ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Big-name politicians are descending on Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley in the closing weeks of the 2024 election, where voters in the swingy 7th Congressional District could determine which party controls the House next year — if not the White House.
On Wednesday, House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., joined Rep. Susan Wild, D-Pa., here on a tour of Latino-owned small businesses. The next day, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., stumped for her GOP opponent, state Rep. Ryan Mackenzie in Hellertown, while Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., participated in a voting rights discussion with Wild in nearby Easton.
Next week, Minority Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass., will campaign for Wild at a reproductive rights event back in Allentown.
The race between Wild, a moderate Democrat, and Mackenzie, a Republican with a long family history in the district, is a “bellwether” for the presidential election, Wild said — a true swing district in a swing state that will play a critical role in deciding who occupies the White House.
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“This is a district that has chosen the president, rightly or wrongly, for the last seven cycles, at least — and will again this year. I keep telling people from outside the area: On election night, watch Pennsylvania 7 if you want to know how the presidential is going to come out,” Wild said in an interview with NBC News after several campaign stops in downtown Allentown with Aguilar.
“This is not an exaggeration. This is not hyperbole,” she said. “I guarantee you … as the Greater Lehigh Valley goes, so goes the nation.”
The battleground district, in eastern Pennsylvania north of Philadelphia, is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans; and based on the updated congressional lines, President Joe Biden narrowly edged out former President Donald Trump here in 2020, 49.7% to 49.1%.
Not the Allentown of the ’80’s
In many ways, the district is a microcosm of the nation as a whole — a blend of urban, suburban and rural areas and a region that is becoming more diverse, thanks in large part to a fast-growing Latino community. Latinos are moving here from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala and Venezuela, but also from more expensive regions in New York and New Jersey.
With a boost from Aguilar and others, Wild has been working to turn out Latino voters in places like Allentown, the once-proud iron and steel manufacturing hub whose population is now 55% Latino, up from nearly 43% in the 2010 U.S. Census. Next door in Bethlehem, nearly a third of the population is Latino.
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“People know the Billy Joel song. They think of Allentown as a post-industrial city. But the reality is that this is a city that’s continued to grow since the ‘80s — like, our low point was probably around that Billy Joel song — and we’ve mostly grown on the strength of a growing Latino community,” said Matthew Tuerk, who made history in 2022 as Allentown’s first Latino and Spanish-speaking mayor.
Tuerk caught up with Wild and Aguilar as they dropped by El Mercadito Grocery in downtown Allentown on Wednesday. Earlier, Wild and Aguilar visited El Tablazo Restaurant, a Dominican family-owned restaurant that serves up empanadas, Cuban sandwiches and oxtail stew.
Wild and Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar, center, drop by El Mercadito Grocery in downtown Allentown.Scott Wong / NBC News
They all ended up at La Cocina Del Abuelo (Grandpa’s Kitchen) for a wide-ranging roundtable discussion with a dozen local Latino leaders that touched on Vice President Kamala Harris’ long-term care proposal, cutting prescription drug prices and red tape for small businesses, and the need for more federal services.
Wild served as Allentown’s solicitor before she won a 2018 special election to succeed moderate Republican Rep. Charlie Dent, who, like Wild, had served as Ethics Committee chairman. She won re-election in 2022 by less than 2 percentage points. Polls now show Wild with a slim lead over Mackenzie but within the margin of error.
Though she is the incumbent and older than Mackenzie, Wild, 67, labeled Mackenzie, 42, a “career politician,” noting he has served in elected office for 12 years — twice as long as her. In Harrisburg, he serves alongside his mother, GOP state Rep. Milou Mackenzie.
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Both Wild and Mackenzie are white.
Latino leaders at the roundtable said the congresswoman has spent the past six years building relationships with the community. “She’s been here,” said Greenberg Lemus, a Mexican American and the owner of La Cocina Del Abuelo, adding that he has Wild’s phone number and frequently texts her with concerns.
Aguilar, the No. 3 House Democrat and highest-ranking Hispanic member of Congress, told the leaders that as the Latino community in Allentown — and around the country — matures and learns to access “doors that weren’t open” before, there will be “growing pains.”
“But I can tell you,” he said, “as someone who works with her every day in D.C., Susan Wild has your back.”
A fight over immigration
Mackenzie and the Republicans have attacked Wild as weak on border security, saying that she repeatedly voted against Trump’s border wall and that she’s contributed to the number ofunaccompanied migrant children in Lehigh Valley.
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“She has a failed record on border security,” Mackenzie said in a Thursday interview after a rally with Johnson in Hellertown. “She is on the record calling a border wall ‘silly.’ She called sanctuary cities safer, and she has voted against border wall funding 10 different times.”
Wild pushed back on that narrative during a recent debate with Mackenzie, saying she voted for wall funding once before and knocked him for opposing the Senate’s bipartisan border security bill.
Johnson tossed even more red meat to 150 GOP faithful who gathered to see Mackenzie and the speaker at the Steel Club, a former spot for Bethlehem Steel executives and supervisors that is now a private golf club.
“Every state is a border state, as we say, because they opened the border wide, and ya’ll, they did it intentionally, OK? They wanted to turn these people into voters,” Johnson said, echoing a baseless conspiracy theory Trump has often raised, though it is already illegal and rare for noncitizens to vote. “Why else would they subject the country to these catastrophic results, the human trafficking, the violent crime, the known terrorists who have come into our country?”
Despite that tough border talk, Mackenzie’s campaign, like Trump’s, sees an opportunity to make inroads among Latino voters. A recent NBC News/Telemundo/CNBC poll found that support for Harris among Latino voters is at 54%, the lowest level in the past four presidential election cycles. Trump this week held a rally in nearby Reading, where nearly 7 out of every 10 residents are Latino.
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Mackenzie said he’s attended Allentown’s Puerto Rican Parade and Dominican Festival. But he hasn’t shifted his messaging to court Latinos, specifically immigrants or Puerto Rican migrants.
“The issues in the Hispanic community are the same as the regular, larger community. … They talk about price of living. They talk about immigration. They see in their communities the crime and the drugs that are coming in across an open southern border as well,” Mackenzie said.
“The only thing that we do differently is we put it in Spanish,” he said. “That’s it. It’s the same message, same communications.”
Radio host and executive Victor Martinez, who owns Allentown’s popular Spanish-language station La Mega and participated in Wild’s roundtable, said he’s been “bombarded” by Democrats trying to get on his airwaves. He’s recently interviewed both Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, on his show, but he said he’s seen zero interest or outreach from Republicans this cycle. He endorsed Harris in a campaign video last month.
Wild joins a roundtable discussion with local Latino leaders at La Cocina Del Abuelo, a Mexican restaurant in Allentown on Wednesday.Scott Wong / NBC News
“If they are seen to be catering too much or reaching too much out to the Latino voter, I think that that could upset their base,” Martinez said. “‘Wait a minute: Here you’re telling us that they are the ones taking our way our benefits, and they are the ones to blame for a lot of things and, at the same time, there you are telling them to come out to vote for you and offering things to make their life better?’”
“I think they are having a hard time reconciling those two together, and that’s why we haven’t seen all-out marketing, advertising, trying to get the Latino votes — at least here in Pennsylvania. It’s been mute,” he added.
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Abortion rights and trust
The candidates have clashed on other issues as well. Wild has sought to portray Mackenzie as bad for women voters. In her ads, she’s suggested he opposes in vitro fertilization and highlighted reports that he lied about his age by eight years in a Tinder dating profile.
She’s also taken aim at his past vote in the state Legislature to ban abortions after 19 weeks of pregnancy, with no exception for rape and incest.
Mackenzie said Wild is trying to “mischaracterize” his record and “deceive voters” — he is fully supportive of IVF, he said, adding he has voted for another bill allowing taxpayer dollars to be used to pay for some abortions in cases of rape, incest and life of the mother.
Mackenzie, who is now married and has a child, called the Tinder issue a “distraction,” saying not a single voter has ever mentioned this issue to him on the campaign trail. He said he’s focused on issues like inflation and border security.
“People want answers on what you’re actually going to do to help them and improve their lives,” he said.
With a toxicity level that is higher than typical air pollution, the thick blanket of smoke from Ontario wildfires currently blanketing a good portion of the East Coast can pose a big risk for those whose jobs don’t allow them to remain inside.
According to the EPA, wildfire smoke contains a mix of gases and tiny particles that can irritate the lungs and airways. In sunlight, some of those gases can also react to form ozone, another harmful air pollutant.
As the Air Quality Index in Pittsburgh reached 240 at 1 p.m. Friday, a UCLA pulmonologist recently told NPR that AQI levels of 100-200 roughly equate to smoking a quarter to half a pack [of cigarettes] a day.
Construction workers, like those on the Commercial Street Bridge project, landscapers or others who work outside for a living and must still venture out, should limit their exposure, wear a mask and limit physical exertion.
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“The N95 mask is absolutely the best way to protect yourself and your lungs,” said Dr. Sally Wenzel, director of the University of Pittsburgh Asthma and Environmental Lung Health Institute at UPMC. “If you can’t do that, a surgical mask would probably be next, but not nearly as good.”
A good fit is important.
“You want to be able to — the way we did during covid — put it on your face, breathe in and get a little bit of a suction feeling,” she said. “The mask should collapse a little bit when you breathe in. You want to have as few empty, open spaces for the air to go through so it has to go through the mask to get to your nose and mouth.”
There is no hard and fast rule on break frequency.
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“The longer you’re ‘exercising,’ the heavier your breathing is going to be and the more you’re going to inhale the stuff that’s out there,” she said. “[Breaks] might allow you to regain a little bit of your energy, not to have to breathe quite as hard as you were at the end of that hour.”
For those who can stay inside, the focus shifts to keeping the smoky air out of the home.
Steve Boehmer, owner of Boehmer Heating and Cooling in Beechview, offers some insight.
“Have a good filter in place, a clean filter,” he said. “Another thing you can do is run your fan all the time. Most people’s thermostats have a fan switch: auto or on. Auto means that the fan runs when the air conditioner runs. If you turn it on, the fan runs all the time. That fan running all the time can make your filter work more of the time, keep the air clean and the particles down.”
Filter choice, he said, is important, too.
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“There are different levels of filters based on their MERV rating,” said Boehmer. “The higher the number, the tighter the weave is and the more particles it can capture. But the higher the rating, the more restrictive the airflow is and it can start to hurt your system. A piece of cardboard is a great filter; it’s not going to let anything through. But it’s not going to let any air through either. So you want to be careful you don’t go too high on that rating.”
The EPA recommends setting the air to recirculate when driving as well.
MILL HALL — This weekend, Central Pennsylvania Auto Auction, 41 Airstrip Dr., Mill Hall, will celebrate the 25th anniversary of its annual Classic Car Auction, welcoming thousands of collectors, buyers and enthusiasts from across the country for two days of bidding, entertainment and celebration. For President Doug Miller, however, the milestone represents far more than classic automobiles.
“It’s kind of like a milestone for us,” Miller said, as he reflected on the anniversary. “Because it’s my dad that started this. We lost him three years ago, and obviously we’re continuing on his legacy and things that he wanted to do. It’s not about the vehicles, it’s not about the auction. It’s just more of continuing on what he would want.”
The collector car event is an extension of the business founded by Miller’s father, Grant, and mother in 1987. While the company is preparing to celebrate 39 years of its weekly dealer-only auto auction in August, the annual collector auction has become a destination event in its own right.
“My father started the company 39 years ago in 1987,” he said. “Over the years, as our sales sort of grew, my father took an interest in antique and collector cars. He would go to other auctions and buy cars and thought, ‘Geez, we have our facility here. We should maybe try and do one of our own.’ So 25 years ago, we set up our collector car auction that we hold, and it’s always been the third weekend in July ever since.”
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This year’s event will feature more than 400 collector vehicles crossing the auction block over two days, along with vintage memorabilia, gas pumps, signs, mini bikes and other automotive collectibles.
While many of the consignments come from Pennsylvania and neighboring states, Miller said the auction’s reputation now stretches far beyond the region.
“We have customers that come from all across the United States,” he said. “The consignments come out of Pennsylvania and the bordering states — New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Maryland, Delaware. We have customers that have sent cars from as far as North Carolina.”
The auction has also become much more than a place to buy and sell classic vehicles.
Thursday evening opens with a complimentary cocktail reception featuring live entertainment at Grant’s Place. The auction begins Friday morning with memorabilia before moving to the collector cars. Friday evening includes a VIP gala with dinner, live music and fireworks.
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“It’s like a celebration, not just an auction,” Miller said. “We like to try to provide some entertainment because we’re obviously in a rural area and it gives the people something to do after the sale’s over.”
The event also brings a significant economic boost to the surrounding community. Hotels fill with visitors, restaurants welcome out-of-town guests and dozens of RV owners make a weekend of the festivities.
“We’ll have upwards to probably a couple thousand people come through our doors over the next three days,” Miller said. “We’ll probably have 30 or 40 RVs across the street that people will set up and spend the weekend camping in our parking lot.”
The celebration comes after months of planning by a team of employees who transform the auction grounds in just a matter of hours. Following Thursday’s regular dealer auction of roughly 750 vehicles, staff immediately begin clearing the lot and staging the hundreds of collector cars.
“We go home to shower and come back basically,” Shanan Miller said with a laugh. “We’re here around the clock.”
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Behind the scenes, nearly 100 employees — full-time and part-time — work together on auction days to keep the operation running smoothly.
“It wouldn’t be possible without our employees,” he said. “It’s a lot of work.”
He added that once the first gavel falls Friday morning, everything falls into place.
“Once Friday morning at 9 o’clock hits, it just sort of takes off,” he said. “It’s on autopilot for the weekend.”
For Doug, the family business has always been about more than selling vehicles.
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After graduating from high school in 1989, he briefly attended college before realizing his passion remained at the auction his father had built. His father insisted he learn every aspect of the business from the ground up.
“He said, ‘If you think for one minute that you’re going to leave school and come here and sit behind a desk and direct orders, that’s not happening,’” Doug recalled. “He said, ‘You’re going to learn every function in this business.’”
So he did.
He started detailing cars, transporting vehicles, picking up litter and plowing snow before eventually moving into management.
“And I still do,” he said with a smile. “If I need to go pick up a load of cars, I can do it.”
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Today, he is passing those same lessons on to his son, Jack Miller, who joined the business full time after the passing of his grandfather.
“I’m doing the same thing with my son, Jack,” Doug said. “He started where I did too.”
In following in their footsteps, Jack hopes to preserve what generations before him have built.
“I just want to continue what my dad has done and my grandfather before him,” Jack said. “Do as good of a job as they’ve done and provide the same level of service that they’ve shown me to provide.”
He believes the relationships built over decades are what keep customers returning.
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“I see how it makes our customers feel,” he said. “I believe that’s a huge part of what brings them back here, week after week if it’s for the regular sale, or every year for the classic auction. Just providing good service and working hard — it feels good to work hard and see a positive end result.”
Doug agreed that philosophy remains the cornerstone of the business his father founded nearly four decades ago.
“One thing my dad taught me is that you need to surround yourself with good people,” he said. “Whether it’s customers or employees, that’s what makes you successful.”
That commitment to service extends to everyone who visits the auction.
“We’re very customer-service driven,” Miller said. “You could sell popsicles, you could sell cars or whatever. It’s all about taking care of your customer. That’s what’s going to get them to come back.”
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As Central Pennsylvania Auction celebrates 25 years of its Classic Car Auction, the event stands as both a showcase of automotive history and a tribute to the family legacy that continues to drive it forward.
For the Miller family, every collector car that rolls across the auction block is another chapter in a story that began with one man’s dream in 1987– and one they hope will continue for generations to come.
Pittsburgh sees unhealthy air quality from Canada, MN wildfire smoke
Wildfire smoke caused Pittsburgh’s air quality to deteriorate, prompting a code red air quality alert.
Pittsburgh was under a Code Red air quality alert on Thursday, July 16 due to wildfire smoke.
The smoke originated from wildfires burning in Canada and Minnesota.
A Code Red alert indicates unhealthy air quality, while a Code Orange alert means it is unhealthy for sensitive groups.
Pittsburgh was under a code red air quality alert on Thursday, July 16 as wildfire smoke from Canada and Minnesota settled across the city.
The city’s air quality was expected to deteriorate as smoke concentration at ground level increased throughout the day, with the day’s overall air quality forecast as unhealthy due to fine particles carried in smoke, according to Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
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Here’s what to know about Pittsburgh’s air quality.
What’s the air quality in Pittsburgh today?
The morning of July 16, the air quality was moderate, with an Air Quality Index reading of 55, according to AirNow. But it was expected to hit unhealthy levels later in the day, with the overall daily air quality anticipated to reach dangerous levels with an AQI of 175, prompting Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to issue a Code Red air quality alert. The alert is based on the day’s expected overall air quality and not individual hour-to-hour readings.
Smoke was likely to continue to impact Pittsburgh into the weekend, with a forecast overall daily AQI of 140 on July 17, with the state department of environmental protection issuing a Code Orange air quality alert. This indicates that the air quality may be unhealthy for sensitive groups.
July 18 was likely to see improved conditions, with moderate air quality.
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What does a Code Red air quality alert mean?
A Code Red air quality alert indicates that the overall air quality within a day is likely to be unhealthy, with an AQI reading of 151 to 200.
Because the alert is based on the overall air quality for the day, there may be periods of time with better air quality. It’s a good idea to check the current air quality before going outside.
If you have to go outside while the AQI is at unhealthy levels, AirNow recommends avoiding strenuous activities or limiting your time outdoors. It may be a good idea to move outdoor activities indoors.
Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection also encouraged residents to avoid using gas-powered lawn and garden equipment, reducing the use of fireplaces or wood stoves and avoiding the open burning of leaves, trash or other materials in an effort to reduce fine particulate matter air polution.
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What does a Code Orange air quality alert mean?
A Code Orange air quality alert means that the overall air quality within a day is likely to be unhealthy for sensitive groups, with an AQI reading between 101 to 150.
Those with lung disease, older adults, children and teens should reduce their exposure by engaging in less strenuous activities or limiting their time outdoors when the current air quality is at its worst, according to AirNow.
Wildfire smoke impacting Pittsburgh’s air quality
There were more than 830 wildfires burning in Canada as of July 15, with over 100 considered out of control. Many of the fires impacting the Northeast’s air quality were in Ontario and Minnesota.
Smoke from the wildfires hit Pennsylvania on the evening of July 15, causing hazy skies in Pittsburgh. Conditions were expected to worsen on July 16 as more smoke entered the area, with smoke likely to linger through July 17.
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Is Pittsburgh under a heat advisory?
While Pittsburgh was under a heat advisory on July 15, the advisory was no longer in effect on July 16. The high on July 16 was forecast at 93, though temperatures could possibly fall several degrees because of smoke cover, according to the National Weather Service.
Brandi D. Addison and Karina Zaiets contributed to this report.
Finch Walker is the Pittsburgh Connect Reporter for the USA TODAY Network.Contact Walker at FWalker@usatodayco.com. Instagram: @finchwalker_. X: @_finchwalker.
