More than a hundred people have come to the community center, everyone seated in rows of chairs arranged in a large semicircle. The host, a towering man with a shaved head, a hoodie and gym shorts, speaks to them in an empathic tone, like he wants them to know he understands. "A show of hands - who has had one of their signs stolen out of their yards?" "Is it easy being a Democrat in a red county?" asks John Fetterman, a Democrat running for the U.S. "Who has gotten weird looks at the grocery store?" Fetterman asks. More hands rise, including one belonging to Patsy Hartnett, 69, a retired teacher, who approaches Fetterman after he finishes speaking. Here in Adams County, Pa., which borders Maryland, 66% of voters went for President Donald Trump in 2020 - about the same that voted for him in 2016, and 3% more than went for Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee in 2012. That's the trend in Pennsylvania, and in many parts of the country. As rural counties grow redder and redder, some Democrats have focused on winning over suburban swing voters turned off by Trumpism and trying to maximize turnout in Democrat-heavy cities.įetterman, 52, who is the purported Democratic front-runner for the coveted U.S. Senate seat being vacated by retiring Republican Sen. Patrick Toomey, has made a show of not giving up on the red counties. These are the places where Trump campaign signs still sit in front yards and banners hang from flagpoles and porches. Several are visible along Lincoln Highway, the road leading into Gettysburg. Plus, on the edge of town, a banner on the side of a shed that says "F- Biden."įetterman campaigned in these areas in 2016, when he ran for the Senate as a pro-Bernie Sanders candidate and finished second in the primary. After a similar strategy helped him become Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor two years later, he visited all 67 counties during a listening tour about legalizing pot. It's mainly Democrats here at the community center, and at other such stops he has made over the months of his campaign. And to advocate for legal weed, transgender rights, gay rights, ending the filibuster and immigration reform, among other Democratic touchstones.
One of those who have come out is Marty Wilder, a retired local newspaper editor who serves as a Democratic Party leader in McKean County, 150 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, where Trump won 72% of the vote in 2020. Wilder has lived for 40 years in Bradford, Pa., where the largest employer is the Zippo lighter plant. They came right up to us, especially the younger kids, right to our face." In recent years, when she organized rallies for Democrats, she said there were people who drove by "in their pickup trucks with their Trump flags, giving us the finger, honking. In Gettysburg, as Fetterman begins his spiel, a woman shouts, "We all came out of hiding for you!" "It's pretty difficult being in such a minority." "I had a 'Resist' sticker on my car that I took off because I don't want to deal with the harassment," she says. Fetterman is doing the drive in his black pickup, along with an entourage that includes campaign staffers and a security detail that follows his truck in a black SUV. He's done the call-and-response at each one of these stops - Bedford, Chambersburg and now Gettysburg.