Trump Appears in Pennsylvania, Biden’s Home State, Igniting a Turf War – The New York Times

OLD FORGE, Pa. — In the working-class county where Joseph R. Biden Jr. spent his childhood, a river of yard signs were at war on Moosic Road: Trump vs. Biden.

“I love what he’s doing,” Mary Vender, a hair stylist, said of the president. She came to the door from her kitchen where she was baking cannoli for a picnic on Thursday in honor of Mr. Trump, who was scheduled to speak down the street at a building supply company. “I think he’s really for the country, for our people,” she said. “He’s getting our jobs back.”

A neighbor, Sherri Hudson, complained that lawn signs for Mr. Biden, whom she supports, were being snatched out of yards. “Everybody is so angry,” said Ms. Hudson. “I think it’s because of the president. He divides the country with his hostile remarks.”

To many strategists, Pennsylvania is the most crucial battleground of 2020, and Northeast Pennsylvania, with its density of white working-class voters, is especially pivotal. It is set up for a turf war between the native son who calls himself “middle-class Joe” and the incumbent president who appeals to the grievances of white voters over immigration, protests against police and other culture-war issues.

Mr. Trump traveled here on Thursday, which just happened to be the day Mr. Biden would later accept the presidential nomination. It was the latest stop in the don’t-forget-about-me-tour of battleground states the president was conducting during the Democratic National Convention, after trips to Arizona, Wisconsin and Iowa.

Mr. Trump’s attempt at political taunting was a reminder that his surprise victory in Pennsylvania in 2016 was made possible by the utter collapse of the Democratic ticket in the region where Mr. Biden was born and spent his childhood, once a party stronghold.

The president sought to undermine Mr. Biden’s claim to Scranton roots and values, since his family had moved to Delaware as a boy after his father lost his job. “The Scranton stuff,” Mr. Trump scoffed, “that’s why I figured I’d come here and explain to you one thing, but I think you people know it better than I do: He left. He abandoned Pennsylvania.”

Both Lackawanna County, home to Scranton, and neighboring Luzerne County twice supported Barack Obama, then saw a 55,000-vote swing to Mr. Trump in 2016, larger than his entire statewide winning margin.

If Mr. Biden is to win the state, Democrats say he can’t just rely on well-educated suburbanites defecting from the Republican Party and on liberals in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

“That was what people like me thought was enough in 2016 and we were wrong,” said Senator Bob Casey Jr., a Democrat who is also a Scranton native. “We can’t afford to be wrong again.”

He and other Democrats said Mr. Biden must also make inroads into rural and small-city counties where Mr. Trump is popular, especially in Northeast Pennsylvania.

Mr. Casey said that in his view, the evidence was clear that Mr. Biden would do better than Hillary Clinton had in 2016. He cited an internal poll he conducted in June in which the former vice president was strongly outperforming Mrs. Clinton in the 16-county Scranton media market.

But Lance Stange, the chair of the Republican Party of Lackawanna County, predicted Mr. Trump would do even better here this year, citing the lack of a Biden field office in Scranton and more newly registered Republicans than Democrats in the county.

“If Joe Biden doesn’t even have an office in Scranton, do I think he’s going to pay any attention to the heartland of Pennsylvania?” he said. “There’s zero enthusiasm for the Democrats or their candidates. They’re hemorrhaging voters.”

A new Morning Call/Muhlenberg College poll of the state released Thursday showed Northeast Pennsylvania was Mr. Trump’s strongest region, where he led Mr. Biden 61 percent to 28 percent.

Statewide, Mr. Biden has an edge of 6.4 percentage points in an average of public polls, a tightening of the race since early summer.

One reason for his growing lead, the surveys suggested, is that Mr. Biden is more well liked than Mrs. Clinton was by voters. Fifty percent of Pennsylvania voters have a favorable view of Mr. Biden, according to a New York Times/Siena College Poll in June. That is notably stronger than the 42 percent of voters with a favorable view of Mrs. Clinton in exit polls of the state four years ago.

It partly explains why Mr. Trump, who is doing little to grow support beyond his fervid base, is trying to drive up enmity for Mr. Biden through scorched-earth attacks, in order to depress turnout for him.

Old Forge, a town where Italian immigrants arrived a century ago to work in coal mines, long since closed, is best known today for a style of rectangular pizza. Mr. Trump’s promise in 2016 to stop undocumented immigration, restore factory jobs and to take on China resonated deeply with the area’s white voters, as it did across other industrial states.

Calling Mr. Biden “no friend of Pennsylvania” on Thursday, the president charged that Mr. Biden’s support for trade deals as a senator had taken a disastrous toll, while he distorted Mr. Biden’s climate plan to claim it would end drilling for oil and gas.

Mr. Biden visited a metalworks factory near Scranton last month to lay out a New Deal-style plan for economic recovery from the virus, promising to create five million manufacturing and innovation jobs across the country. His advisers consider Mr. Trump’s advantage with voters on jobs and the economy to be Mr. Biden’s greatest vulnerability.

Republicans have begun to narrow a historic gap with Democrats in registered voters in Lackawanna County. Since November of last year, Republicans added 2,469 registered voters, versus 459 new registered Democrats. The Democratic brand is so tarnished locally that Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti of Scranton, a former official in the Obama administration, ran last November as an independent.

“It does surprise me that so many people have registered that way,” said Ms. Cognetti, who endorsed Mr. Biden. Referring to the pandemic and record unemployment of 15.3 percent in Lackawanna County, she added, “To me the Democrats are the party that is going to get us through this crisis.”

Back on Moosic Road, Anthony Spano had adorned a goose lawn ornament with a patriotic outfit to welcome Mr. Trump. “I love him,” he said of the president. Insisting he was not “being a fanboy,” he cited the pre-Covid economy, when unemployment reached its lowest in 50 years, as well as Mr. Trump’s efforts to close the borders to undocumented immigrants.

“I don’t dislike immigrants,” Mr. Spano, a 63-year-old disabled truck mechanic, added. “My parents were immigrants. My grandfather came over in 1906 from Italy and went to World War I. These Mexicans coming in here, they’re not going to fight for this country. They don’t even want to speak English.”

Not far away, Marygrace Vadala had a small Biden sign at the home where she had grown up, and where her mother, a Trump supporter, had lived before her death in May, at 82, from Covid-19.

A registered nurse in Lackawanna County and a Republican, Ms. Vadala said she had tried to convince her mother that the president was not a good leader.

“As a nurse, when people first started getting Covid, I turned to the president for leadership,” she said. “And after listening to him for two or three days, I thought, ‘Oh my gosh.’ His press conferences just seemed like rallies to get him re-elected. Like, this isn’t about you. This is about the people that you’re serving.”

She said her mother had gone to Zumba classes and walked three miles every day before contracting the virus.

“The first thing I did after she passed away and we started cleaning up the house was take the Trump sign and put it over my knee and throw it out for garbage,” she said.

Asked what she would say to Mr. Trump if she had the chance during his visit, she choked up. While she composed herself, her husband, Joe Vidala, a high school geography teacher sitting beside her on the house’s porch, jumped in.

“I know what I would say: ‘Can’t you put your pride aside and listen to other people?’” he said. “That’s what leaders do. They take it all in and then make a decision. That’s what Joe Biden is going to do.”

Ms. Vadala’s cousin, Mary Grace McHale, was listening from behind a screen door.

“Lackawanna County is going to go to the mattresses for Biden,” she said.