Donald Trump heads to Johnstown to regain support he lost to Joe Biden

Four years ago, former President Donald Trump went to Johnstown and told the working class of western Pennsylvania that he had “brought back steel.”

“This is the place where generations of tough, strong Pennsylvania workers have mined coal, worked the railroads and forged steel.” Trump said at the airport, with Air Force One behind him, in October 2020. visit. “And you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

The city, where steel and iron mills occupied 13 miles of waterfront until the slow 1980s, no longer produces metal. That hasn’t changed under Trump or President Joe Biden.

But it is probable to get a similar offer from Trump Friday in an election in which Johnstown is a symbol of small- and mid-sized post-industrial towns struggling to rebuild. Trump is scheduled to deliver a speech at 4:30 p.m. at the Cambria County War Memorial on Friday.

Biden won Johnstown by a slim margin of about 80 votes in 2020, after Trump defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by a similar margin in 2016. It’s a purple town in the red belt of Cambria County that Trump won by 16 percentage points in his last two elections.

The visit — along with Trump’s recent drive through Wilkes-Barre and a visit by his vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance to Erie this week — is intended to bolster Trump’s support among white working-class voters and derail Biden’s 2020 run now that Vice President Kamala Harris is the Democratic nominee.

“We have to do an above-average job here,” said Bob Gleason, a Johnstown native and former Pennsylvania Republican Party chairman and a Trump elector in the state.

“The party’s philosophy in Cambria and surrounding counties is to exceed expectations, just as we did in 2016. People here have never wavered in their support for Trump, but the election will be decided by who gets the votes.”

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Nina Locastro, chairwoman of the Cambria Democratic Committee, said Trump’s offensive in rust belt cities and towns reflects concerns about growing Democratic support for Harris after the convention.

“I don’t think he’s confident in those areas,” Locastro said, predicting Trump will win red areas by narrower margins. “I’m not going to sit there and say we’re going to win that county, but we’re going to get enough votes for the district. I’ve been in politics for 20 years and I’ve never seen enthusiasm like that.”

Focus on the economy

In 2020, Biden also stopped in Johnstown, where he stood in front of an Amtrak train and told the crowd that Trump had left a “trail of broken promises and lies” across the industrial Midwest and Pennsylvania.

“He doesn’t have a plan to get you back on your feet or provide relief to the people who need it most,” Biden said.

Not much has changed in Johnstown with either Trump or Biden in the White House.

The city best known for its tragedy — the 1889 levee collapse that flooded the city and killed thousands — has a median family income of $33,000 a year and nearly 33 percent of its people live in poverty (three times the state poverty rate). Only about 14 percent of residents have a bachelor’s degree or higher.

“What unites Johnstown unites the country. People complain about the cost of gas and groceries … their paychecks and pensions,” Kulbeck said.

Trump’s popularity has surged in areas where he has made sweeping promises to restore long-retired industries. While both Trump and Harris have said they would support tariffs to protect American manufacturing, neither candidate has offered significant policies that directly address the current economic plight in former industrial areas.

Trump has been an outspoken supporter of fracking. Harris supported a ban on fracking in 2019 as a presidential candidate, but her 2024 campaign says she no longer takes that position.

“If we want to see any kind of revival of heavy industry … the key element is the cost of production, and that’s where keeping energy costs down is really important,” Kulbeck said.

Trump likely previewed some of his remarks in an economic speech in York last weekcriticizing Harris as a “job killer in chief” for his past support for a ban on fracking. He also reiterated his opposition to the sale of U.S. Steel to Japanese conglomerate Nippon Steel, which Biden has also opposed.

Johnstown received money from both Biden’s American Rescue Plan and bipartisan infrastructure legislation, which resulted in several projects completed in the last two years. But Gleason doesn’t see this work having an impact on voters.

“Sure, the money came in, but it didn’t have any impact here,” Gleason said. “And the Republicans did a great job of twisting it and saying it caused inflation. So people really understand that their money is not going any further.”

How will Harris appeal in Johnstown?

A key question for Trump’s path in Pennsylvania is whether Harris can match or enhance the support Biden has received in rural and suburban areas. Harris’ campaign has suggested that focusing on more Republican areas is part of her strategy in the state.

“People like to categorize places outside of big cities as if we don’t like women or people of color. I don’t think that’s true,” Locastro said. “People felt like they were in this Trump-Biden mold, they felt pigeonholed.”

And Locastro thinks Harris has a working-class charm. “Growing up, having divorced parents, moving, trying to improve yourself, working at McDonald’s in high school, that’s something you can understand.”

However, Kulbeck called Harris an concealed and widely disliked figure in Cambria County.

“What does she really represent? It’s all unicorns and butterflies. There’s nothing substantial about it. And honestly, the average voter in Cambria County just can’t relate to her.”