In Butler, will Trump try something new? | PA 2024 Newsletter

📅 There are 31 days until Election Day.

In this edition:

— Julia Terruso, Anna Orso, Gillian McGoldrick, Aliya Schneider, Katie Bernard, Fallon Roth, Ximena Conde, Oona Goodin-Smith, pa2024@inquirer.com

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As former President Donald Trump readies to return to Butler, Pa. this weekend, national politics reporter Julia Terruso looks at what is at stake:

Former President Donald Trump has said that the first line he’ll deliver when he returns to the stage in Butler Saturday will be, “...as I was saying.”

But to seize what is sure to be a closely watched moment, he may want to switch up the speech that follows.

Returning to Butler — the site of the first assassination attempt on a president in 43 years — will surely motivate an already engaged base, but how Trump can expand his support with the small but critical pool of moderate undecided voters remains a question with less than six weeks to Election Day.

“It’s these same old things he says at these rallies,” said John Grenci, a Butler native and alternate Trump delegate at the RNC. “Even though there aren’t independents, generally, at his rallies he could at least say things that maybe have a domino effect toward reaching independents.”

Grenci, who has attended five Trump rallies this year along with the convention, won’t be going on Saturday. He remains a huge Trump supporter and he sees the value in the former president showing resilience, but he’s concerned Trump will replay the same 90-minute rally speech for which he’s come to be known – and criticized.

“He’s largely preaching to the choir and I get the intent is to galvanize the choir but personally, I think there’s too much calling names,” Grenci said. “This is the most winnable election. He’s got a great record but then [at the rallies] there’s this buzz, there’s this frenzy, you get caught up in the moment, everyone’s raising their fists in the air.”

Ahead of Trump’s RNC speech, which came just five days after the Butler assassination attempt, speculation swirled about whether Trump might use the moment to appeal to the center.

For the first 15 minutes, Trump delivered a soft-spoken recounting of the moments when gunfire interrupted the rally, denouncing violence and urging unity. He spent the next 60 minutes giving a version of the rambling, often-angry address that typically ends with supporters filing out early.

“With Donald Trump, it’s not so much that having rallies hurts him with independents,” Democratic strategist Mike Mikus said. “It’s what he says at these rallies. He has become increasingly dark, increasingly divisive — and I don’t think it’s gonna work with the swing voters.”

✉️ When some Philadelphians received their mail ballots this week, the return envelopes were already sealed — likely a result of humid weather, the department of state said. If you or someone you know received a sealed ballot, here’s how you can still vote by mail.

🪑 In Pennsylvania’s state House, Democrats have a one-seat majority as Republicans are vying to take back control in November. Here’s a look at the most competitive races to watch.

💰 State treasurer is a position of power and consequence. But even in a year where all eyes are on Pennsylvania’s elections, the candidates vying for the role in the commonwealth are answering questions like: “Does this state have a treasurer?”

🏛️ U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans suffered a stroke in May. Five months later, he still isn’t back in D.C., and has missed hundreds of votes in Congress. Still, the Philadelphia Democrat says he is prepared to serve his full 5th term.

🙋‍♀️ For 298 years — since before the Revolutionary War — Pennsylvania has not had a female leader, and voters have never elected a woman as governor or as U.S. senator. Does the state’s lacking record offer clues or warning signs about its current willingness to elect the nation’s first female president?

🗳️ Federal prosecutors this week delivered their most extensive accounting of the evidence they say proves Trump criminally conspired with others to overturn the 2020 election. In one instance, a prominent Philly GOP operative allegedly urged violence outside a Detroit vote counting center, saying: “Make them riot. Do it!!!”

💬 During the first debate in Pennsylvania’s nationally-watched Senate race Thursday, Republican candidate Dave McCormick repeatedly attacked Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey as a “weak” career politician, while Casey cast his challenger as a carpetbagging financier “bought and paid for by … big corporations and billionaires.”

🎤 We’re now passing the mic to City Hall reporter Anna Orso for a look at how Philly’s working class electorate is shifting away from Democrats:

The working class in Philadelphia was once a reliable voting bloc for Philly Democrats, but that appears to be slowly changing.

We analyzed precinct-level data over the last few presidential elections, and found that Democrats have lost the most ground in neighborhoods where education rates are lowest and poverty rates are highest.

That could spell trouble for Vice President Kamala Harris’ chances in Pennsylvania, as 20% of the state’s Democrats live in Philly.

Here are some takeaways from our look at the city:

🏙️ Democrats bled more votes in Philly in 2020 than in any other Pennsylvania county. Biden performed worse than Clinton in 41 of the city’s 66 political wards.

🏙️ Philadelphia precincts with the highest proportion of residents in poverty shifted furthest to the right. But it wasn’t all bad news for Democrats – they gained ground in wealthier areas of the city, with precincts with the lowest poverty rates shifting left.

🏙️ The trend was consistent across racial groups, but it was the most stark in majority-Latino neighborhoods. Democrats lost more votes in those precincts than in ones where a plurality of residents were white or Black.

🏙️ Taken together, it means Philly’s share of the overall Democratic vote in the state is declining. The 2020 election marked its lowest share in a presidential year this century.

📈 Midwest nice: Ohio Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz set a cordial tone during Tuesday night’s VP debate – a stark contrast to the tone typical of presidential debates during the Trump era. It exemplified “Midwest nice” as the candidates shook hands, spent time chatting on stage after the debate and even at times suggesting they agreed with one another. But the congeniality on the stage was peppered with passive aggression (a key ingredient of Midwest nice, according to the native Midwesterners on our team) — and compliments and agreements were laced, often in the same sentences, with not-so-subtle jabs against their opponent.

📉 Trump’s surrogates: Former presidential candidate-turned-Trump surrogate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. held a closed-to-the-public town hall event in Germantown Monday featuring several influencers, health experts, former Green Bay Packer Brett Favre, and British celebrity Russell Brand. The common thread among them: They either experienced addiction themselves or saw it affect their communities. The “Make America Healthy Event,” which the Trump campaign invited media to attend, ran two hours and was largely an earnest conversation about how rehab treatment is hard to access. But the tone of the event shifted whenever Brand took the mic. Though well received by the 15 town hall participants, Brand’s denunciation of “rationalism, materialism, bureaucracy, technocracy, globalism in its current form” was hard to follow. Kennedy wrapped the event by proposing the federal government tax marijuana sales, which could pay for the community rehab farms and other initiatives, but it was unclear whether Trump has committed to those ideas.

📉 Erin McClelland: Gov. Josh Shapiro delivered the latest (and biggest) blow to Democratic nominee Erin McClelland’s campaign for treasurer this week when he told The Inquirer he would not make an endorsement in the race. McClelland had previously made waves when she criticized Shapiro when he was under consideration to be Harris’ running mate. McClelland had hardly raised any money since her upset win in the primary election, plus she lost the support of key labor unions that usually support Democrats, including the Philadelphia Building Trades Council and the Pennsylvania Conference of Teamsters that endorsed her opponent, incumbent Republican Treasurer Stacy Garrity.

Get out the vote efforts are ramping up across the region — including in Bucks County, where locals like internet celebrity Robin Robinson stripped down to show you don’t even have to get dressed to cast your ballot.

➡️ These pending lawsuits in state and federal courts, which could change how votes are counted in Pennsylvania in November.

➡️ Whether the power of music will bring more Gen Z voters to the polls, as Philly DJs prepare to appeal to the youth on Election Day.

🗳️ One last voting thing: There are important races up and down the ballot in Pennsylvania beyond the presidency, from statewide offices to seats which could determine control of Congress. Learn about the candidates with our voters guide.

That’s it for us this week. Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you back here next Friday – same time, same place. 👋