Can Kamala Harris win back support in Pa.’s Trump-friendly Rust Belt?

NANTICOKE, Pa. — Jim Watkins felt surrounded. Signs for former President Donald Trump dotted the lawns across the street. Next door, a flag fluttered brazenly in the wind reading: ”Trump 2024: F— your feelings.” So Watkins draped a large anti-Trump banner with an expletive over his porch and zip-tied it to his banister.

“He’s gonna ruin our democracy,” Watkins, a 66-year-old retired union plumber and lifelong Democrat, said of the former president.

In this narrowly divided former coal town of about 10,000 people nestled in the foothills of Luzerne County, national politics is either plastered on your porch or a topic best avoided. It’s the type of place that could decide the election as Trump looks to shore up support with white, working-class voters in the key swing state of Pennsylvania, and Vice President Kamala Harris tries to replicate President Joe Biden’s gains from 2020 by appealing to a political middle, including some voters who say they feel disenchanted with both parties.

Once Democratic strongholds, Nanticoke and other former manufacturing towns and small cities — like Johnstown and Bristol — started on a rightward shift about a decade ago that was supercharged by Trump’s populism. Though he lost the state in 2020, Trump pulled more votes out of many historically blue towns along the Susquehanna River in the Northeast and in Southwestern Pennsylvania than when he won it in 2016.

But Democrats also boosted numbers in working-class urban areas like Nanticoke four years ago. And during the last election, Biden won just enough votes in the same areas to swing them as a collective whole, helping him win the presidency.

Taken together, these areas are some of the least predictable, but potentially most determinative, in the state.

“It’s definitely mixed here,” said Brian Kivler, a 46-year-old Trump supporter and off-duty Nanticoke police officer, while mowing his mother’s lawn across the street from Watkins’ house on a recent afternoon. Kivler wasn’t politically engaged until 2016, when Trump ran.

“When I look at the economy, gas prices, the border, my life now compared to the last four years, it’s not as good — and I think a lot of people here feel that way,” he said.

Nanticoke, like many postindustrial hubs, is a town in transition. Named for the Algonquian-speaking Native Americans who settled there, the former anthracite coal mining community was home to more than 27,000 people at its peak in the 1930s. Today, the nearby Nanticoke Creek is still dealing with mine drainage pollution, empty storefronts line Main Street, and Concrete City — a development built to house miners in the early 1900s — is a graffiti artists’ playground and tourist attraction nestled in the woods.

There are some signs of revitalization: Luzerne County Community College is a big employer, as are warehouses for Chewy and Adidas. Some locals have returned to run restaurants and coffee shops and out-of-towners have moved in, attracted by the affordable housing and easy transit routes to major cities.

But 18% of residents live below the poverty line in Nanticoke, which is older, whiter, and less college-educated than the rest of the state. The median household income is $56,000, below the state’s $73,000. And while Nanticoke was put on the map by the Polish immigrants who came there to work in the mines in the late 1800s, the sentiment against undocumented immigrants is omnipresent in 2024.

More than a dozen people interviewed for this story brought up the United States-Mexico border and the economy as the two issues most concerning to them in the town, which is 85% white — down from 94% in 2020. Today, 7% of Nanticoke’s population is Latino and 4% is Black.

“Everybody who grows up here leaves,” said Gene Ziemba, the GOP Luzerne County chair whose grandfather was a mine worker and labor leader in town. “They don’t want to leave. It’s the economy and border. Every state is a border state. The history of this area is immigrants. We’ve embraced immigrants, but not illegals.”

Trump’s economic messaging — blaming Harris for inflation and illegal border crossings, and stoking fear with misleading claims that undocumented immigrants are taking U.S. citizens’ jobs — is resonating here.

A veteran on a bench in the town’s pristine park lamented that his rent had doubled in the last year. A woman walking her pugs said her Honey Nut Cheerios were up to $6.50 for the big box. A retired bar owner complained about the cost of ice cream. A Republican electrician said that he felt Democrats helped his union, but that his savings have dwindled and his “stock portfolio is in the trash.”

Even some voters leaning toward Harris said they were frustrated with the economy and skeptical of the change she could bring, coming from the current administration.

“I feel like I made more money when I was 15 and [former President Bill] Clinton was in office than now, when I’m 42,” said Kim Segura, a Democrat who works at a car dealership. “I’m probably gonna vote Democrat because I don’t like [Trump] at all, but I just don’t see anybody fixing this.”

While Nanticoke is one of several towns where Biden grew the presidential vote for Democrats in 2020, it’s in the only county that voted for Obama and then Trump to then stick with Trump in 2020. And there are concerning signs for Democrats here. Last year, the town elected a Republican to the state House for the first time in 50 years, and Luzerne County has seen a big increase in GOP registrations over the last four years.

“I used to be a Democrat. I voted for Obama twice, I did all that. You know, I bought into the lie,” said Dave Racemus, 38, a registered nurse picking up Trump lawn signs with his mom at the Luzerne County GOP headquarters earlier this month. Now, he’s a Trump Force One Captain, the campaign’s name for outreach volunteers who text and call voters.

In 2020, Luzerne County — the redder sister to Lackawanna, home to Biden’s native Scranton — had 20,000 more Democratic registered voters than Republicans. That advantage is now down to just a few hundred. And while part of that Democratic drop is due to a purge of inactive voters from the rolls, while other longtime GOP voters may have only recently registered with the party, it’s still a steep decline.

In an election where Harris has won back some of the younger, racially diverse voters who have long been part of the Democratic base, the white working-class urban areas, home to about 20% of the voting-age population, remain a battleground.

Some of Harris’ allies wonder how the historic nature of her candidacy — as the first woman of color to lead a major party’s presidential ticket — is affecting her appeal in whiter parts of a state that has never elected a female governor or senator.

Marian Foose, a cleaner at a local hospital, sat on the stoop of a shuttered bar with her two small dogs, weighing what to do in November. The undecided voter called Trump dangerous and a “hothead.” Asked what was keeping her from voting for Harris, she sighed. “Trump, even though he drives me crazy, he doesn’t take no s—,” Foose said.

“Harris, she’s mousy, and I worry people are gonna walk all over her.”

Thomas Shubilla still struggles to understand the appeal Trump has with working-class people in Luzerne County.

“Donald Trump is a guy that really has only known being a really wealthy guy,” Shubilla, the county’s Democratic chair, said over coffee at the Bus Stop diner. “All his policies are going toward that. They are actively working against the working class.”

As he spoke, a radio ad for Harris played in the diner, touting her “opportunity economy.” Both campaigns are spending exorbitantly to reach voters in places like Nanticoke. Trump and his allies have booked more than $64 million in ad time leading up to Election Day in Pennsylvania — more than he has reserved in Arizona, Wisconsin, and North Carolina combined. And Harris and her supporters have eclipsed that, reserving $77 million in ads, according to data from the tracking firm AdImpact.

It’s not just ads, but an avalanche of volunteers and money dedicated to helping the Democratic operation here, Shubilla said. During a 35-minute coffee interview, three people called him requesting Harris campaign signs. “Everyone has just been like, ‘OK, let’s go, let’s canvass, we can do this!’” Shubilla said.

Gabe Jenceleski, a 22-year-old aspiring vocalist working at Weis Market in Nanticoke, hears plenty of complaints about grocery prices at the register, but he said he’s also sensed a growing interest in Harris. “More people in the area are talking about her, and I think the more they learn, the better she will do here.”

Other Harris voters say they are motivated by the fear of another Trump presidency.

Heidi Jarecki was a lifelong Republican who left the party when Trump became its nominee, disturbed by how he mocked a reporter with a disability in 2015.

“That was it. That was absolutely it,” said Jarecki, a retired librarian who has cerebral palsy. She acknowledged Trump has retained a lot of fans in the region, where she and her husband run a community newsletter. “We were fortunate enough to go to college and graduate school, both of us, and so maybe it’s a different mindset.”

Ultimately, the election will likely come down to the few thousand Pennsylvania voters who are still making up their minds. And towns like Nanticoke are home to a lot of sought-after moderates.

As Megan Kocher, a Democrat running for state representative, knocked on doors earlier this month, she played squarely to the middle, saying she supports term limits and increased education funding, without mentioning her party or the presidential election.

“I think a lot of people feel the same way that I did, disaffected with the government, and it kind of goes like one or two ways, like you either get really involved or you really disconnect,” she said.

Mark Hudak, a 59-year-old independent on his lunch break from supervising a call center, called Harris and Trump “extremes on both sides.” Hudak said he doesn’t agree with Trump’s dismissal of NAFTA or antiabortion actions, but he’s unimpressed by the Biden-Harris administration’s work on the economy.

“I don’t know that I’ve ever been this unsure,” he said.

Nearby in Patriot Square, a woman walking her dog said she feels inundated with advertisements but starved for specific solutions.

“One side, they say he’s gonna cut your Medicare, cut your Social Security, and then the other one says, ‘Oh, we’re so happy with our economy,’” said Esther, an 83-year-old Nanticoke resident who didn’t want to give her last name as an undecided voter, fearful of being bombarded by both campaigns.

“And who’s really gonna do anything? I just don’t know. It’s up in the air. I don’t know who to trust or who to believe.”