'In Stewartstown, I'm in the minority': Pennsylvania Democrats compensate for rural disadvantage.

Tuesday, September 10 will see the televised discussion between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in this crucial November state. In Republican-held rural areas, the Democratic candidate is using an enthusiastic activist network to close the deficit.

Rural Pennsylvania repeats. Fired sunflowers, dried corncobs, woodlands, cemeteries, sleepy towns. Half-mirage. Rural Pennsylvania pretends to be unchanging to the distracted visitor. However, something is happening in York County, a southern county with 460,000 residents. An unknown but crucial task two months before the US presidential election: Democrats will no longer leave sparsely urbanized areas to Republicans.

Jefferson County, a small Pennsylvania county that has only voted for a Democratic presidential candidate once, won’t help Vice President Kamala Harris.

But the hundreds of Democrats who visited the county fairgrounds recently felt right at home.

They attended Demstock, the annual two-day therapy, campout, and strategy session at the end of August. In locations where Democrats believe it’s unsafe and isolating, county and regional officials networked and shared voter turnout ideas.

There are few rural Democrats in Pennsylvania, but they could be influential this year. Harris is rallying support in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and the Trump campaign wants to maximize base support among the 1.8 million rural registered voters. He earned approximately 70% of rural 2020 votes.

Rural Pennsylvania Democrats see themselves as the last line of defense against a rural wave that would secure a Trump triumph.

“I know how hard it is to be a Dem in a red county,” Sen. John Fetterman told hundreds at the fairgrounds. “You are the unsung heroes of your work. Thank you, because you don’t hear that enough.”

Fetterman has helped promote Demstock since he was lieutenant governor, presenting at the yearly festival. As he told the gathering, he skipped the Democratic National Convention that week but never Demstock.

“They are not in the business of turning a red county blue,” Fetterman told reporters before his address. “It’s about jamming things up, playing on the margins instead of letting Trump carry rural Pennsylvania.”

What began as a backyard party in 2018 has grown into the commonwealth’s preeminent rural Democratic event, one that Democrats in Georgia and Texas have asked organizers to imitate. The PAC raises thousands annually selling Demstock tickets. Everything not paid on operating costs supports rural candidates, especially those without state party support.

As RVs, trailers, and tents filled the Jefferson County fairgrounds on Friday afternoon, Demstock began. Nighttime partying lasted till 2 a.m. One person projected DNC highlights on an outdoor projector, but the campfire was the main attraction. Democrats drank Bud Light and moonshine and baked “mountain pies” over the fire (two white bread slices with your filling). Butler County Democrats fired horizontal fireworks over the field as “Don’t Stop Believin’” played in the background.

The next day, Demstock treasurer and PA Dems northwest regional caucus chair James Heckman said the “magic” of Demstock isn’t in Fetterman and statewide candidates’ standing-room-only dinner. That’s typical of Democratic events.

He stated, “The real magic is up at that bonfire, everybody getting to know each other, talking, networking, exchanging numbers.”

“When you look at Pennsylvania and what determines our 19 electoral votes, it’s going to be the middle of the state; it’s the margins,” Heckman said. The connections built around this fire assist accomplish that.”

Pennsylvania Democratic Party Chair Sharif Street termed Demstock “a support group, an energizing group, a feel-the-love group and a lot of fun.”

It also tracks rural Obama-Trump-Biden voters who will decide Harris’ Pennsylvania outcome.

The Trump campaign is counting on high turnout among rural Pennsylvania base supporters, particularly in the west, to neutralize Harris’s support among suburban young and minority voters. The campaign also targets white, working-class Trump supporters who switched to Biden.

“We got a lot of them back in 2020, and it’s going to be critically important that we keep those folks,” Street told NOTUS.

“The national party and media talk so much to suburbanites. Strategy requires 67 counties. He added that in other locations, targeting a few counties is enough, but not here.

Some local Democratic leaders also disagreed with their state party on rural voter outreach.

“The state party was telling candidates statewide, ‘Don’t invest in signs, don’t do billboards,’” said Butler County commissioner, DNC delegate, and former state committee member Kevin Boozel. But out here, it’s one of our main communication methods. When they told our candidates that, I said, “That’s wrong.”

Boozel has been going to Demstock for years and proudly claims to have brought the first RV. (“I told them I’m too old and fat to lie on the grass. Need a camper.”)

As a major rural Democrat at the state level, Boozel attributed Trump’s 2016 election to state party “complacency”.

We can’t rely on densely inhabited areas to vote. Kids, wake up—Allegheny is becoming purple. Erie elected a Republican executive. Philly is carrying it, but I don’t know how long they’ll carry enough, he said.

I told a DNC official I wanted to lose less. I may not win, but I hope to lose less.”

Demstock attendees indicated in interviews that rural Democrats are not only isolated but also at risk. They cite the automobiles wrecked, house windows smashed, and county fair mockery or ostracizing as a result of their Democratic support.

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