MONACA, Pa. — If you want a sense of the challenges Democrats face in 2022’s House races, look no further than two districts that share a common border in western Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania's 12th District, which includes Pittsburgh as well as suburbs to the east and south looks to be solidly Democratic. A deep blue stronghold, the district is home to Democratic candidate Summer Lee, who has built her campaign around environmental justice and income inequality.
The state's 17th District, which holds some of Pittsburgh’s suburbs and all of rural/exurban Beaver County, looks much more like a toss-up. The district is home to Democratic candidate Chris Deluzio, who focuses on his veteran status and his work to help unionize the University of Pittsburgh’s faculty.
Both districts include parts of Allegheny County, the home of Pittsburgh, but the two offer very different terrains for Democrats.
Not long ago, this entire area was Democratic. In the 2000 presidential race, Democrat Al Gore carried Allegheny County by 16 points, while carrying Beaver by 9 points. But 2020 showed how the map had changed. Joe Biden carried Allegheny by 20 points, but Donald Trump carried Beaver by 18 points.
What happened? Pittsburgh, still considered the “steel city” by many Americans, has morphed into a medical and tech center. About 43 percent of the 25-and-over population has a bachelor’s degree. But many of the suburbs around the city, like those in Beaver, are still rooted in the area’s industrial past; about 26 percent of adults in Beaver have a bachelor’s degree.
The emerging differences are clear to see on the ground.
Last week in Pittsburgh, we met with Jasiri X, the co-founder and CEO of 1Hood, a community organizing group in the city. His concern is whether Democrats are doing enough on the issues that Black voters face on a day-to-day basis.
“2018 was this very pivotal year for Pittsburgh,” he said. “We had a very high profile police killing of a young man named Antwon Rose. ... We also had the Tree of Life massacre later on that year."
"It began to be like, ‘OK, well, protesting by itself isn't enough," he continued. "Can we move to come together to actually create and change laws?’” He says that these voters haven’t seen the return on their investment and want Democrats to push harder on progressive policies instead of being “passive.”
An hour drive away from the city, in the far northern reaches of the northwestern Pittsburgh suburbs — the United Steelworkers Local 1016 held a meeting in Wheatland, Pennsylvania. There, we heard a very different message of what the country needs: Trump’s new brand of union workers were more worried about issues like the emerging Supreme Court decision on abortion.
United Steelworkers District 10 Director Bernie Hall studied his crowd of union leaders closely, taking stock of what political questions arose. A Biden voter himself, he was worried about candidates increasingly going to “extremes.” If the Supreme Court can overturn a law like Roe v. Wade from 1973, what about the 1935 Wagner Act that said employees have a right to establish a union?
“We’ll have dozens of these [meetings] across the state,” he said. “I'm concerned that people aren't getting facts in general, not only about President Biden but just about the political process and issues that face our country.”
In Aliquippa, after the local steel mill shut down, nature is slowly reclaiming empty homes and many of residents of this hard-hit African-American community are well beneath the poverty line.
Aliquippa Mayor Dwan Walker (D) urged Democrats to unite the rural voters and urban progressives. The way forward in Western Pennsylvania, he says, is to remind people the area is the birthplace of the unions.
“There’s 72,000 Democrats [here that are] ‘light blue’ [Reagan Democrat]” he said. “But they’ll vote Republican just based off the message. The message just has to be claimed.”