Tag: PA

Dawn or Dusk for Pennsylvania

By Michelle Naranjo

Consider me a reluctant Pennsylvania tourist who owns a home here in Lehigh County. It's okay. I know that I will never belong. 

I moved to Pennsylvania with a sound understanding of risk. I moved for love. Sue me. 

From being born in New Mexico into biracial parents -- let's just say that my family has been in what is now the U.S. since my great x17 grandfather -- I think it's cute when people tell me their great-grandfather came to this country. My parents were pretty sedentary but never accepted.

Flash forward: Parents are gone, and I own a house in rural Pennsylvania, and there are days when I drive for glue, or something odd, at one of the local Dollar General stores -- I live precisely three miles between two of the franchises -- and I catch a view of the "blue mountain."

They call everything Blue Mountain everywhere here. There is a road I can drive up and stop to look north or south and hope to see someone crossing as they trek the Appalachian Trail. I yearn to connect with another tourist. 

Those hikers probably won’t stay long enough to see the darkness here that you can also find in England, Wales, Texas, Arizona, California, New Mexico, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. That may look like an odd list of places, but it is everywhere I have lived as a tourist. 

As an outsider, here is what I see:

Between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, there is wealth. Those people have "green" properties, so pay one-third or less than the people who have homes on hillsides and cannot claim the same environmental tax write-offs. Farmers also get a similar tax benefit, even if they let their land go fallow because they can't sell corn or soy to China. 

And there are more people here without any path to wealth. The current jobs are in the distribution warehouses popping up. Forty hours at $15 an hour is a promise that means two or even three jobs for people trying to have a family. Property taxes have disenfranchised homeownership. Landlords are making bank. The worse the school district is, the higher the taxes. 

The best of the public schools between the big cities are impressive with sports and labs, but the lucky from them get to attend any one of the plethora of small, liberal-arts colleges, while poorer districts might get wrestlers into a state Pennsylvania school. Yay, team.

And these are proud people who do not leave where they grew up. Coal is dead. Fracking is dying. They can’t let go.

The 1970s and ‘80s efforts to diversify the workforce here ended in an elevated racist culture. Puerto Rican restaurants struggle to identify themselves as "Spanish" to appeal to the euro-centric Penn Dutch descendants. Imagine what it is like for anyone speaking Spanish at a warehouse. Or, for those who don’t?

Like several of my neighbors, I was too scared to put out my Biden signs. We live in a mix of manicured and aging neighborhoods where yard signs say, “Not a Gun Free Zone” all year long. Our homes are all sent The Epoch Times newspaper unsolicited. The latest issue was about the evils of marijuana and Hunter Biden. 

All of that is to say that Pennsylvania may have been the deciding factor for our new president-elect, but we have a lot to heal here in the hinterlands. Or, as I learned in Welsh, y gwyll, meaning “the dusk.” 

I say "we" like I might stay. There is work to do.

Naranjo is a freelance writer living in rural Pennsylvania.

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Ode to Pennsylvania

By Charles Dervarics

Pennsylvania has had its detractors over the years.  To famed political advisor James Carville, it’s just Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with “Alabama in between.” In 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama got into hot water by citing his trips to struggling small towns in the state where people “cling to guns or religion.”

As a Pennsylvania native with a blue-collar background, I usually don’t take kindly to these references – though the state has had its challenges. As the coal and steel industries declined, those without a college education suffered. And it has a record of social conservatism, perhaps best reflected by the late Bob Casey, Sr., father of the current U.S. senator, who was a pro-union governor and leader of the anti-abortion wing of the national Democratic party.

Fast forward to 2020, and it’s not surprising the state emerged as a political hotspot. Natural gas and fracking have revitalized parts of the old industrial base in the north and west, while the state’s vast middle is still largely Republican and conservative. But the cities, particularly Philadelphia, remain a huge source of Democratic support where concerns about racial injustice and poverty take precedence.

But after Donald Trump surprised Hillary Clinton there in fall 2016, Joe Biden has turned the state blue again for a few reasons:

His home state roots: As he never hesitates to mention, Biden was born in Scranton in the state’s northeast area. The official 2020 tally has him with 54 percent of the vote in Lackawanna County, where Scranton is the county seat. Clinton’s share was about 50 percent. Biden also prevailed in Monroe County, the next county to the south.

Philadelphia and its suburbs: Biden again ran a few percentage points ahead of Clinton in the all-important suburbs and benefitted from higher turnout overall. In Bucks County, Biden claimed nearly 200,000 votes and 51.5 percent of the total, compared with Clinton’s 165,000 and 48 percent. More city residents also cast ballots in 2020, with Biden earning about 81 percent of the vote. 

Limiting losses: While Trump ran up the score in rural locations, Biden captured some areas the president won in 2016. One is Northampton County in the central-eastern Lehigh Valley, which Trump carried by four points in 2016. But current results show Biden with a slight lead there. It’s a similar story in Erie County in the state’s northwest corner.

It wasn’t easy for Biden, who took heat for comments on the oil industry and fracking that likely cost him some votes. But the small gains he made in many vote-rich areas – compared with 2016 – have given him a statewide edge of 40,000 votes.

The president’s legal team has raised challenges in Pennsylvania and other swing states, filing lawsuits to halt counts and challenge votes. So far, those efforts have not resulted in any changes to the Pennsylvania tally.

Charles Dervarics is a writer and policy analyst based in Alexandria, Va. He formerly was a reporter with newspapers in Allentown and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

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