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.

“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.

“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.

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.

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 of unaccompanied migrant children in Lehigh Valley.

“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.

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.

“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.

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.