An election that was never in doubt has nonetheless cast a long shadow over the campaign for the presidency as voters in the country’s largest swing state went to the polls on Tuesday and expressed serious misgivings about their parties’ nominees.
Both Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Donald Trump locked up their nominations more than a month ago, and they’ve trained their sights on Pennsylvania, where the state’s 19 electoral votes could decide the November election.
But as Trump sat in a courtroom in Manhattan during the first criminal trial of a former president in U.S. history, some staunchly Republican voters told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that they could not vote for their party’s standard-bearer.
“I’m a pretty strong Republican, but it’s hard to support Mr. Trump,” said Terry Bimle, 68, of Bethel Park.
Bimle instead cast his vote for Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who suspended her campaign in early March but who has become a vehicle for GOP voters to register their opposition to Trump in primaries that took place after she left the race.
In Georgia and Wisconsin, she won the support of about 13% of Republican primary voters despite no longer being in the race. In Arizona, another key swing state, she won nearly 18% — more than 110,000 votes.
None of those states has as much sway in presidential elections as Pennsylvania. The vote count Tuesday night will indicate just how fractured the Republican electorate is here, but some who cast their ballots expressed outright antipathy for the man who has been the GOP nominee in three consecutive presidential elections — and has been criminally charged in four separate cases since leaving office.
“I despise him,” said Paul Woessner, 63, a retired defense intelligence officer who lives in Ross and voted at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Parish’s Schoppol Hall. “He’s a criminal. He’s a horrible person, utterly deranged. He’s destroyed one great political party.”
In the other party, the war between Israel and Hamas led to an organized push by some activists to persuade Democrats not to vote for Biden, though early returns showed far fewer protest votes against him than were cast in the GOP primary.
More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in a military campaign that began when Hamas attacked the Jewish state last Oct. 7. The growing humanitarian crisis — and the role of American aid to Israel in its military operation — has led to a vocal movement within the Democratic Party to pressure Biden to do more to protect Palestinian civilians.
“I have a history of teaching many Palestinian students,” said Hollie Link, 40, a preschool teacher in Upper St. Clair. “I feel really bad for those innocent people not getting aid.”
Link said she cast a write-in vote for “uncommitted” on Tuesday, echoing protests in other states’ primaries that have drawn tens of thousands of voters who will be crucial to Biden’s re-election chances in November.
“This campaign is about channeling our collective frustration into a powerful democratic act,” said Rabiul Chowdhury, co-chair of Abandon Biden Pennsylvania, which urged Democratic voters to write in “No Joe” on their primary ballots.
With 19 electoral votes, Pennsylvania is the biggest prize among the handful of states that will determine the next president. Trump won the Keystone State and the presidency in 2016, and Biden did the same four years ago.
Just like the national surveys that show the candidates within the margins of error, Pennsylvania polls show the rubber match up for grabs, with Biden holding the slightest of leads over Trump and just six months to go until the general election.
In presidential election years, the candidates at the top of the ticket can have far-reaching effects on down-ballot races — something that could be particularly important in Pennsylvania. The U.S. Senate race here could determine who controls the narrowly divided chamber.
U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr., D-Pa., faces perhaps the most formidable challenge in Republican nominee and former hedge fund CEO David McCormick. Like Casey, McCormick ran unopposed on Tuesday, sparing him an expensive and bruising primary fight like the one he narrowly lost to celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz in 2022. Dr. Oz, who was backed by Trump, later lost to Democrat John Fetterman.
Abortion, the economy, immigration and foreign policy including support for Israel have been major flashpoints in the Senate race, while Casey and McCormick both attempt to link each other to the unpopular figures topping the ticket.
Speaking outside his Manhattan criminal trial over alleged hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels, Trump urged Pennsylvanians Tuesday to turn out to support both him and McCormick.
“It’s a big day in Pennsylvania,” Trump told reporters. “Today is preliminary but still it’s very important. And maybe they’ll think also about the very good person who’s running for the Senate in Pennsylvania, Dave McCormick.”
The former president made the comments as he faces charges of falsifying business records tied to a hush money payment to Daniels, along with other pending legal battles over the handling of classified documents and attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
“He’s doing a good job, working very hard, successful man, wants to put his success to the country,” Trump said of McCormick. “He’ll be a very good senator, so hopefully they’ll be behind Dave and get out there and vote today.”
Casey and his wife, Terese, voted Tuesday at his hometown’s Scranton High School. The senator in a post on X urged Pennsylvanians to get to the polls and “make your voice heard.”
Casey, who visited Pittsburgh on Monday, later pounced on the Trump endorsement in a fundraising message about 90 minutes before polls closed, calling on supporters to help him “stand up to Trump and the MAGA Republicans targeting” Pennsylvania.
As the presidential campaigns retool for the general election, the lessons Pennsylvania voters taught them on Tuesday will help shape the way they run their race in this crucial state.
Julie Rodriguez, Biden’s campaign manager, said offices already are open across Pennsylvania, including one in Pittsburgh that was opened at an event that featured Lt. Gov. Austin Davis. Rodriguez said in a memo that the president’s campaign has joined local campaigns and union members to knock on more than 1,600 doors in the city.
Trump’s campaign said it also was active in the state.
“We have paid staffers and volunteer-powered field programs in every battleground state, including Pennsylvania, and they are expanding daily,” said Karoline Leavitt, the campaign’s national press secretary. “Our aggressive and experienced operation is focused on turning out votes and highlighting the contrast between Joe Biden’s weakness and failures with President Trump’s record of success.”
Consolidating the support of voters within their party is only part of the challenge. In a closely divided state like Pennsylvania, they’ll also have to win over enough swing voters to put them over the top.
For Biden, that will mean turning around the pessimism people feel about the economy. The president spent three days barnstorming the state last week, talking about his commitment to helping the middle class and touting his long list of accomplishments.
But inflation, though lower than its peak in June 2022, remains elevated, and gasoline prices are rising again. The average cost for a gallon of regular gasoline in Pennsylvania was $3.819, up from $3.611 a month earlier, according to AAA. It was $2.696 when Biden took office in the midst of the pandemic-induced economic downturn.
In last month’s Franklin & Marshall Poll, 45% of Pennsylvania voters said they were worse off financially than they were a year ago, and three-fourths of them specifically mentioned inflation, the cost of living, the cost of goods and services or the cost of food as the reason why.
In that survey, 48% of voters said Trump was better able to handle the economy, compared to 39% for Biden.
Besides touting his efforts to bring down costs, which also include capping the price for insulin for the elderly and allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies, Biden has sought to contrast his solutions with those proposed by Trump, who has called for renewing the provisions of his tax law that expire next year. That law gave 65% of its benefits to the richest 20% of taxpayers and 52% to the top 10%, according to the Tax Policy Center.
“For more than 40 years, our Republican friends have promised that the best way to grow the economy is from the top down,” Biden said last week in Scranton, where he grew up. “But here’s what they don’t tell you: It’s never worked. The benefits don’t trickle down….Folks, trickle-down economics failed the middle class. It failed America. And the truth is, Donald Trump embodies that failure. He wants to double down on trickle down.”
In Schnecksville in Lehigh County, where Trump held a rally the weekend before Biden’s Pennsylvania trip, the former president touted his tax law, repeating the false claim that it was ”the largest tax cut in the history of our country.”
It actually was the eighth biggest since 1918, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which supports efforts to reduce the federal deficit.
He insisted Biden would raise everyone’s taxes. Biden has called for tax increases — but only for the wealthiest taxpayers.
“They’re going to raise your taxes by four times,” Trump said. “Four times. Think of that. Take your taxes and multiply times four. That’s what you’re going to be paying if this person gets in.”
But Trump has his own looming general election liabilities. In addition to the criminal prosecutions of him playing out in courtrooms in three states and Washington, D.C., his role in appointing Supreme Court justices who ended the constitutional right to abortion continues to weigh on voters.
Even Republicans.
Yvonne McConnell, 55, said having an abortion is a decision people should be allowed to make for themselves. Her party’s nominee has repeatedly taken credit for his role in overturning Roe v. Wade. On Tuesday, McConnell voted for Haley.
When the November election rolls around, voters like McConnell and Bimle will face a choice between a Democratic candidate they don’t want to support and the Republican nominee they just voted against.
“I see myself struggling,” Bimle said. “I don’t know what I’ll do.”
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(Pittsburg Post-Gazette staff writers Jacob Geanous, Kris Mamula and Ciara McEneany contributed to this story.)
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©2024 PG Publishing Co. Visit at post-gazette.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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