Pittsburgh Takes A Star Turn in Political Universe
PITTSBURGH—This midtier city is best known for steel, football and being the oftclaimed birthplace of ketchup. Now it presides at the vortex of America’s presidential election.
Billionaires and political luminaries, including Elon Musk, Mark Cuban, Bill Clinton and Nikki Haley, have descended upon Pittsburgh in the waning days of the race. Legions of out-of-state volunteers walk the neighborhoods, knocking on doors. Campaign notifications bombard phones, partisan ads dominate the TV and digital billboards glow with redand- blue “TRUMP” displays or black-and-white testimonials from Republicans pledging to vote Harris this time.
Pennsylvania, with its 19 electoral votes, reigns as the biggest prize among battleground states, and is a mustwin for Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Its southwest corner has its own distinction as the potential key that could unlock the state and possibly the entire presidential contest.
Despite being a Democratic stronghold, Allegheny County yielded more Republican votes than any other county in the state in the 2022 election, making it fertile terrain for both campaigns to woo voters as polls show them in a dead heat.
The Pittsburgh region once stood solidly blue, and Republican candidates such as Ronald Reagan rarely visited. As manufacturing, coal and union clout diminished, cracks emerged in this Democratic bulwark, and Trump’s populist appeal resonated with many voters who felt left behind. The region’s voting pattern now resembles a target: a blue core and increasingly deeper red outer rings.
This election season, presidential and vice-presidential candidates have visited Allegheny County a total of 17 times, a possible record, according to local officials.
Harris, who plans to be in Pittsburgh for a concert and rally on Monday, is courting Independents and moderate Republicans here, arguing she will protect women’s reproductive rights and democracy from what her campaign calls Trump’s “unhinged, unstable, unchecked pursuit of power.”
Trump officials believe they can siphon some Pittsburgharea Democrats upset about inflation, immigration and crime.
Volunteers for each side are navigating Pittsburgh’s streets to visit homes and mobilize voters, despite residents’ growing weariness. (Many say they now watch TV on mute and no longer answer their front doors for canvassers.)
In August, Will Austin, 43, a former postal worker, drove from Jefferson City, Mo., and moved into a Holiday Inn Express here. Since then, he has worked with the county Republication Party and Early Vote Action, which registers and turns out voters.
Austin’s support for Trump grew when the former president withdrew troops from Syria in 2019, as Austin’s son was aboard the USS Essex headed there. When Trump survived a July assassination attempt in Butler, Pa., Austin resolved to “stop posting memes and get off the couch.” And help Trump win the state.
“I told them straight up I’ll do anything you need me to,” said Austin, who is largely paying his own way, including $84 a day for his hotel room.
On Wednesday morning, he joined forces with about 50 other canvassers from Texas, California and other states for a briefing at a local Double-Tree. Rick Potter, national chairman of the Mighty American Strike Force, another group marshaling votes for Trump, dispensed advice: be neighborly, mind the dogs, ring doorbells only once, and most important, curtail conversations on Steelers game day.
As a sweetener, another organizer said those completing 100 voter interviews would be invited to a December dinner at Mar-a-Lago.
A local volunteer distributed cookies bearing Trump’s face. She elicited cheers when announcing the results of Oakmont Bakery’s informal poll, 21,000 Trump cookies sold, outpacing 6,000 Harris cookies in that suburb.
Austin and a canvassing partner, Frank Paterniti, from Florida, traversed neighborhoods in Baldwin, just south of Pittsburgh. Both Trump and Harris signs decorated yards.
Erica Morgan, 42, a fourthgeneration Pittsburgher whose family once worked at the Jones and Laughlin steel company, was home tending to a sick son. A former John Kerry supporter who cried at his 2004 loss, she now backs Trump.
“If Kamala wins, it’s going to be World War III,” Morgan said. “If Trump wins, we’re going to be able to afford groceries.”
Across town in Squirrel Hill, Joel Rubin was preparing to host a fundraiser. A former deputy assistant secretary of state during the Obama administration, he had driven from Washington back to his parents’ home here to volunteer for Harris.
Rubin, 53, has been conducting Zoom calls from his boyhood bedroom, which still has a shelf of his old cassette tapes, with bands from Rush to the Fixx, and his baseball signed by Hall of Fame Pirates player Willie Stargell.
His mother, Lois Rubin, a retired Penn State English professor and a Harris supporter, said she is anxious about the election, but enjoys having her son home and has even done his laundry and cooked for him.
Fellow native Richard Barish, a 73-year-old retired lawyer, was canvassing Democrats in the same leafy neighborhood where he had also grown up. He flew back to Pittsburgh from Albuquerque, N.M., to help Harris. “We can have a president who is an autocrat,” he said, “or a president who will be good for most people.”
That evening, Tiffany Durish, who works in commercial real estate, and her friend Tina Piper, a registered nurse, talked about the endless campaigning at E-Town Bar & Grille in Etna. Both say they will vote for Trump on Tuesday, but each has household family members backing Harris.
“It’s a house divided,” said Durish, as yet more political ads droned on a TV. “We just can’t wait for it to be over.”
