Fractious fairground: at the heart of the US political divide
Reading, Pennsylvania, is an illustration of how tight the presidential race has become in America’s most vital swing state, with locals complaining of division and hatred fuelled by the election.
America’s political divide slices straight through the bustling Fairgrounds Farmers Market in Reading, Pennsylvania, where residents with vastly different views – some wearing MAGA hats and others displaying Harris badges – brushed shoulders and exchanged barbs.
Lying about 100km to the northwest of Philadelphia, Reading is the administrative centre of Berks County and home to about 95,000 people, two-thirds of whom are Latino. It is a must-win for Donald Trump and an illustration of how tight the race has become in America’s most vital swing state, with locals complaining of division and hatred fuelled by the election.
The former president will rally in the city on Monday (Tuesday AEDT) in a bid to win Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral college votes, although last-minute momentum appeared to shift to Kamala Harris as the US’s most renowned pollster found a shock lead for her in the Trump-friendly state of Iowa.
With Mr Trump copping criticism in the dying days of the contest for saying ex-Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney should have guns “trained on her face”, the Vice-President was featured during Saturday Night Live after rallying in Atlanta, Georgia, and Charlotte in North Carolina. She painted Mr Trump as “increasingly unstable, obsessed with revenge” and “out for unchecked power”. “We have an opportunity in this election to finally turn the page on a decade of Donald Trump who spends full-time trying to keep us divided and afraid of each other,” she said in Atlanta.
In Gastonia, North Carolina, Mr Trump conjured an apocalyptic vision, falling back on his central campaign message on immigrant crime, telling women voters that he would protect them.
“When you’re home, in your house alone, and you have this monster that got out of prison, he’s got, you know, six charges of murdering six different people, I think you’d rather have Trump,” he said.
Patrick, a 47-year-old welder in the trucking industry, said he would attend the former president’s rally in Reading. The Berks County resident told The Australian: “I support Donald Trump. He can say some things off the wall sometimes. But you have to look at the message and not the messenger.
“We need to worry about America, America’s interest and what’s going on in America first – before we get involved supporting wars. Just being in the store here at least a dozen people walked by me and said ‘I hope we get this’ and supported Trump … to sum it all up, you don’t shit your pants and change your shirt. And the last four years has just been one big turd.”
A Harris supporter was quick to challenge Patrick on his views about Mr Trump, while another beeped while driving past and yelled out his support for the Vice-President after spotting the welder’s bright red MAGA cap.
Locals going about their shopping held strongly conflicting views on the presidential race, with one man saying he wanted “no Nazis in the White House” as he climbed into a departing bus. The driver, a lifetime resident of Berks County, said she was concerned that “our freedom … all freedoms” would be at risk if Mr Trump emerged victorious. “This is just ridiculousness,” she said. “Dude. He’s a 34-time convicted felon running for president of the United States.”
One man leaving the market said he’d told a woman “walking around with a shirt with Biden on it, ‘You’re going to get yourself hurt around here because everyone wants Trump’.”
Jim, a 75-year-old Harris supporter and Reading local whose key issues were the economy and cost of living, said: “What turns me off most is the hate. That seems to be the division and the hatred and the bullying. And that back and forth. And I just hate that part of it.
“I’ve come to despise politics. I hate to vote against somebody rather than for somebody. However, this election I am able to favour a candidate and that would be Harris. And I think that she’s the one who can unite us.”
With expectations high that fewer than 100,000 voters across the rust-belt states could determine the election, the co-chair of the Republicans for Harris initiative in Pennsylvania said the contest was “extremely close”.
Kamala Harris talks to Kamala Harris pic.twitter.com/AJuW7aO7VM
— Saturday Night Live - SNL (@nbcsnl) November 3, 2024
Ann Womble, a lifelong Republican who joined the party during the Regan era, suggested that disaffected conservatives voting against Mr Trump could swing the contest for Ms Harris and the Democrats. She noted that about 158,000 Republicans had cast Pennsylvania primary votes for Nikki Haley two months after she had left the race as a protest against the former president.
“When we started this effort, we thought, ‘OK, a good number of those Republicans are going to wind up going back and voting for Trump’. But maybe we think we could get 3 per cent of Republican likely voters in Pennsylvania to vote for Harris,” she told The Australian. “At his stage, our internal polling is showing that we think we’ve got about 11 per cent of Republicans likely voters who will vote for Harris. So that is a significant difference. I think our coalition here … could be decisive I think in helping her (Ms Harris) to win Pennsylvania.”
Ms Womble, the former chair of the Republican Committee of Lancaster County, also expressed concern the GOP was laying the groundwork to challenge the election outcome if Mr Trump lost, warning that the January 6 march on the Capitol in 2021 was a “bush league effort” compared to what might happen.
“They’ve already primed their supporters to believe that there’s no way that Donald Trump could lose,” she said. “When he loses, there’s going to be a period of, I don’t know what to say, violence perhaps. I hope it’s not deadly violence. But he will make sure his supporters do not accept it. And I think we’re going to see a very critically dangerous time in this country between election day and inauguration day.”
Matt, a 30-year-old Reading local who works two jobs as a forklift operator and a food-delivery driver, said “we’re doomed if she (Ms Harris) gets in”.
He said it was “getting very bad. It’s leading up to another world war. And not just in Reading, Pennsylvania, United States – it’s going to be everywhere … It’s going to be in Australia. It’s going to be in England. It’s going to be in Russia, Ukraine, Israel.”
However, while he had attended Mr Trump’s rallies and believed Ms Harris would take the nation backwards, Matt did not have enough confidence in the integrity of the US electoral system to cast a vote. “I don’t trust none of these governments,” he said.
His partner, August, 43, who will also not be voting but favoured the Republican Party, said that illegal immigration had become “very dangerous” while “prices everywhere are up, there’s more wars and the Israel war is biblical – so that’s concerning”. “What I wish would be different is – instead of talking bad about each other – talk about how to make it better.”
Kelly, another Reading local who was wearing a Harris badge, said Mr Trump would struggle to win Pennsylvania because of the disparaging comments made by a comedian at his Madison Square Garden rally last week likening Puerto Rico to “garbage”.
“The majority of the people in the Reading area are going to vote Democrats. Especially with what he just said about Puerto Rico.”
Ms Harris’ campaign also received an unexpected boost over the weekend when a survey by Ann Selzer, one of the most reliable US pollsters, showed the vice president leading Mr Trump by three percentage points – 47 to 44 per cent – in Iowa, a state that was not considered at risk by the Republican machine.
Polls have tended towards a neck-and-neck contest in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, but there were signs momentum was with running Ms Harris with the latest Marist polling, conducted between October 27 and 30, showing the Vice-President ahead in the blue-wall states.
Jonathan Katz, a former Obama administration official and democracy expert who spent the weekend doorknocking for Ms Harris in Pittsburgh in the east of Pennsylvania, told The Australian he found “a lot of enthusiasm for Harris”. However, in the outer suburbs, Mr Katz said “you’ll see some yard signs for Trump” and “neighbours next to each other with different campaign signs”.
“This is one of the most important parts of the campaign – it’s the ground game, and getting people out to vote,” he said.
Mr Katz said this was the “most consequential” election he had worked on, and expressed deep concern that Mr Trump could “go after political enemies”.
“We have never had a presidential candidate like Mr Trump in American history that has been this big a threat to the ideals and values of this country,” he said.
But support for Mr Trump was strong out in the rural town of Ronks in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, with Alice Mowry, a 56-year-old medical administrator, telling The Australian at the local shopping centre that the former president “has the best interest for our country and the world”.
Ross J Anderson Jnr, a loader operator who lives in Lancaster County, said: “I like Trump ’cause he’s talking good and he’s making sure that we get the jobs that they took across overseas and get them back. I think he’s a good guy … I think he does a good job. For Harris, I don’t like her. I don’t believe a word she said.”
Zavian, a 23-year-old-diesel mechanic who lives in Ronks, said that “everybody at work is of course going to vote for Trump. Seems like the office people want Kamala and the guys in the shop want Trump.”
Dan Weber, a 40-year-old nurse from Philadelphia who was holidaying in the country with his family, said it was “scary – the fact that there’s so many people that are actually voting for him after what he’s done”.
“The amount of Trump signs is scary,” he said. “I feel like Donald Trump is the Anti-Christ. So I am voting for Kamala Harris and I feel like she will help lead our country to a more respectful status amongst the world.
“It is a shame about the amount of people that have been hoodwinked or just misled by bullshitting and lies.”
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