Can Dems win back blue-collar voters?
Some districts may hold clues for 2024 strategies
As the late-March sky lightened to a dappled purple, Tony Milidantri, 81, and his fellow retirees filed into Lori’s Corner Kitchen in Lake Ariel, Pennsylvania, to sip coffee and chat about the issues facing the country.
A union electrician, Milidantri commuted into New York City every day for decades to bring light to the skyscrapers. He took pride in the work and made enough money to build a lake house. Now he worries that rising costs are preventing others from finding the same opportunities.
It’s among the reasons he plans to vote for former President Donald Trump.
“They’ve changed tremendously,” Milidantri said of the Democratic Party, which he left around 2016. “They used to help people. Now it doesn’t seem that way.”
President Joe Biden’s path to holding the White House could hinge on his ability to win back blue-collar voters like Milidantri who live in Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District. The area is expected to serve as a barometer for disillusioned swing voters in post-industrial parts of the country.
Trump won the district in 2020. But it returned a longtime Democratic representative to the U.S. House in 2022. Only two other congressional districts – Ohio’s 9th and Maine’s 2nd – experienced the same trend. The finicky politics reflect their common identity as once-prosperous industrial hubs whose economies declined as manufacturing jobs moved abroad.
Both Trump and Biden have heavily emphasized winning over similar voters in the last few weeks. Trump held a weekend rally in Pennsylvania, and Biden campaigned in his hometown of Scranton on Tuesday with events highlighting his economic, middle-class and tax policies. He plans to stay in Pennsylvania through Thursday.
The contest for working-class voters
In 2016, Trump wooed working-class voters in areas like Pennsylvania’s 8th District with a message centered on economic grievances and a pledge to “make America great again.” He tapped into their anger toward politicians, whom many believed had discarded them in the global dustbin. It worked.
Luzerne County, a part of the district with a strong union presence, chose Barack Obama in 2012 by about five points. Trump won in 2016 by almost 20.
Thomas Shubilla, chair of the county’s Democratic Party, argued that it wasn’t so much that Democrats had “failed unions,” but that they had failed “to voice why Democrats are the union candidates.”
In 2020, Biden leaned into that by touting his own blue-collar roots and moderate message. In front of his childhood home, he unveiled an economic plan designed around building up American manufacturing by using government investments to stimulate the infrastructure, energy and health care industries.
Though Biden didn’t win the district, he built on Hillary Clinton’s lead in Democratic strongholds like Scranton and shrank Trump’s margins in the district’s rural communities.
However, Ben Toll, a professor at Wilkes University, suggested that the incumbent Democratic president might have a harder time this year.
“The mood of the country is still not supportive of Biden’s presidency,” he said. “He needs to win the places that he can win, that maybe other, more progressive Democrats can’t.”
Democrats’ strategies in Trump-won districts
Democratic representatives who have won over working-class, conservative voters have done so by campaigning almost exclusively on the infrastructure and jobs bills they’ve passed. That may provide a road map for Biden in 2024.
Rep. Matt Cartwright, a Democrat, has served Pennsylvania’s 8th District since 2013, partly due to his focus on passing district funding projects.
Gerald Ephault, a 76-year-old selfdescribed “conservative Democrat,” said that where Biden was doing a “good job,” Cartwright was doing an “excellent job.”
“He’s bringing in money, and he’s supporting our Department of Defense industries. He’s supporting infrastructure,” Ephault said.
The president appeared recently with Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Toledo, who has held Ohio’s northwestern 9th Congressional District since 1983 as her state shifted from purple to red. Kaptur, currently the longest-serving woman in Congress, credits her tenacity to building and maintaining the industries in her district.
“Voting for the automotive industry, not against it. Voting for the steel industry, not against it,” said Kaptur, 77. “People remember.”
United Auto Workers Local 14 President Tony Totty said some members support Trump, but he can’t see them backing Kaptur’s Republican opponent, who supported anti-union legislation in the statehouse.
Totty praised Kaptur for securing federal funding for an electric vehicle center that will train students and mechanics as the auto industry evolves.
“You won’t agree with her 100 percent of the time, but she is effective,” he said.
Democratic Rep. Jared Golden, 41, has served Maine’s northern, rightleaning 2nd District since 2018. Trump won it in 2020 by 7 points.
When it comes to winning over more conservative voters, Golden, a Marine Corps veteran who has lived in the area for most of his life, doesn’t have a replicable strategy. “At the end of the day, it’s just the majority of the voters in this district recognize me as someone who gets them,” he said.
Jerry Bernatchez, 61, voted for Trump in 2020 but supported Golden in 2022 because of the congressman’s “down to earth,” “typical Mainer” style.
If Biden and national Democrats want to win back voters like Bernatchez, Golden suggested they need to spend more time talking with and understanding them. “The party is just a little out of touch with working-class communities,” he said.
Haley BeMiller is a reporter for the USA TODAY NETWORK Ohio Bureau; Karissa Waddick and Margie Cullen are USA TODAY reporters