Pittsburg, PA
We went to Pennsylvania to ask voters how they’re feeling. Here’s what we learned
A view of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on July 29, 2024.
Nate Smallwood for NPR
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Nate Smallwood for NPR
Who’s going to win?
Voters in a handful of battleground swing states will decide whether former President Donald Trump will return to the White House or if Democrats’ gamble of replacing President Biden with Vice President Harris as their nominee will keep him out.
A Morning Edition team visited Pittsburgh and some of its suburbs to hear from voters in Pennsylvania about how they’re feeling about the revamped race. We knocked on doors, visited local parks and attractions and even attended a family dinner.
Voter turnout here in Allegheny County was critical to Biden winning the state four years ago. More people voted than in 2016 and, even in towns that Biden lost, he still picked up support that got him across the finish line.
Pennsylvania narrowly went for Trump in 2016, breaking its run of voting for the Democratic presidential nominee since 1992. His message resonated with working-class voters here, where the coal, steel and manufacturing industries have been in decline for decades.
On our visit, we learned that plenty of enthusiasm and support for Trump remains.
Retired police chief Alan DeRusso told us he’s excited to vote for Trump again as a “Let’s Go Brandon” flag fluttered on his front porch.
What do his neighbors here in Moon Township think of his political sign, we ask.
“I really don’t care,” he said with a chuckle. “I mean, as a cop, I couldn’t do too much. But as I’m retired, I can do whatever I want.”
He told us he’s a registered Democrat, but that he can’t stand the party anymore.
Alan DeRusso poses for a portrait outside his home in Moon Township, Pennsylvania on July 23, 2024.
Nate Smallwood for NPR
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Nate Smallwood for NPR
He listed off his concerns, including inflation, trans kids in sports and border security, which he linked to Harris.
“She’s been [to the border] once for a drive thru. That was it,” DeRusso said. “What’s come to our border? Nobody knows.”
Some conservatives have incorrectly claimed that Harris was assigned to be Biden’s “Border Czar.” The vice president was tasked with examining causes of migration in 2021, primarily from Mexico and Central America.
When it comes to Trump’s felony convictions – for falsifying business records to hide a $130,000 hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels – the former police chief has concluded that Trump did nothing wrong.
“I think there should be a full investigation as to why those charges were even pursued,” DeRusso said.
Down the street, his neighbor Mahendra Shukla, a naturalized U.S. citizen from India, felt similarly.
Trump’s conviction in New York earlier this year didn’t change his view of the former president and he felt the case was unfair because of when it was tried in court.
“He was guilty, not now, he was guilty whenever he committed the crime, but nobody came after him [then],” Shukla said.
Shukla spoke to us as a construction crew worked on renovations to his home, which he has lived in since 2016.
A neighborhood street in Moon Township, PA on July 24, 2024, where NPR journalists talked to several residents about their views on the election.
Nate Smallwood for NPR
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Nate Smallwood for NPR
He voted for Trump that year and again in 2020, but his politics are not clear cut, he said. He’s a registered Republican. But in 2008, when he became a U.S. citizen and first eligible to vote, he did so for President Barack Obama.
This election, he said he will definitely not be voting for Harris. Shukla said he was concerned that gender and race played a role in Harris’ selection as vice president in 2020. That year, Biden did say he would select a woman to be his running mate but did not explicitly say that it would be a person of color.
So, we asked Shukla, does that mean he’d vote for Trump a third time? “Ideally, I would not like to vote for Donald Trump,” he said, adding, however, that he sees a benefit to Trump.
“Most politicians are two people. One is on the camera and the other is on the back side,” Shukla said. “Democrats and many Republicans, they don’t show their real person. I want to see the real person. [With] Donald Trump, the advantage is that I get what I see.”
A few miles north in Sewickley, Sylvia Marco was thrilled at the prospect of voting for a woman presidential candidate.
We met her as she was helping to lay out booths for a harvest festival near Beaver Street, an area lined with trendy restaurants and shops in this affluent suburb.
Sylvia Marco poses for a portrait in Sewickley, Pennsylvania on July 24, 2024.
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“I liked [Harris] all along,” Marco said. “Of course, I would love to see a woman president because I was all in for Hillary Clinton.”
She’s concerned about Trump’s fitness for office, the GOP’s 2024 platform, the state of democracy and his seeming admiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Her husband, Bob Marco, whom she described as being a little more conservative than she is, was nearby.
“Bob!” she called and he made his way over. We asked if he would be canceling out Sylvia’s vote with a vote for Trump.
Robert Marco, poses for a portrait in Sewickley, Pennsylvania on July 24, 2024.
Nate Smallwood for NPR
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“Yeah,” he responded, chuckling, before quickly backpedaling with “No, I’m not. No, I’m not.”
“If he votes for Trump, he’s being kicked out of the house,” Sylvia quipped.
“I’m voting for Harris,” he said, adding that he doesn’t want a president who is a convicted felon.
In South Heights, a town that sits just off the Ohio River, Reggie and Jim Madonna’s family gathered for their weekly Tuesday night dinner.
There we met their grandson Jimmy Madonna, a 25-year-old working in environmental inspection and compliance in the oil and gas industry. He’s the kind of newly energized voter Democrats are likely to be relieved to hear about.
He sat with us, eating a plate of halupki, a stuffed cabbage dish. He told us he’s always leaned left on politics, but this year, it’s been harder to get excited about the election. Though he disagrees with Trump and is concerned about Project 2025, a roadmap created by a conservative group to expand presidential authority, Biden just wasn’t the candidate for him.
Jimmy Madonna, 25, of Pittsburgh, Pa., poses for a portrait following a dinner with family in South Heights, Pennsylvania on July 23, 2024.
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“If Democrats can’t put up a candidate that can beat Trump and Trump becomes the president, then democracy needs to learn from that,” Jimmy Madonna said. “You have to beat him in an election one way or another, and whatever is produced by him the same way.”
But Madonna said Harris stepping in as the likely new Democratic candidate made him reconsider.
“The day that Joe Biden stepped down, I went from thinking ‘I might not vote in this election’ to ‘I’m definitely going to vote in this election, and be more involved in it,’” Jimmy Madonna said.
The race may come down to voters like Adrian Dilworth of the Hill District, a historically Black Pittsburgh neighborhood, and Cindy Runco of suburban Moon Township.
Dilworth was out and about in the neighborhood, near Salem’s, a grocery store that opened earlier this year to alleviate the area’s need for fresh groceries.
She feels that Biden stepping down was the right move, but she wishes Democrats had considered other candidates. She’s also worried about Harris’ past as a prosecutor and her approaches to criminal justice that have drawn criticism from advocates.
Dilworth, who returned to live in this neighborhood to be near family after many years away, said it needs jobs, more housing and better funding for its schools and roads.
The Hill District neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on July 24, 2024.
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Dilworth said she would like to hear Harris’ plans specifically for the country and Pittsburgh and see them come true. We asked if it mattered at all that Harris could become the first Black woman president. “It doesn’t matter as far as the qualifications. I want somebody who’s qualified to do the job and who’s going to be a candidate for the people,” Dilworth said. “There’s good, bad and indifferent in every color and every race. So I want to see a person that really has the best hearts and minds for the people.”
Back in Moon Township, we met Runco, who had just taken her granddaughter to the playground at Moon Park, where kids played on a splash pad, volunteers walked around picking up trash and as joggers circled the park.
We spoke to Runco as she and her granddaughter watched a plane come in low for a landing at nearby Pittsburgh International Airport.
“I am a registered Republican, but I don’t like the extreme right of the party,” Runco said. “I’m a little frightened by Project 2025 and how that will influence or is influencing the party.”
Runco spent 20 years in a Christian ministry and generally opposes abortion, but feels it is sometimes medically necessary.
She wants a moderate position on that issue and also thinks Democrats veer too far to the left. She’s not a fan of what she called Trump’s “bullying” and him calling people names, but she feels the alleged assassination attempt on him may have humbled him. She thinks he could still move back to the center, which she prefers.
A view of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on July 24, 2024.
Nate Smallwood for NPR
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Nate Smallwood for NPR
“I’m right in the middle right now,” she said of how she will vote.
And now there’s one more factor in her indecision.
“I’m concerned with Kamala, a woman, when you go up against somebody in the world like Putin and what’s happening in China in some of those countries, I am concerned about that,” Runco said. “I don’t know that it’s the right time. Running the country is one thing, but international affairs is a whole ‘nother issue.”
She’s not persuaded by the examples of women who have run other nations.
“Because we are such a large, powerful country. It’s not like if you had a woman in a smaller country. Now, I do consider, depending on who the VP is, if it’s a strong man, that there might be enough.”