How Democrats Lost Western Pennsylvania
Adam Frisch thinks “it’s the dignity, stupid.” The Democratic nominee for Colorado’s 3rd congressional district lives 1,600 miles from Western Pennsylvania – but politically he resides next door. Like Western Pennsylvania, Frisch’s 29-county district has a few blue urban dots, but it’s dominated by rural extractive industries: agriculture, steel, oil, and gas. In 2022, Frisch made national news by nearly unseating the MAGA darling, Lauren Boebert, in this deep red Colorado district. The moderate Democrat is competing so strongly in 2024 that Boebert switched to run in Colorado’s 4th congressional district.
Frisch, unlike many Democrats, understands the Trump phenomenon. He sees a political economy that is tilted toward the urban, knowledge economy consumer and away from the rural producers. The 2020 electoral results demonstrate the consumer-producer divide. Joe Biden’s 509 mostly urban, knowledge economy counties are home to 71% of America’s gross domestic product. Donald Trump’s 2,547 largely rural counties represent 29% of the nation’s economic output. Trump may not possess a coherent working-class economic policy, but he speaks to the rural, producer’s class resentment. Frisch put it to me this way: “Pride and dignity will trump pocketbook issues all the time.”
In 2024, Trump has added working-class Hispanics and a slice of African-American men to his coalition. His GOP is becoming what GOP pollster, Patrick Ruffini, titled his book, Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP. This is evident in Western Pennsylvania, an area once dominated by heavy industry, labor unions, and blue-collar Democrats. In 2024, Trump will win almost every county outside of Allegheny, home to Pittsburgh, and Erie by 20-points – at least. In the 1984 presidential race, Walter Mondale, who otherwise won “zero, none, zip, nada,” took large swaths of Western Pennsylvania over Ronald Reagan. Forty-years hence, the region is politically unrecognizable.
Lainey Newman understands this political vertigo. A Pittsburgh native with strong family roots in organized labor, she was baffled by Trump’s popularity with working-class voters. To understand, she did something unusual: she talked to them. In her consequent co-authored book, Rust Belt Union Blues, Newman explains what happened to the Western Pennsylvania working class when “us-versus-them” meant “Labor and Democrats were ‘us,’ [and] Republicans were the ‘them.’”
A generation ago, a dense network of manufacturing towns, unions, and labor halls created an identity of a “union man” who prized mutual commitment and the collective. In these Western Pennsylvania towns, strong civic organizations and tight communities prevailed. Globalization and deindustrialization have wrought a cataclysmic collapse of labor and union towns. This, as thousands of observers have noted, hit Western Pennsylvania pocketbooks. But Newman and Frisch understand that this economic cataclysm hit something deeper: identity. These working-class voters now sense, as Newman told me, “They, the Democrats, are not us.” Trump may be a charlatan, but he holds multiple rallies where they live: Butler, Erie, Indiana, and Johnstown. He even attended a Pittsburgh Steelers game. Meanwhile, Western Pennsylvania’s working-class voters believe in Newman’s words: “Democrats are not here in our communities.”
Matt Barron confirms what Lainey reports. The principal at MLB Research Associates helped Tim Walz win his first House race in rural Minnesota. Barron specializes in rural Democratic races. He told me that rural, small-town Americans “feel totally ignored” by a Democratic establishment infected by a “rural bias.” The resident of rural Massachusetts admits even “I feel the elitism of [Senator Elizabeth] Warren, who won’t talk to someone who drinks a beer out of [a] can.” But the Democrats’ political malpractice does not stop with vibes. In 2010, the House and Senate shuttered its rural outreach offices. As a result, Democrats possess little knowledge of rural issues and the local festivals and civic organizations where you find rural, small-town voters. A Western Pennsylvania politico admitted to me, “We [Pennsylvania Democrats] ignored the rural voter. We concentrated on Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.” While canvassing, a rural voter told them, “I used to be a Democrat, but they don’t care about us.”
This voter’s sense is not wrong. Another Democratic consultant confided to me, “the party is not interested in the nuance of how normal people live their lives.” Ironically, Democrats need not look too closely. The problems in Western Pennsylvania are anything but hidden. In 1950, half of all American jobs were in the Rust Belt. Since that time, no region has been hit harder by deindustrialization. Western Pennsylvanians not only lost good union paying jobs, but an entire demographic – the metal benders and laborers – feel they no longer possess important societal roles. Deaths of despair ensued. Working-class whites have experienced a decline in life expectancy caused by misery and suicides in slow motion by alcoholism, addiction, and risky life choices. The Ohio Valley, which encompasses Western Pennsylvania, leads the nation in this scourge.
Trump speaks to this working-class anguish and rage. But far too many elected and activist Democrats are blind to this. Jasmine Flores, the Erie City Council President, typifies elite condescension of working-class Americans. Last week, Flores posted on social media that Trump voters, “90% if not more of you red hat followers need to be honest with yourselves and acknowledge that WHITEHOOD you all own or were raised to own because of your SICK family history…YOU ARE A RACIST.”
Trump, as his Madison Square Garden rally demonstrates, traffics in ugly xenophobia. There are those who vote Trump for the bigotry. But an Erie-area Trump voter typifies many of his supporters in admitting to me, “I don’t want to have dinner with him …He is power hungry,” but “those years under Trump, my life was good, and I felt safe.” Democrats build their party around Philadelphia and Pittsburgh’s knowledge workers. Trump, meanwhile, courts Western Pennsylvania’s working-class.
This was not always so. In 2008, Barack Obama sent legions of canvassers to rural, small town Western Pennsylvania. Corry, located 30 miles south of Erie, was just one of these typical lily-white towns, where poverty reaches 25%. The Obama campaign was relentless. And the African-American Democrat took all four of the town’s wards. Obama did not sweep the rest of small-town Western Pennsylvania as he did Corry, but he was competitive. He won Pennsylvania comfortably, twice.
Like Obama, Adam Frisch is relentless and contains multitudes. The son of a Jewish émigré grew up in rural Minnesota, working a family store for miners and ranchers. After time in New York City finance, he settled in Colorado. In 2022, Frisch crisscrossed 24,000 miles of the 3rd district, speaking to voters in a Trump-friendly district. “I’m either brave or dumb” he told me because “I will say the same thing no matter where I was.” He came within 600-votes of victory. In 2024, he has already driven 65,000 miles to reach every nook and cranny of his district. He is optimistic of victory. Frisch believes, “Authenticity and sincerity go a long way.”
Ultimately, Frisch told me his key is telling voters, “I’m not team ‘D’ or team ‘R,’ I’m team Colorado [district] 3.” Councilwoman Flores: Western Pennsylvania’s working-class voters are not closet Klan members. They want someone who is on their side. Trump may be a fake, but he shows up. Frisch demonstrates, for Democrats, the way back.
