STRAIGHT OUTTA TRUMPTON
THE CITY OF HAZELTON IN THE PIVOTAL SWING STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA IS NOW A KEY TRUMP HEARTLAND ... WE SENT OUR US CORRESPONDENT ANDREW PURCELL THERE TO DISCOVER WHY A FAR-RIGHT BILLIONAIRE IS GETTING THE VOTE OF THE POVERTY-STRICKEN FOLK OF THE AMERICAN RUS
ON a Tuesday morning, exactly eight weeks before election day, Donald Trump’s campaign headquarters in Hazleton is locked and not quite empty, its sole contents a few folding chairs, an armful of yard signs, a five-gallon water cooler and a printer, still in its box.
Local newspapers announced the grand opening in mid-April, shortly before Trump’s victory in Pennsylvania’s Republican primary. Kathy at the United Mineworkers office next door told me the space is rented until November but there’s never anyone there. Every day people drive up hoping to get badges and banners and leave disappointed.
A few blocks away on Broad Street, the city’s decline is evident in the vacant shop fronts and the gaps where department stores once stood. Neither historic nor up to date, the strip is killing time, waiting for a recovery that never comes. Property owners take what commercial tenants they can get. In the surrounding neighbourhoods, four bedroom houses built in the first half of the 20th century and last renovated when Ronald Reagan was president go for $50,000.
“Hazleton is…” Kathy paused, searching for the right word. “It’s sad, right now. There’s a lot of drugs, a lot of gangs, a lot of heroin overdoses.”
Lewis Beishline, a retired truck driver drinking Bud Lite at the Palace Bar, described a “scum town” plagued by crime. “The city went to hell. You can tell Jesus Christ if you want to,” he said.
“I’ve never seen drugs as bad as it is now. There’s heroin, a lot of pills, so many guns,” said pizzeria owner Keith Kojeszewski, pulling a pistol from under the counter to illustrate his point. In common with almost everyone that I spoke to in Hazleton, he planned to vote for Trump.
Hazleton is the second-largest city in Luzerne County, an area of north-eastern Pennsylvania that once produced more anthracite coal than anywhere else in the world. The county is traditionally a Democratic stronghold. Vice-President Joe Biden was born down the road in Scranton. Hillary Clinton spent her childhood summers in her family’s cottage by the banks of nearby Lake Winola.
George Bush Sr. was the last Republican presidential candidate to win Pennsylvania, in 1988. After initially taking the state for granted, the Clinton campaign has woken up to the threat Trump poses. In August, at a campaign rally in Scranton, Biden played the blue-collar attack dog. “[Trump] is trying to tell us he cares about the middle class,” he said. “Give me a break.”
Trump’s “rust belt strategy” depends on running up large enough margins in white working-class areas to win Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. In Luzerne County, 95 per cent of the population is white. The median household income of $45,000 is well below the national average. Four years ago, Barack Obama won 51per cent of the vote here, narrowly beating Mitt Romney. In April’s primary, Trump won 77.4 per cent of the vote – his biggest share in the state. On the Democratic side, Clinton edged out Bernie Sanders, but with 27,000 fewer votes than she won eight years previously when her opponent was Obama.
In the last two decades, an influx of Latinos, mostly Dominicans arriving via New York or New Jersey, has radically changed Hazleton. In the 2000 census, 95 per cent of the city’s residents identified as white. By 2010, the city was 37 per cent Hispanic. At the last count, the Latino share of the population had increased to 46 per cent. Hazleton made national headlines in 2006 when its city council, led by Mayor Lou Barletta, passed the Illegal Immigrant Relief Act. The legislation introduced fines for employing or renting property to undocumented migrants, and needlessly declared that official business would be conducted in English. Barletta pledged: “I’m going to eliminate illegal aliens from the city of Hazleton.”
The act was struck down by a federal court, but it made Barletta’s career. In 2010 he defeated eight term Democratic Congressman Paul Kanjorski with a campaign that tacitly blamed economic uncertainty on demographic and cultural change. He is seeking re-election for the third time.
“This story about immigrants ruining the town isn’t accurate in the sense that immigrants don’t commit more crime or drain city resources, but everything in that narrative that he’s using is filling the gaps in people’s experience,” said Jamie Longazel, a sociology professor who grew up in Hazleton and has written a book, Undocumented Fears, about his hometown.
“The city is going under, and with poverty comes crime and drugs. And he says, ‘Look at undocumented immigrants taking all our money away’ and ‘The police have to hunt them down because they’re committing all these crimes’… The narrative about race resonates much more strongly than the narrative about economic justice and social class.”
Walking in West Hazleton, I met three elderly ladies smoking cigarettes in the afternoon sunshine. “This is strictly a Democratic city. Although we did vote for a Re- publican,” said the most talkative, a bottle blonde in Jackie O sunglasses. “The reason he (Barletta) was so popular is that he wanted to do something about…” she gave a tiny nod and her friends giggled. Immigrants, I said. He promised to stop them coming. “You said it. I didn’t say it.”
“If they would have just brought their culture, but no, they brought their drugs,” chimed in friend one. “Hazleton was a beautiful city,” said friend two. “We had people from Poland, Italians, all nationalities. They settled in this area and we’ve all gotten along. It’s only since certain ones moved in…”
As they wouldn’t tell me their names for fear of reprisals at their apartment block, I asked them who they intended to vote for. “You think I’d vote for Donald Trump? Oh