I Think Senator-Elect Fetterman is on to Something Here

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "Every County, Every Vote"  

For almost a decade, I lived in rural Butler County, Pennsylvania.  I know exactly how it feels to be a Democrat in a county where two thirds of the registered voters are Republican.  Enthusiasm for voting in local elections or state legislative races where the outcome is a foregone conclusion is hard to work up.  Candidates for statewide office on the Democratic party side never hold events in the county, to see them in person requires driving into Pittsburgh.  

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Trump held a rally at the airport just outside of the county seat of Butler.  It was apparently a memorable event, where hundreds of attenders were brought in by bus, and left waiting in the cold for hours, or having to walk back to where they'd parked in freezing weather.  I remember reading an article with several interviews in the local daily, and an older man told the reporter, "I voted for him (Trump) in 2016, but I'm not voting for him this time.  I thought things would change.  But for me, nothing really did."  

Democratic voter turnout, even in statewide elections, can be suppressed by the fact that no one is running on their side of the ballot in state legislative races, or even in some of the congressional elections.  In almost a decade, only two candidates for statewide office ever held an event in the county to rally support among Democratic voters.  Josh Shapiro did in 2016, running for Attorney General, and again this time around while running for Governor.  And John Fetterman did this year, running for the Senate.  

That's Exactly What I Would Expect From Fetterman

John Fetterman was the mayor of Braddock, a "suburb" just southeast of Pittsburgh, lying along the Monongahela River in an economically depressed, former manufacturing and industrial section of the metro area that has more than its share of blighted neighborhoods and run-down buildings.  Fetterman could have started his political career anywhere else besides a tiny, rarely noticed borough of fewer than 2,000 population.  But they're his kind of people, and as mayor, he put in tireless effort at revitalizing the former steel mill town that included setting up a not-for-profit company to revitalize buildings and houses, establishing youth programs and generally fighting malaise and apathy in a dying, decaying town.  

The town is still not much to look at, and still has abandoned buildings and blighted areas, but business has slowly started to invest there, the population has stabilized and there's no doubt that Fetterman's work as mayor made the community a better place to live among most of its residents.  That's what good public servants do.  That's also a big part of why he campaigned everywhere, working to motivate Democratic voters in areas where they're a minority, to vote.  

And they did. 

Democrats Should Take a Page From His Playbook

I know campaigns are tiring, visiting a dozen places a day, continuous speeches, and candidates want to make the most of their appearances.  The volume of voters live in the suburbs and the cities.  And it seems a lot more practical to spend time and money on places that can deliver a maximum number of votes.  But conceding the rural areas to the Republicans means losing a lot of potential votes that can make a real difference in places like Pennsylvania, where the balance between suburban, urban and rural voters can turn the results of an election.  

Fetterman's vote totals in places like Butler County are an improvement over Democratic performance there in either of the two most recent Presidential races, and almost equal to Senator Casey's performance in his 2018 landslide.  He got high percentages of the vote in Philadelphia, which is essential to any Democrat's chances of winning in the state, as well as in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, and the other urban areas in the state including Erie, Allentown and Harrisburg.  But his vote totals across the state, including rural counties, was better than Biden's 2020 performance in 56 of the 67 counties in the state.  In some cases, it was better by several percentage points.  It could very well be said that Fetterman won the election on the strength of the vote from Rural Pennsylvania.  

While most rural areas and small towns lie within television media markets, and are reached by television ads, it's hard to tell what a visit to a community might do for a candidate. Trump convinced a lot of voters who used to support Democrats that he cared about them, not by doing anything for them, just by holding a rally near their home and echoing their common complaints for an hour and a half speech.  Fetterman, whose political record includes actually doing things for people, helped demonstrate that this works and it's relatively inexpensive to pull off.  He did it in spite of his struggles after his stroke, and he won.