Pennsylvania voters send warning to Trump, Biden
An election that was never in doubt has nonetheless cast a long shadow over the campaign for the presidency as voters in the country’s largest swing state went to the polls Tuesday and expressed serious misgivings about their parties’ nominees.
Both Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Donald Trump locked up their nominations more than a month ago, and they’ve trained their sights on Pennsylvania, where the state’s 19 electoral votes could decide the November election.
But as Trump sat in a courtroom in Manhattan during the first criminal trial of a former president in U.S. history, some staunchly Republican voters said they could not vote for their party’s standard-bearer.
“I’m a pretty strong Republican, but it’s hard to support Mr. Trump,” said Terry Bimle, 68, of Bethel Park.
Bimle instead cast his vote for Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who suspended her campaign in early March but who has become a vehicle for GOP voters to register their opposition to Trump in primaries that took place after she left the race.
In Georgia and Wisconsin, she won the support of about 13% of Republican primary voters despite no longer being in the race. In Arizona, another key swing state, she won nearly 18% — more than 110,000 votes.
None of those states has as much sway in presidential elections as Pennsylvania. The vote count Tuesday night — Haley received 16% — indicates just how fractured the Republican electorate is here, but some who cast their ballots expressed outright antipathy for the man who has been the GOP nominee in three consecutive presidential elections — and has been criminally charged in four separate cases since leaving office.
“I despise him,” said Paul Woessner, 63, a retired defense intelligence officer. He’s a horrible person, utterly deranged. He’s destroyed one great political party.”
In the other party, the war between Israel and Hamas led to an organized push by some activists to persuade Democrats not to vote for Biden, though early returns showed far fewer protest votes against him than were cast in the GOP primary.
More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in a military campaign that began when Hamas attacked the Jewish state last Oct. 7. The growing humanitarian crisis — and the role of American aid to Israel in its military operation — has led to a vocal movement within the Democratic Party to pressure Biden to do more to protect Palestinian civilians.
“I have a history of teaching many Palestinian students,” said Hollie Link, 40, a preschool teacher. “I feel really bad for those innocent people not getting aid.”
Link said she cast a write-in vote for “uncommitted” Tuesday, echoing protests in other states’ primaries that have drawn tens of thousands of voters who will be crucial to Biden’s re-election chances in November.