BETHLEHEM, Pennsylvania — Democrats in one of the most important swing counties in the U.S. were eager for Tim Walz to fire up the party faithful during his Saturday visit. They were also hoping he’d pull in some of the still skeptical working-class voters Kamala Harris needs to woo to clinch the must-win state and secure her best path to the White House.
But even the gun-owning, car-fixing Midwest dad is facing skeptics of his own in this former steel town.
On Saturday, the campaign dispatched Walz to a campaign rally in their Northampton County stronghold of Bethlehem, a city of 80,000 in the Lehigh Valley, where voters are known for backing centrists. President Joe Biden won this county by less than one percentage point in 2020, after it went for Donald Trump once and Barack Obama twice. Democratic Rep. Susan Wild, who flipped the longtime GOP congressional seat blue in 2018, is one of the most endangered House Democrats this November.
But while hundreds of Democrats and local residents waited in line to pack into the Freedom High School gym to hear Walz speak Saturday morning, the challenges facing the Democratic ticket in the region were clear around other parts of the county — notably, with younger working-class men.
Walking his dog across town in Bethlehem, AJ Janssen, 47, described himself as a liberal and independent who supported Bernie Sanders in past Democratic primaries. He’s the kind of Democratic-inclined voter the Harris campaign is hoping Walz can attract here and across the country.
But Janssen, who works for the city, isn’t planning to vote. And, Walz’s visit this weekend didn’t give him any second thoughts about his plans.
“I don’t support either of them,” Janssen said of Harris and Trump.
Eli Lovell, 22, works in inventory and receiving at a shipping company in Easton, a city of 30,000 just northeast of Bethlehem. He doesn’t like Trump, but isn’t enthused about Harris either. He doesn’t plan to vote, and Walz coming to the area hasn’t swayed him.
“I probably won’t be there,” Lovell said.
Democrats are hoping Walz, a former high school teacher and football coach, can be the antidote to at least some of that sentiment. And the need to reach out to such voters is clearly on the campaign’s mind, especially in Pennsylvania where recent polls show Harris just narrowly up or tied with Trump as she makes gains with voters on her handling of the economy.
Walz’s team even recently posted a campaign video of Walz surrounded by a group of young men after a rally, where one told the governor that he was an undecided voter but, he added: “I think I’m decided now, though” after hearing the governor speak. Walz told the men to “talk to their friends” about voting, adding his frequent stump speech refrain that even if people aren’t into politics: “Too damn bad. Politics is into you.”
Former GOP Rep. Charlie Dent, who represented a key part of Lehigh Valley in Congress for 14 years and served with Walz for 12, said it was “a smart move” for the Harris campaign to send the governor to Bethlehem.
“Northampton County is the quintessential swing county in Pennsylvania and maybe the country,” said Dent, a centrist Republican who was a frequent critic of Trump before he resigned in 2018.
“I'm not big on making predictions, but I will make this prediction: Whichever candidate wins Northampton County will win Pennsylvania, and the White House,” he said.
It’s likely Walz will have more luck turning out the base in the blue-trending suburbs here than trying to sway working-class men in the county that is a mix of historically Democratic cities and small towns, suburbs and deep red rural stretches.
But Walz has another purpose as well — driving Democratic turnout in the adjacent, redder rural counties in the region.
Saturday’s rally was Walz’s third visit to the Keystone State since Harris tapped him as her running mate. He made a campaign swing through several red counties in Pennsylvania earlier this month, including stops at a local store and a Democratic party office in Lancaster County, where Trump won by 16 points in 2020.
Democrats there are clear-eyed about the objective.
“He doesn’t have to win these rural counties. He doesn’t have to win my county. It’d be nice if we did. I’d love it. They’d probably build a statue of me or something,” said Tom O’Brien, the Lancaster County Democratic chair. “But if he can put a dent in it in places like this, they’re gonna win Pennsylvania.”
“And if you win Pennsylvania, you're going to win the whole thing,” O’Brien added.
At the Saturday rally, around 3,000 people filled the high school gym on a warm fall day to hear Walz speak, according to the campaign. The governor, largely sticking to his campaign stump speech, sliced into Trump, touted Harris’ economic plans for middle-class voters and told the crowd they have “a binary choice between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.”
Democrats still have a major opportunity to boost their margins in the city of Bethlehem and the county’s blue-trending suburbs. In a nod to turning out the base, Walz told the rally crowd if Trump “tells the truth, he doesn’t get a damn vote,” so instead he and Republicans “tell lies.”
Matthew Boyle, 61, was in line several hours before the rally even started — wearing a Harris 2024 that read: “Grab him by the ballot.” He was excited to hear from Walz.
“Trump is a moron,” Boyle said, who lives in Bethlehem and works at a food manufacturer.
And, during his rally, Walz sought to make a connection between his state and this region’s industrial legacy. He repeated a story that he originally told a rally crowd in Erie, Pennsylvania’s other critical swing county, about their shared history: Minnesota miners powered the Pennsylvania steel mills that built the tanks that liberated Europe from Nazi tyranny. Chants of “USA!” broke out.
Democrats are also targeting the region’s significant Hispanic population, in an effort to drive turnout and keep working-class Latinos from turning more toward Trump as families weather the bite of inflation. Thirty percent of Bethlehem and nearly half of nearby Allentown’s population is Hispanic, many with Puerto Rican heritage.
At the rally, Walz recognized the seventh anniversary of the devastating 2017 Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. He was joined onstage by actress Liza Colón-Zayas of The Bear and actor Anthony Ramos of Hamilton, who pressed attendees to vote for Harris and Walz. The audience roared when Walz arrived and they chanted “We’re not going back” throughout the event.
But during the rally, an ongoing series of pro-Palestine protesters waving Palestinian flags and yelling interrupted Walz, in a sign of the ticket’s own tensions with some left-leaning voters.
Democratic organizers here have come around on their support for Walz, after Harris picked the Minnesota governor over their own highly popular Gov. Josh Shapiro. Now, they couldn’t be more thrilled to have Walz in the area, where Democrats are desperately trying to hang onto territory Biden won back from Trump in 2020.
“He checks all the boxes. He identifies with everyone. If there was ever a Joe Schmo or a John Smith, Tim Walz is that guy,” said Tameko Patterson, who chairs the local Democratic party in Monroe County just to the north.
In neighboring Lehigh County, which Biden won by almost eight percentage points in 2020 and includes a small slice of Bethlehem, Democrats see an opportunity to increase their margins — especially in their stronghold of Allentown, Pennsylvania's third-most populous city with 125,000 residents.
Kathy Michalik, 72 and her husband Joe, 74, live in Macungie, a small borough outside Allentown in Lehigh County. They’re voting for Harris.
“Trump is on the same track he's always been on. And that is not for the American people, but for himself,” Michalik said.
In another boost, Democrats in the area have never had so many volunteers to door knock across the sprawling area, Northampton County Democratic chair Matt Munsey said.
But they acknowledged there’s lots of work ahead in the final sprint.
Rob Miller, a 49-year-old independent voter from Bethlehem, said he doesn't think he’ll vote in this election. “Trump sticks his fucking foot in his mouth a lot,” Miller said, but “economically, I probably like his policies better than Harris.”
Josh, 39, a small business owner who lives in Bethlehem has voted for Democrats in the past and said he was worried about Harris’ plan for taxes. He didn’t want to provide his last name.
Who is he voting for? “Probably Trump, even though I don't like him.”
Walz, while he faces some of the same limitations as any Democrat trying to reach key voting blocs in the area, could help shift perception more than Harris — as Republicans are pouring millions of dollars into attack ads in the state to depict her and Democrats as out-of-touch, radical liberals.
“Walz appeals to people who might be skeptical, or who might not be aware of her background,” Munsey said. “I think their values are pretty similar, but it’s a different image.”
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