos and hoodies but because his forthright agenda in a wounded place like Braddock felt unspoken and averted in so many other places like it.

He not only toured the entire state while campaigning in past races, but also on his 2019 marijuana listening tour as lieutenant governor, where a majority of voters statewide, even in Republican strongholds like Warren County, voiced surprising support for legalization.

More: Pot tour informs key debate

That is why showing up and listening matter. We find points of agreement, and maybe solutions, to problems we share.

Shapiro's unflagging statewide engagement and meaningful, practical platform found similar resonance. As his campaign announced in recent days, his overwhelming defeat of Mastriano — powered by support from voters across the entire state — meant he could have won the race without winning a single vote from Philadelphia or the Philadelphia suburbs.

What matters now? How the winners wield the power obtained with the help, however slight, of rural voters.

The fight for our democracy depends on vigilant defense of ballot access and exposing the lies that corrode faith in our system and each other.

It also relies on restoring trust and engagement in rural communities and small Pennsylvania towns left too long to confront overwhelming economic and social challenges without adequate intervention. People talk of the need for a Rust Belt Marshall Plan for good reason.

Monuments to past productivity and relevance litter the landscapes of places like Oil City and Johnstown and any number of the rural communities touched in the 2022 Democratic campaigns.

But amid the rust and blight exist ingenuity and resilience that deserves to be met by leaders of all stripes in good-faith equal measure. There are enduring local manufacturers and businesses, and new entrepreneurs — many of them young and brimming with hope perhaps because they are not shackled by memories of what was. They carve new niches in the arts, outdoor recreation, whole foods, cafes, breweries and wine. Civic leaders work to turn chain retail closings into fresh opportunities for local small businesses and revived Main Streets; and volunteers curate events that lure people from their screens and homes to restore community fellowship that was once a given.

What does every county, every vote mean after Election Day for them?

That question could be reasonably downplayed if rural people and policies to help them are eyed as what they are by any fair mathematical calculation — a margin play.

But what could it mean for our democracy and productivity if rural Pennsylvanians' distinct problems and needs were addressed proactively at scale and their communities' potential not overlooked but eyed collectively and tapped?

That might in truth make Pennsylvania great again.

Opinion and Engagement Editor Lisa Thompson Sayers can be reached at lthompson@timesnews.com or 814-870-1802. Follow her on Twitter @ETNThompson. 

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Rural PA voters came out for Fetterman, Shapiro, what happens next?