On the morning of Nov. 3, 2020, a day that would deliver him the presidency, Joe Biden began his Tuesday at a place no president had set foot before.
Outside the Carpenters and Joiners Local 445 — a union hall along the railroad tracks in Scranton, Pennsylvania — Biden spoke briefly to canvassers about the lessons he learned at his “grandpop’s table at 2446 N. Washington Ave.”
He talked at length about the value of unions. He told the group that money doesn’t equal wealth, that you look out for the other guy.
“The middle class built this country, and unions built the middle class,” Biden said, according to a video of his remarks. Six feet away from him — it was 2020, after all — was Drew Simpson, the union’s regional leader who represents almost all of Pennsylvania.
Later that morning, Simpson spoke to Biden alone inside the union hall.
“I told him our concerns, and Biden was poking me in the chest, and he gets close and tells me, ‘Don’t worry, the carpenters union has been behind me since the first day I ran for office. You’ve always supported me and I’ll never forget what you guys have done for me, and I’ll make sure that you guys have a seat at the table,’” Simpson said.
Four years earlier, many members of the union voted for former President Donald Trump. They were attracted to Trump’s rhetoric about building a wall, and, as Simpson put it, they were tired of “the same old politician saying the same old thing and doing the same old thing.”
In April, Biden returned to the union hall, two months before the debate performance that would lead to his decision to drop out of the presidential race.
“Was it the right choice? Probably,” Simpson said of Biden stepping aside. But he paused. Surrounded by a shelf of photos of the president, Simpson added that the whole situation was “a shame.”
“I’m sorry to see the change,” he said. “We have a lot of presidents who say they’re our friends and talk the talk but not necessarily walk the walk.”
“We’ve never had a president say the word ‘union’ as much as President Biden,” Simpson said. “We’ve never had a president that walked the picket line before — and he did.”
What Simpson loved about Biden, what he thinks brought the union members who voted for Trump in 2016 back to Democrats in 2020, goes beyond policy.
“When President Biden came by a few months ago and met with our members, it wasn’t as if he just walked by and took a picture and left,” Simpson said. “I mean, he actually spoke to every one of them, shook everyone’s hands, and was just down-to-earth.”
“If you didn’t know he was president, then he’s just a normal guy from Scranton,” he said.
Vice President Kamala Harris has burst into the presidential race with a groundswell of enthusiasm. She has recruited thousands of new volunteers, and the campaign raised $310 million in the month of July. It’s the largest single month of fundraising ever — and Harris raised $200 million of it in her first week of candidacy.
But for all the new energy, there’s new concern about her winning coalition. Harris’ support among white, non-college-educated voters — the voters who helped win Pennsylvania for Biden and, therefore, propelled him to the presidency — is far from guaranteed.
Across Lackawanna County, voters and Democratic leaders echoed the same sentiments that Simpson shared. They told NOTUS that Biden understands the issues facing this community from his firsthand experience growing up there, that he’s one of them.
But it’s an oversimplification to draw a line between Biden’s hometown roots and the support he enjoys in the area.
His family moved from Scranton to Delaware when he was in the fourth grade, and though he often visited his grandparents in the summers, he never lived full-time in the town again. Still, Biden represents an idea of Scranton. He embodies the identity.
As Lackawanna County Commissioner Bill Gaughan put it, “Irish-Catholic-Democrat is one word.”
Harris, of course, is an extension of Biden’s legacy that’s etched into the politics of Scranton. But in conversations with voters, party leaders and strategists across the county, she’s still largely untested and unfamiliar to them. Some of those Trump-Biden voters are now leaning toward Trump again.
Harris now faces the same test as Hillary Clinton in the disproportionately blue areas that swung toward Trump in 2016. She has to convince those blue-collar voters who saw themselves in Biden that she will fight for them too.
And Democrats like Simpson have their doubts.
“To be perfectly honest with you, I don’t know much about her,” he told NOTUS. “We need to see what she’s made of. We need to see the things that you don’t necessarily see as vice president. And we need to see that she can do the job.”
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Harris faces a test in Scranton. She has a test in Lackawanna County, in stretches of Pennsylvania, in the Rust Belt and in a country dominated by blue-collar people. For as much as political strategists know what she stands for and what she believes, voters in Scranton — even party leaders in Scranton — weren’t so sure.
Scranton is, statistically speaking, a reliably blue stronghold in a part of northeastern Pennsylvania that’s been getting redder.
Former President Barack Obama won Lackawanna County by 27% in 2012. Four years later, Clinton won by only 3%. That swing of 23,000 votes in one county alone was a game-changing gap, considering Trump won the state by just 68,000 votes.
Biden won almost exactly 10,000 more votes in the county than Clinton did in 2016, beating Trump 53% to 45%. His improvement in Lackawanna and across northeastern Pennsylvania played no small role in his close victory over Trump.
Ed Mitchell, a longtime Democratic strategist in the area, echoed what so many said in Lackawanna County. People are struggling to afford groceries, to afford gas. They’re worried about medical bills and their kids’ futures. They don’t want a handout; they just need a little help.
“The people who’ve been most successful here, generally, are people who go right up the middle. There’s a reason we don’t have any AOCs in public office here,” Mitchell said, referring to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Mitchell supports Harris, and he’s energized by how she’ll bring younger people to the fold. But even he admitted he didn’t think Harris would do as well in northeastern Pennsylvania as Biden.
He said she can make up that gap with suburban women and minority groups across the state, but in order to get the Trump-Biden blue-collar voters on her side, she should stick close to Biden’s “Scranton Joe” message built on the working class.
“You’ve got to offer them a future and not say we’re the worst country in the world,” he said. “We’re moving toward a majority party, a majority country, that’s going to be largely people from other places. And that’s a tough thing for these people who are dug in and the hard-core Trump people to accept.”
“But if you offer those those people a future that has the greatest economy,” he continued, “if you talk about changing our manufacturing away from making dresses towards making computer chips, that life won’t be bad for old people, if she can go on the record of Biden lowering drug costs, reducing medical debt, then she can do it here.”
“They love Biden here,” Mitchell said. “But as it is today, I think we’ve got a chance, a better chance than we did if you and I were sitting here last Sunday.”
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It takes a different type of Democrat to win in Scranton, and to local Democrats, Biden was that exact type of Democrat.
“You won’t find many people here that agree with the far left or the far right. We’re all in the middle,” said Bill Gaughan, a Scranton City Council member. “That’s what we know; that’s what we grew up with here.”
For a city of roughly 76,000 people, Gaughan said it’s a tight-knit community.
“Everybody knows everybody,” he continued, calling Scranton a “middle-class, hardworking town.”
Gaughan is a lifelong Democrat, and that won’t be changing this election. He saw how Trump flipped many folks in the area in 2016, and he’s seen how Trump continues to flip the area. But he, personally, is unconvinced.
“The hell does Donald Trump know about middle-class people? He’s been handed a silver spoon for his entire life,” he said. “He wouldn’t know middle class if it bit him in the face.”
Gaughan added that people “demonize” Trump. (“Rightfully so,” he said.) But he doesn’t dislike Trump fans. “I just don’t understand them,” he said.
As for Harris, Gaughan said that “there’s an excitement in the area” since she became the nominee, calling her “an extension of the Biden administration” that has helped out Scranton’s working-class families like his.
But to Gaughan, the new excitement is less about Harris and more about defeating Trump.
“We’re willing to get behind anybody who can make the case against him because we can’t afford another four years of him,” he said.
But not all Democrats in the area feel the same way.
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Pennsylvania union leader Drew Simpson is promoting Biden’s record on infrastructure to his rank-and-file members, and feels confident Harris will continue that work.
Katherine Swartz/NOTUS
Evie Rafalko McNulty, a leader in local Democratic politics for decades, said that the fear of another Trump term will drive people to Harris.
Katherine Swartz/NOTUS
Lackawanna County Commissioner Bill Gaughan said for Biden and for many in Scranton, “Irish-Catholic-Democrat” is one word, and at the center of people’s values.
Katherine Swartz/NOTUS
Lonnie Slick sees Joe Biden as a regular guy. She sees Harris as the exact opposite.
“Growing up, we were just like middle-class, working people. We had a huge gang of kids, a really good neighborhood. And so I really like Biden. He just kind of comes off as just one of the neighbors,” she said.
Slick said Harris’ experience as a prosecutor made her different. “I don’t see her as one of the neighbors. She reminds me more of narrower-minded type,” Slick said. “I don’t see her in me.”
Slick is strongly anti-abortion, and she voted for Trump in 2016. But she sees drawbacks with Trump in this election. For one, she adamantly believes the United States should help Ukraine stand up to Vladimir Putin.
“Trump is pro-Russia, and he’s pro-life,” Slick said. “And then with Kamala Harris, she is pro-Ukraine, and strongly pro-abortion.”
“I’d say this is one of the most difficult election decisions that I’ve ever faced,” she said.
Slick said she won’t sit out the election; she sees voting as her duty. She’s just not sure how Trump or Harris can win her over.
“I know her take on abortion, but that’s it. I just need to know more,” she said.
Like thousands of others in Lackawanna County, Kelli Edwards voted for Trump in 2016 before flipping to Biden in 2020.
Edwards, 33, is from just north of Scranton, supporting her four kids on her own. She was leaning toward voting for Trump in November because she had problems with his age. But now, with Harris in the race instead, Edwards said she has “mixed emotions” on who to support now.
“I’m glad Biden dropped out, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said. “I’m not happy with Trump, but I’m not happy with Biden either.”
In 2016, she voted for Trump because she felt the economy needed a boost and she wanted a businessman, not a politician. She thought Trump did a good job in office, especially on the border wall, and she said immigration and raising the minimum wage were her top priorities.
There’s just one thing keeping her from voting for Trump again, the same that brought her over to Biden in 2020: She can’t stand him.
“It’s his unprofessionalism. Look at that thing he said about grabbing the woman — I’m not gonna say it in front of the kids,” she said.
“I do like him as a president, like I did feel he was getting stuff done and helping the economy, I did. But the unprofessionalism is what got me,” she said.
Brianna Fay, 25, was sitting behind Edwards on her front porch when she was talking about Trump. She lives across the street with her two kids. She disagreed with Edwards’ take.
“Want to know why I didn’t vote for Trump? Yeah, he’s good at business or whatever, but he doesn’t know how it is to struggle,” Fay said. “I feel like he’s for the rich and making the rich richer.”
“I don’t think he’s helping us,” Fay said. “He doesn’t know how it is to struggle.”
Fay and Edwards agree on the issues but not on the presidency. Fay is all in for Harris, but Edwards is leaning toward Trump.
“I know she was vice president, but I really don’t know anything else about her,” Edwards said.
Then she brought up Gov. Josh Shapiro. She “reads everything about him every day.”
“He’s for the people, he wants to help, a people person who’s family-oriented, and he actually wants to get to know the people,” she said. “And he’s good looking — that doesn’t hurt. He’s got a lucky wife.”
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One thing that keeps coming up in conversation in Lackawanna County is Shapiro.
If he were the vice presidential nominee, Evie Rafalko McNulty told NOTUS, Harris would “be an easy sell.”
“He’s made himself known, he’s helped,” Rafalko McNulty said. “My mom got her tax rebate check, and it’s normally $300 and some dollars. He increased it, and now $570 she got back. Well, to my mom, and to the people struggling to get by in this community, he’s all that.”
Rafalko McNulty has been a party player for decades, dubbed “Scranton’s sweetheart” by the local press. Her late husband, James McNulty, was the mayor of Scranton during an economic boom, bringing the Steamtown Mall downtown — with Biden’s help.
“Jim always used to call him the third senator from Pennsylvania because every time there was a vote to be taken, he would always vote to support projects here, especially the funding for Steamtown. He was instrumental in that,” she said.
“He always cared. Even if he moved away, it was still his hometown,” she added.
She met Biden in 1988, during his first disastrous presidential run. Her husband met him years before, prior to Biden entering the Senate in 1973. The two maintained a close relationship.
Jim was battling cancer when Biden called the couple asking for advice. His son Beau had just been diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer, and before the information was public, he wanted Jim’s take.
Jim died in 2016, while Biden was still vice president, and Biden called Rafalko McNulty as soon as he heard the news.
“He called me that day,” Rafalko McNulty said. “And that’s the kind of stuff, the little things that he did, that made a difference. He wasn’t doing it because he was just trying to get my vote or anything. He knew he had that. He was doing it because he genuinely cared. And that’s just the kind of man he was, and that’s why everybody just appreciated who he was.”
“Or, I should really say, who he is,” she said.
Rafalko McNulty was standing at the window of the Lackawanna County Recorder of Deeds office, where she maintains her “Biden wall” — just like Simpson’s Biden shelf at the carpenter’s union in South Scranton.
Along Rafalko McNulty’s wall is a single picture of her with Hillary Clinton. But she doesn’t have the same praise for Clinton as she does for Biden.
“Her campaign made assumptions that she’d do good because she was raising money. The campaign wouldn’t listen. They wouldn’t do GOTV. They just didn’t care about the rank-and-file people,” she said.
“Nobody really felt invigorated,” she continued.
But were the 2016 results in Scranton about Clinton or about Trump?
“In 2016, I don’t think people here were ready for a woman,” she said.
Asked if they were ready for Harris eight years later, Rafalko McNulty paused.
“There’s still some Archie Bunkers in this town. Believe me, if my grandfather were alive, he’d be like, ‘A woman?’ And then he’d say, ‘A Black woman?’” she said. “We’re just an old community, especially out in the rurals.”
She’s hopeful that Harris will be a different story, as long as she leans into Biden’s working-class mission and prioritizes the rank and file like her.
“Even though Kamala was not as outspoken as I had hoped the administration would let her be, she’s there,” she said. “I think she’s there.”
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Katherine Swartz is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.