--:-- Noelle King: Pennsylvania and its 19 electoral votes could easily decide the 2024 election, and both campaigns know it. So Donald Trump got weird and eerie on Sunday. Her whole life, she's, you will never frack, never frack. There will be no petroleum product. We're going to go to wind. Everything's going to be wind.
--:-- Noelle King: And Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will take a bus tour through central PA this week. The campaigns aren't taking a single vote for granted, And that means chasing votes in places that no one assumes they can win.
--:-- Noelle King: Harris is investing in rural areas. It's a whole county goal. It's not just the city. And Trump is courting Black and Hispanic voters in Pennsylvania's cities.
--:-- Noelle King: He survived all of those attacks that we get all the time as a Black man. The system against us. Criminal justice unfair. And then you got the, what, the prosecutor running for president? Oh, no. I'm going for Trump.
--:-- Noelle King: That's coming up on Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from BetterHelp. Let me tell you a true story. Last weekend, I got an email from a listener who wanted to discuss their problems with me. And I said, look, I don't think that this is about me personally. At least I hope it's not. Why don't you try BetterHelp.com slash Explained? Absolute truth.
--:-- Noelle King: As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Find the one with BetterHelp. The one is not me, guys. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash explain. That's BetterHelp.com slash explain.
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--:-- Noelle King: Today Explained. Battleground states. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I'm Noelle King. There are 35 days until the 2024 election, and once a week until then, we're going to be looking at one of the seven swing states. They could go either way. They will decide the election.
--:-- Noelle King: Last week we were in Georgia and today we're in Pennsylvania where Philly Bureau Chief Miles Bryan and Vox senior politics reporter Christian Paz have been reporting.
--:-- Noelle King: Christian, tell me about the last month.
--:-- Christian Paz: Yeah, so I think it's always great to go out to what's arguably the most important state in this election. And we went out to Pennsylvania because it's a place where the Harris and Trump campaign have really pulled out all the stops. They've been flooding it with spending. They've been sending surrogates there. I think it's the place that they've campaigned in the most this year.
--:-- Christian Paz: And you also see one of the central themes of the election. That's about the margins. It's about winning votes on the margins just because of how entrenched polarization and partisanship are within each party's base.
--:-- Christian Paz: And it's the kind of place, I think, that Democrats are trying to shave off some of the margins that Republicans really, really win by in the rural regions. And Republicans are trying to pick off a few votes from the big advantages that Democrats get from the big cities.
--:-- Noelle King: OK, so these campaigns are fighting on territory that is not considered their own. Pennsylvania is a pretty big state. Where did you go first?
--:-- Christian Paz: Yeah, so we went out to join the Democrats in the Kamala Harris operation out in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Lancaster is Amish country. It is Amish country. It's historically a Republican stronghold, right? Trump beat Biden there by about 10 points.
--:-- Christian Paz: But Democrats have been making a really big investment in the county this time. It's not just Lancaster. It's across rural parts of Pennsylvania. but we wanted to see this in action.
--:-- Noelle King: We're looking for Stella. You're actually at the right building.
--:-- Christian Paz: We are.
--:-- Noelle King: So we drove out to Lancaster City, where the Democrats have their headquarters, to meet with Stella Sexton.
--:-- Christian Paz: So I'm a volunteer. I'm the vice chair of the Lancaster County Democrats.
--:-- Stella Sexton: Stella told us that Lancaster's so much more than Amish country these days. The economy's booming. Healthcare, my neighborhood, a bunch of doctors are moving in. The county has been adding a lot of young, educated people. It's also been a destination for a lot of college-educated retirees.
--:-- Stella Sexton: My grandparents, for example, moved here. They're in their 90s. They were lifelong Republicans. They are now Democrats since 2016.
--:-- Stella Sexton: And it's the kind of place that Democrats have gotten really close to flipping in the past. Specifically in 2022, the Democrat who was running for governor there lost Lancaster by only 4,000 votes out of more than 200,000 that were cast.
--:-- Stella Sexton: The bottom line is the reason the Harris campaign, Biden and now Harris campaign, made this investment here is not necessarily because we're going to flip it this cycle. It may take one more cycle to outright flip the county, but because the pickup in margin that they can get here is very important to winning the state.
--:-- Christian Paz: What did you see there?
--:-- Christian Paz: Yeah, totally. They actually opened up the office for us. This Democrat office wasn't supposed to be open that day. But even so, people kept coming in throughout the day, picking up yard signs, picking up campaign literature. They were signing up to phone bank, signing up to volunteer.
--:-- Christian Paz: I'm a part-time cashier. I was a teacher for 32 years, so I'm a retired teacher. That included Bobby and Ron Hamilton. They were wearing matching grocery store uniforms from Giant.
--:-- Bobby Hamilton: Did you meet at Giant?
--:-- Ron Hamilton: Oh, no. We're together.
--:-- Ron Hamilton: And your marriage is still strong?
--:-- Bobby Hamilton: We used to DJ together as a part-time job. DJ? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
--:-- Ron Hamilton: They were just so cute. They're longtime Democrats. And that was interesting to us because they said they lived in Mount Joy, which is a conservative suburb. So they're Democrats living in a sea of red.
--:-- Ron Hamilton: But they told us that this year feels different. They don't feel as lonely. And Ron actually put up a Kamala Harris sign in front of his house the other day.
--:-- Ron Hamilton: I'm out front of my house yesterday, just walking around. Car pulls up. Where's your goddamn sign? I said, don't worry about where I got them. Do you want one? And the little, I said, the lady, she said, oh, by all means. I said, well, I'm going to make a special trip all the way down Lancaster just for you, just to get these signs. I'm going to need them. A lot of people are asking for them.
--:-- Stella Sexton: I think a change that's happening that I noticed knocking doors is that there were always Democrats around but I don't know that in our suburban or rural areas that the Democrats realized there were other Democrats as their neighbors
--:-- Ron Hamilton: And I think something that has changed this year in what I'm noticing is that folks aren't embarrassed or hiding it. People are proud to be Democrats and they are proud to represent that to their neighbors.
--:-- Stella Sexton: Exactly. We asked Stella, right, what is it that's causing this change? And she said it's a few reasons. The main reason is like an overarching thing about the Harris and Biden campaign before that. And that's that they said early on, we're going to be competing in these rural areas. We're going to be finding these Democrats that might have felt lonely in the past, might have felt like they weren't being talked to before. And we're going to remind them, hey, we're here. We're coming for you.
--:-- Christian Paz: Yeah, totally. They actually opened up the office for us. This Democrat office wasn't supposed to be open that day. But even so, people kept coming in throughout the day, picking up yard signs, picking up campaign literature. They were signing up to phone bank, signing up to volunteer.
--:-- Christian Paz: I'm a part-time cashier. I was a teacher for 32 years, so I'm a retired teacher. That included Bobby and Ron Hamilton. They were wearing matching grocery store uniforms from Giant.
--:-- Christian Paz: So we followed Laura around. This is so pretty. Definitely got a lot of steps in. We were keeping a respectable distance.
--:-- Laura Mazurkovitz: I think what we're going to do is just like for the sake, like let her go first and say, hey, there's some journalists following us today. And maybe if I just say like, like they're just with a podcast.
--:-- Laura Mazurkovitz: She knocked on a bunch of doors. Oh, he's not home. So. And we got some no's, for sure. So she said she was going to decline to answer questions.
--:-- Christian Paz: And we also talked to some folks who said they're voting Democrat. I am Spanish interpreter, so if the campaign needs anything in Spanish.
--:-- Christian Paz: Toward the end of the evening, we finally ran into... Just wanted to kind of hear how you're feeling about the election. Oh, well, you won't like it because I think they're both garbage.
--:-- Ziggy: He thinks they're both garbage. He's an undecided voter. Undecided voter. His name's Ziggy.
--:-- Ziggy: Looked like we had caught him just after work. He was an early middle-aged white guy. He told us he was a union electrician and he had, you know, his work clothes on him. He was having a drink. He was smoking some cigarettes and said, OK, I'll listen. God bless.
--:-- Christian Paz: So what's his deal? So told us not a fan of Trump. Also wasn't a fan of Biden. You know, companies won't hire somebody that's over retirement age to work in an office. Why the hell are we hiring people to run a country that are that age?
--:-- Ziggy: Number one. I absolutely think that Trump shows signs of being a bullcan. Biden was, oh, he was slipping before he even got elected. And he also didn't necessarily have strong feelings about Kamala Harris either.
--:-- Christian Paz: So we got to watch Laura make her soft pitch. That started with talking about Kamala Harris' support for an expanded child tax credit.
--:-- Laura Mazurkovitz: I want the kid to have food for the next couple years. I think there's enough money in our country to do that. I believe in kindness.
--:-- Ziggy: But that didn't entirely land. Don't get me wrong. I'm not some miser that thinks that kids shouldn't eat by any means. But at the same time, a child tax only incentivizes people to have children. And we have more than enough people going on right now.
--:-- Ziggy: Well, Advance thinks that the only thing women should be doing is having kids or else there's no point to them. It's a bit ridiculous.
--:-- Laura Mazurkovitz: And then Laura moved on to January 6th, but that wasn't necessarily a slam dunk either.
--:-- Ziggy: I hate to say it, like Malcolm X said, at least the enemies that are your enemies to your face, you know who they are. Now, and granted, that's not something... Democracy is not necessarily what we're founded on. We're founded on the republic.
--:-- Laura Mazurkovitz: I don't know. I'm a nurse. Like, I follow, you know, I work at LGH. You know, I, you know, I'm just... We worked on this stuff for building, by the way. We did the electrical for that.
--:-- Laura Mazurkovitz: She was talking specifically about the drugs that are used in abortions that some Republicans want to ban. We use those drugs when people have babies. We use those drugs when people have hemorrhages, when they have a hysterectomy because they have cancer.
--:-- Ziggy: I have pretty good medical knowledge. I do know a lot of coagulants are used for a lot of things. My one-boy had bone cancer. They had to use all kinds of shit on him that they would normally use for abortion-type stuff, especially stem cell as well, you know?
--:-- Christian Paz: So the vibe we got was that he might be leaning toward a third party still, but Laura said that's okay, you know. They're going to circle back. This is just the first step. When we will circle back to him.
--:-- Noelle King: So the Democrats are coming out of the closet in Lancaster. But the point is the Harris campaign has to win over people who did not plan to vote Democrat. Whose job is that?
--:-- Christian Paz: Totally. That's where the door knockers and canvassers come in. They're running this operation on the ground.
--:-- Christian Paz: We met Laura Mazurkovitz. She's a nurse, early 40s, nice white lady. and it looked like she'd shown up just after work. She was wearing some turquoise scrubs.
--:-- Christian Paz: The energy she had was really gentle, but it was persistent. She is always working the angle, and she told us that winning over voters is kind of like trying to convince a person to stop smoking.
--:-- Laura Mazurkovitz: You know, you're not trying to get, like, the patch on their arm that day. You're just like, hey, you know, you do, like, they're in, like, a pre-contemplation state. You know, so you're just like, hey, I wonder if, you know, I'm just going to mention this, but we're not, you know, I see you in three months. So we'll talk about it then.
--:-- Noelle King: Support for today explained comes from built rewards these days it seems like everybody has a rewards program you swipe your card and you get one cent on the hundred dollars But with your rent frequently you just pay month after month You never get anything from it other than that roof over your head. Not anymore, says Built Rewards.
--:-- Noelle King: Built Rewards says it lets you earn points on your rent. By paying rent through Built, they say you can earn flexible points that can be redeemed toward hundreds of hotels and airlines, perhaps a future rent payment, your next Lyft ride, and so much more.
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--:-- Noelle King: When you're ready to travel, they say Bilt points can be converted to miles or hotel points all around the world. You can earn points on rent and around your neighborhood wherever you call home by joining Bilt.com slash Explained. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash explained.
--:-- Noelle King: No generic answers. No frustration. Visit sierra.ai to learn more.
--:-- Noelle King: Support for Today Explained comes from Upwork. If you run a business, you know that scaling your business requires the right expertise at the right time.
--:-- Noelle King: I sometimes wonder how many of you are running businesses out there. I would love to know. Please email me, noelle at king dot com.
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--:-- Noelle King: That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com, Upwork.com. It's Today Explained. We're back with Vox senior politics reporter Christian Paz. Christian, earlier in the show, we were in rural Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Amish country. Where are we this time?
--:-- Christian Paz: Yeah, so now we have to move 75 miles east, and we're in North Philly. A couple weeks ago, Miles and I went out there to meet up with a group called the Black Conservative Federation.
--:-- Christian Paz: So naturally, one of the big stories of this election has been that Trump has been doing better in the polls with black and Latino voters this cycle. Specifically, black voters. He's winning like 10 to 15 percent of support across polling averages.
--:-- Christian Paz: And that's a pretty big step up from 2016 and 2020. And Trump was doing better before Biden dropped out and Harris became the nominee. But they're still banking on being able to win over more support from black and other voters of color.
--:-- Christian Paz: So earlier this month, a black voters for Trump tour swung through a few key states. And we decided to meet up with them in Philly.
--:-- Christian Paz: Hi, how you doing? Good, good. We're with Vox News.
--:-- Christian Paz: The tour started in a cheesesteak spot called Max's, and the biggest name there was Congressman Byron Donald.
--:-- Byron Donald: Did you get a cheesesteak? Oh yeah, I'm about to eat it right now. With onions, provolone, because I don't do that whiz, provolone, with mayo.
--:-- Byron Donald: Donald's is from Florida, and he's become one of Trump's main surrogates to black communities. If you're a black man, Hispanic man, white man, you're working hard every day, and the money you earn doesn't go as far, that hurts your family that hurts your kids so they're looking at this situation saying wait a minute kamala you're in charge you made this inflation happen why should i support you that's number one number two this immigration problem which is a serious problem especially in inner cities people are saying wait a minute why are illegal aliens getting food getting shelter getting an education while my family and my child is struggling. It's not right and it's not fair.
--:-- Byron Donald: They're looking at that. Trump won only about 7% of the black vote in Pennsylvania in 2020. But Donald told us he thinks Trump can double that this year. I think that the floor is 12 to 15%. I think that's the floor today. Why? Because black people are sick and tired of being sick and tired, man.
--:-- Christian Paz: Christian, we've been hearing this on Today Explained in our reporting all year long. people in poor communities of color honestly feel they were doing better under Donald Trump, whether or not there's a congressman making the case to them.
--:-- Christian Paz: But here we have Donald's making that case. And how does this go over to the people he's talking to?
--:-- Christian Paz: Right. It's a pretty compelling case. But at first, it didn't really go over at all because there wasn't anyone around to make that case to. Ha! Like, the event wasn't announced until late afternoon the day before. and there really didn't seem like there was an attempt to gather a big crowd or anything.
--:-- Christian Paz: There it is. There's the bus. What are we seeing? We're seeing this blue bus. It says in red, I'm not with her. Under it in a bigger white letter says, Black vote is for Trump. Register to vote today.
--:-- Christian Paz: So we had a lot of people stopping to check the scene because it kind of felt like maybe they hadn't seen a Trump bus or a Trump campaign event like this show up in the neighborhood before. But it wasn't enough to convince these folks to vote for him.
--:-- Christian Paz: Are you going to vote? Yeah, I'm going to vote. But not for this guy.
--:-- Christian Paz: Miles actually talked to one of these people, a carpenter, who went by B. Is there anything that can convince you to vote for Trump? Huh? No, not really. You know, he's a criminal. He's under investigation. You know, you've been indicted, just like most of my homies around here. You've been indicted, so how could you run for president?
--:-- Christian Paz: So you wouldn't vote for your buddies for president? No, hell no. They're criminals. Why would I do that?
--:-- Christian Paz: Entirely relatable. All right, so this event is very chaotic. I guess the question was but was it a success We did eventually see some Trump folks walk by That included a woman from the neighborhood named Sheila She lives in the neighborhood around Max's.
--:-- Christian Paz: And this is one of those neighborhoods that saw a spike in gun violence during the pandemic. She told us she wasn't sure who she was going to vote for. I just want us to be safe. And I don't want to go through no struggles, no war.
--:-- Byron Donald: And now this time we got to see Byron Donald make the Republican pitch to her. I've been on the plane with him. I've been in the car with him. I've been on the road with him. You sound like Trump sounds. I don't want any wars. I just want things to make sense.
--:-- Sheila: When you get away from all of this, the news and the cameras and all of that, and you talk to him man-to-man, one-on-one, that's what he says.
--:-- Byron Donald: She voted for the thing that's caused inflation, that's driven up the cost of everything in our country, whether it's Philly, Detroit, Florida, New York, Chicago, L.A., doesn't matter. She did that. Now, so I look at policies first. What you talking about? Leadership.
--:-- Sheila: I've seen Kamala. I know Trump. That dude's in charge. Do you think he's going to win? I think he's going to win. I believe so. I think he's going to win in Pennsylvania, too. But especially because you're thinking like you're thinking. When Russia comes, who you want to go negotiate? A man.
--:-- Christian Paz: And there we also got a little bit of some of the gender dynamics of this election and the way that Trump is talking to women now. He's kind of assuming this protective role and leaning into a little bit of the gender gap that we have in our politics.
--:-- Christian Paz: Yes, and Ms. Sheila is a good old-fashioned sexist, but she also sounds persuadable. She sounds like she could vote for Donald Trump.
--:-- Christian Paz: Was anyone there completely persuaded? Actually, yeah. Can I share something with y'all too? This is Sheila's daughter, Sherita White.
--:-- Sherita White: I just want to say, when Trump was in a cheer, Blake people was up. And I wanted Trump back in a cheer because I've been struggling ever since he's been out of the cheer.
--:-- Sherita White: Sherita's exactly the kind of Black voter that the Trump campaign is hoping to win. She was really eager to talk to the media. She was going around sharing her story about how much things have changed since Trump was president.
--:-- Sherita White: She said that back when Trump was president, she had a good job in health care. She was living in a middle-class neighborhood, and she had some money because of stimulus checks. But things have gotten really hard since then. She lost her job. She lost her housing. Her husband died. Her kid has Crohn's disease. and she's living in a neighborhood of Philly, Kensington, best known for being an open-air fentanyl market.
--:-- Sherita White: I'm in a neighborhood that I don't want to be in. But if Trump get in his chair, that can change. I might can move and everything. But people is not supporting him. They talk so much trash and say this man is ignorant. No, we need somebody like that. How you think you're going to reach the people? We ain't going to reach them talking like, yo, let's keep it real. We need somebody tough and ratchet with their mouth. Trump is that man.
--:-- Sherita White: I need to survive. And these streets of Philadelphia, it seems like they're turning me into New York now. Everything is high here. You know, people can't even afford to get a water. I don't know too much about politics. But the only thing I know, my income's changed. And if I need that man to get in a chair to fix my income, I'm all down.
--:-- Christian Paz: Donald Trump listens to this episode and is like, get me Sharita's number. is Sharita definitely going to vote? Well, that's the thing. We noticed that the Black Voters for Trump team didn't follow up and get her information. Huh! They didn't log it in an app. Guys! And they didn't even check to see if she was registered to vote to begin with.
--:-- Christian Paz: And that brings me to a kind of important point, which is this operation, Black Voters for Trump, isn't being formally run by the Trump campaign. It's a Black Conservative Federation operation. Ah. And there are lots of these kinds of operations trying to engage voters, but many of the operations aren't being led by the Trump campaign. They're being led by Trump-aligned PACs or outside groups.
--:-- Christian Paz: They're just now registering voters at Trump rallies, hiring canvassers. And it's not like a formal operation in the way that we saw in Lancaster. There's this reliance on these outside groups to handle the ground game for them.
--:-- Christian Paz: I mean, the Trump campaign didn't even open their first formal campaign office in Pennsylvania until June. Christian, your reporting from Pennsylvania suggests that the Trump team has a very strong message, but a very disorganized ground game. And the Harris team has a very organized ground game.
--:-- Christian Paz: And yet, in the tape you brought back, it's just not clear to me that that message is landing. And that's what we saw in our reporting. The Trump team's message we saw was clean and simple. Life was better five years ago. You had more money in your pocket. And Harris's team has a more complicated message to sell. It's more about policy than feelings.
--:-- Christian Paz: And they've had less time to do it. And that's why they're relying on this ground game. This gamble that both Trump and Harris are making Trump on vibes and Harris on organizing, it might decide the race. This is Pennsylvania, after all.
--:-- Noelle King: That was Vox senior politics reporter Christian Paz, along with producer Miles Bryan. Amina El-Sadi edited today's show, and Andrea Kristen's daughter and Rob Byers engineered. Laura Bullard and Victoria Chamberlain fact-checked.
--:-- Noelle King: We will be covering five more swing states before Election Day next week. Arizona. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. Thank you.
