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Tag: pennsylvania
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Presidential push ahead of the 2022 midterm elections
Presidential push ahead of the 2022 midterm elections – CBS News
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Decades of Black history were lost in an overgrown Pennsylvania cemetery until volunteers unearthed more than 800 headstones | CNN
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North York, Pennsylvania
CNN
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Before she became one of America’s most-decorated Special Olympics athletes, before the made-for-TV movie and the shared stages with actor Denzel Washington and Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Loretta Claiborne was a great-granddaughter – of one Anna Johnson.
Johnson died mysteriously after the 1969 race riots in Claiborne’s hometown of York. The 84-year-old was buried in North York’s Lebanon Cemetery – which, until the mid-1960s, was one of the only graveyards in the area where African Americans could be interred.
In 2000, hoping to draw attention to the curious circumstances surrounding her great-grandmother’s death, Claiborne visited the cemetery, trying to locate Johnson’s gravestone.
She couldn’t find it. Gravity had pulled it into the earth as the cemetery fell into disrepair over the years.
Not until two decades later did Claiborne learn that a group of volunteers called Friends of Lebanon Cemetery had found Johnson’s grave marker. Co-founder Samantha Dorm had read about Claiborne’s fruitless attempts to find the headstone, and her group invited the multi-sport gold medalist to visit her great-grandmother’s resting place.
But when Claiborne arrived, she found the stone filthy and barely protruding from the dirt. The H in Johnson was missing.
“They buried her and didn’t have the (respect) to spell her name right,” Claiborne, 69, told CNN. “That’s pretty poor. I was elated that I was able to find her grave, but I was not elated to see how it wasn’t respectful to her.”
The Friends group was originally told there were 2,300 people in the historic Black cemetery. In the more than three years they’ve been working, they’ve found at least 800 buried headstones in the cemetery, many previously undocumented. Most were a few inches beneath the surface, some a few feet.
Cemetery records, newspaper articles and ground-penetrating radar now indicate more than 3,700 souls rest at Lebanon – many of them tightly situated, leaving geophysicist Bill Steinhart, who has surveyed most of the cemetery, to say, “If they’re not touching, they’re nearly touching.”
Through research and genealogy efforts, Friends of Lebanon Cemetery also have unearthed the stories of everyday folks – schoolteachers, factory workers, chefs and barbers – who helped York thrive. They lie alongside more prominent figures, including Underground Railroad agents, suffragettes, Buffalo soldiers, a Tuskegee Airman and other veterans. Together, they connect York’s robust history to overlooked chapters of the American biography.
Dorm has since heard of many cemeteries like the 150-year-old Lebanon, forsaken because those buried there were deemed unimportant. Congress is aware. The proposed African American Burial Grounds Preservation Act, a bipartisan bill sponsored by Sens. Sherrod Brown and Mitt Romney, would provide funding to identify and preserve cemeteries like this one.
“For too long these burial grounds and the men and women interred there were forgotten or overlooked,” Brown said in a statement. “Saving these sites is not only about preserving Black History, but American history, and we need to act now before these sites are lost to the ravages of time or development.”
Meep-meep!
Friends co-founder Tina Charles waved a metal detector over the dirt along Lebanon Cemetery’s northern treeline. Meep-meep!
The cemetery sits amid middle-class houses and townhomes, many bearing architectural elements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Catacorner is the Messiah United Methodist Church, built in the 1950s, and behind that the sprawling Prospect Hill Cemetery, home to two Medal of Honor recipients and several White congressmen. On the north side of Lebanon sits a strip mall and the parking lot of a shuttered church.
A cleanup effort drew a diverse group on a Saturday in mid-August. One gentleman walked over from a nearby neighborhood. Others arrived in cars, joining family members, Rotarians, Legionnaires and the current and former mayor.
Three dozen volunteers, men and women of all ages, pried headstones – many of them sunken or shrouded in tall grass – from the ground. Some employed a flat-head tamping bar, nicknamed “Trooper.” They scrubbed down markers, poured drainage gravel beneath them and leveled them off.
Charles summoned volunteers to explore the ground beneath the metal detector. They soon hit paydirt, extracting the heart-shaped grave marker of Carrie E. Reed, who died in 1926. Charles, who cites esoterica about the cemetery like a savant, whipped out her phone. In minutes, she learned Reed hailed from West Virginia and that her brother died in an auto wreck. Reed’s husband, Harry, is in Lebanon, too, though Charles was unsure where.
“Most of the heart ones are down by George Street,” Charles said, pointing down the hill, across the fresh-mowed grass, past the military flags. “This (part of the cemetery) wasn’t here in 1926, so that’s where she belongs.”
She pondered why the 23-year-old’s gravestone was so far away from her father. Mack Winfred, his gravestone misspelled Windred, lies a couple hundred feet away. How were they separated? Vandals? Hard to say given the years of neglect, but Charles, Dorm and co-founder Jenny De Jesus Marshall vow to find out more about Reed.
Minutes after Reed’s headstone was found, another group was hatching a plan. Pfc. Floyd Suber’s headstone had slipped about 2 feet into the earth, leaving only his name, rank and company visible.
Volunteers fashioned a pulley out of thick yellow webbing and an old truck tire and heaved the marble stone from the ground. As a woman scrubbed away the soil caked to the bottom half, details of Suber’s life emerged: He was a World War I vet, one of more than 70 in the cemetery. He belonged to the 807th Pioneer Infantry Division, formed at New Jersey’s Camp Dix, one of 14 African American units that served overseas and one of seven to see combat.
The group gave itself a cheer and posed by Suber’s grave for photos. One volunteer called Dorm over to recount their ingenuity.
“That was awesome. It took a village,” said Joan Mummert, president of the York County History Center, who’d dropped in to help. She offered high praise for the Friends group, telling CNN they’ve memorialized little-known or forgotten people and given York an “expansive understanding of how people lived, their families, neighborhoods and achievements.”
Dorm, 52, is a public safety grant writer. Growing up, she was a whiz in school. Numbers came so naturally that she did math in her head and was accused of cheating because she hadn’t shown her work. Yet one subject flummoxed her.
“History was the one class I had to study for,” she said. “I didn’t know when the War of 1812 was. I really did not know, because it wasn’t relevant to me.”
In March 2019, her family gathered for the funeral of her great uncle, but the ground was so rutty and pocked with groundhog holes that they struggled getting his wife’s wheelchair graveside. They eventually prevailed because “she would not be deterred from being near her husband,” Dorm said.
Dorm had always visited the cemetery. Her paternal grandparents and great-grandparents are there, and she’d deliver flowers on Mother’s Day and other occasions. A couple of year before her father died in 2021, she learned he’d quietly visited the cemetery for years, tending to the family’s graves.
“It’s part of why I do what I do,” she said.
Her pride in York was palpable as she led a CNN reporter through downtown, explaining how its Quaker population and the nearby Mason-Dixon Line made the city a vital layover on many former slaves’ journeys to the abolitionist strongholds of Lancaster and Philadelphia.
York is thick with history, and many handsome downtown buildings date back to the mid-1700s. It served briefly as the US capital, and the Continental Congress drafted the Articles of the Confederation in York. The famed York Peppermint Pattie was born here, as was the York Barbell company.
But Dorm focused on the lesser-told history: York had its own Black Wall Street, like Tulsa, Oklahoma’s, she said, beaming. She showed off Ida Grayson’s home, which was featured in “The Negro Travelers’ Green Book,” and the former site of the city’s first “colored school” helmed by educator James Smallwood, who is buried at Lebanon.
Unveiled in August was a statue of William Goodridge, a former slave turned prominent businessman. The bronze likeness now sits before his downtown home, where he hid slaves escaping via the Underground Railroad. One of the more famous “passengers” was abolitionist John Brown’s lieutenant, Osborne Perry Anderson, the only African American to survive Brown’s 1859 raid on Harper’s Ferry. Goodridge helped usher Anderson to safety, historians say.
Grandson Glen Goodridge shares a tombstone with his mother and wife at Lebanon. For three years, the Friends searched for the grandson of another Underground Railroad conductor, Basil Biggs of Gettysburg. The grandson, also named Basil, was buried at Lebanon, but his headstone remained elusive until this year, when volunteers found it buried next to Goodridge’s – literally two steps away. Was it intentional?
Regardless, Dorm and the team were delighted to find the grandchildren of two beacons of freedom resting for eternity alongside each other.
Dorm walked through Lebanon beneath a cloudless sky, reeling off more luminaries whose gravestones or stories the Friends have discovered.
There’s Mary J. Small, the first woman elected elder of the AME Zion Church. Over there is the Rev. John Hector, “the Black Knight” of the temperance movement. Here lies William Wood, who helped build inventor Phineas Davis’ first locomotive engine.
Here is the county’s first Black elected official, and there is York’s first Black police officer – a short walk from the city’s first Black physician, George Bowles, who also had a taste for baseball and helped manage the minor-league York Colored Monarchs. Several Monarchs enjoyed success in Black professional baseball, including Hall of Fame infielder, manager and historian Sol White, who later was a pioneer of the Negro Major Leagues.
Dorm’s family is steeped in military history – after beginning work at Lebanon, she learned one of her grandfathers fought in World War II – so she never forgets the veterans. She’s presently seeking sponsors for Wreaths Across America to include Lebanon’s more than 300 veterans in the nonprofit’s mission to adorn graves at Arlington National Cemetery and 3,400 other locations.
Among those Dorm would like honored are 2nd Lt. Lloyd Arthur Carter, a Tuskegee Airman; buffalo soldier George B. Berry, who was part of the Ninth Cavalry sent to Mexico in search of Pancho Villa; and the Rev. Jesse Cowles, who escaped slavery in Virginia and fought with Union forces at age 15 before making a name for himself as a minister.
Despite this rich history, Lebanon remains a work in progress. Last month, volunteers found six more headstones, three belonging to Dorm’s relatives. She joked that her great-granddad, whose grave marker she’s still searching for, was “pushing others to the front of the line to keep me motivated.”
“It’s been crazy, in part, because I thought I was related to six or seven people in the cemetery, and now it’s more than 100 – six generations on two of my lines,” she said. “There’s a running joke when we find someone: ‘Oh, Sam’s probably your cousin.’”
Dorm’s disdain for history is no more. She’s quick to recount her own, how her relatives were among a group of 300 who migrated to York from Bamberg, South Carolina, to help fix roads – at a time when African Americans weren’t allowed in the city’s taverns and movie houses.
And she definitely knows when the War of 1812 unfolded. At least two of its veterans are buried in Lebanon.
Among the volunteers for the August cleanup were three generations of Armstrongs. Along with siblings Bill Armstrong and Mary Armstrong Wright were Mary’s son, Dwayne Coles Wright, visiting from Georgia, and his daughter, Amaya Pope, 13. Dwayne, who used to make monthly visits to Lebanon as a kid, said it’s important for Amaya to know the legacy of her “ancestors whose shoulders we’re standing on.”
Asked what brought her to the cemetery, Mary Armstrong replied simply: family.
“It’s an old cemetery,” she said, “and we try to keep it going. It means a lot to me, and it means a lot to a lot of people. Some have gone on. Some can’t be here. I’d want somebody to do it for me, too.”
Bill Armstrong drove 90 minutes from Silver Spring, Maryland, to join the effort. With hand shears, he snipped at the shaggy grass obscuring the gravestone of Etha Carroll Cowles Armstrong, his grandmother, as he listed relatives spanning four generations resting at Lebanon. The family is still seeking two of its patriarchs, he said, and only last year did they find his great aunt, Clara, her gravestone misspelled “Coweles.”
That the cemetery fell into such disrepair is “somewhat disheartening and disturbing,” he said, “but I got beyond the hurt because I can’t control what folks do and don’t do. I’ve come to accept the fact that at least I know they’re in here someplace.”
Renee Crankfield, 55, has been visiting Lebanon since she was a child and used to cut through the cemetery to get to the store.
“I knew where all the graves were back then, and as we got older we couldn’t find the graves anymore,” she said, explaining that she and her mother wondered for years where Crankfield’s sister was buried (she’s since been located).
Volunteers recently found the grave marker for her great-great uncle, Whit Smallwood, not far from a groundhog hole big enough to swallow a man’s leg. But Crankfield can’t point to the precise location of her father Ervin “Tenny” Banks’ grave, which was never marked after he died in 2007.
“We didn’t have much for a headstone, but we’re going to get that,” she said. “Dad is near my sister, but we’re not sure where. Tina (Charles) knows. I would love to find him and put a marker there.”
Crankfield’s mother intends to be buried there, in a plot Banks purchased years ago. Perhaps they can share a headstone, Crankfield said, reminiscing how her father cherished not only his six children but all the neighborhood kids so much that he’d pile them into the bed of his green pickup truck and take them cruising in the country.
“He was our world,” she said.
Crankfield, like the Armstrongs, says it’s important to keep legacies alive through stories told across generations.
“Our future depends on our children knowing their history, knowing where their families came from. We have a duty to keep that up, so their children’s children can maintain that,” she said. “It’s important that we let them know who they are.”
The youngsters in attendance get it. Amaya Pope said it “felt really accomplishing” to work on the graves and that she felt a closer connection to her family afterward.
“I think it was real cool knowing about my ancestors and where they came from and hearing their stories,” the eighth-grader said.
Claiborne, the Special Olympics athlete, never learned how her great grandmother died.
Weeks after the 1969 race riots cooled to a simmer, Anna Johnson was found that September face down in Codorus Creek, near a city park. She had bruises and signs of trauma. Her dress was bunched around her waist. Some of her clothing was strewn along the creek bank. Her purse and shoes were in the park, macerated by a lawnmower.
Authorities ruled Johnson died from a heart attack, which Johnson’s family never bought. In 1999, detectives reopened the 30-year-old cold cases of a police officer and a divorced mother visiting from South Carolina, both fatally shot in the riots.
They quizzed Claiborne and two of her siblings on Johnson’s killing. Claiborne said her family was told back in 1969 to go along with the heart attack ruling because city leaders feared news of another murder might reignite the summer’s racial violence.
Investigators ultimately chose not to reopen Johnson’s case, citing lack of evidence, Claiborne said.
“The whole thing just really, to this day, has shocked me, but life goes on,” said Claiborne, who was 16 when Johnson was killed. “We’ll never find out how she died, but God never misses a move or slips a note.”
Claiborne has traveled the world collecting medals in running, bowling and figure skating, despite being born partially blind and with clubbed feet. She’s finished more than two dozen marathons, holds three honorary doctorates, earned a black belt in karate, accepted the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage at the 1996 ESPYs and has appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s show.
Today, she serves on the Special Olympics’ board of directors and is the games’ chief inspiration officer.
But York remains home. Claiborne still travels to North York to visit Johnson, along with her mother and grandmother, who reside on the opposite side of the cemetery near its main entrance. One day, she’d like to join them.
“That’s where I’m going to be buried, if God’s willing,” she said.
Correction: A previous version of this story included a mobile graphic that incorrectly identified an image of Etha Armstrong.
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Trump and other Republicans are already casting doubt on midterm results | CNN Politics
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Washington
CNN
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Former President Donald Trump posted on social media on Tuesday to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the midterm election in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania. “Here we go again!” he wrote. “Rigged Election!”
Trump’s supposed evidence? An article on a right-wing news site that demonstrated no rigging. Rather, the article baselessly raised suspicion about absentee-ballot data the article did not clearly explain.
In 2020, Trump and his allies made a prolonged effort to discredit the presidential election results in advance, spending months laying the groundwork for their false post-election claims that the election was stolen. Now, in the weeks leading up to Election Day in 2022, some Republicans have been deploying similar – and similarly dishonest – rhetoric.
Trump is not the only Republican trying to baselessly promote suspicion about the midterms in Pennsylvania, a state that could determine which party controls the US Senate.
After Pennsylvania’s acting elections chief, Leigh Chapman, told NBC News last week that it could take “days” to complete the vote count, Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, who has repeatedly promoted false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, said on a right-wing show monitored by liberal organization Media Matters for America: “That’s an attempt to have the fix in.”
It isn’t. It simply takes time to count votes – especially, as Chapman noted, because the Republican-controlled state legislature has refused to pass a no-strings-attached bill to allow counties to begin processing mail-in ballots earlier than the morning of Election Day.
But other prominent Republicans piled on. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas tweeted a link to an article about Chapman’s comments and added: “Why is it only Democrat blue cities that take ‘days’ to count their votes? The rest of the country manages to get it done on election night.”
Even aside from the fact that the big cities that tend to lean Democratic have many more votes to count than the small rural counties that tend to lean Republican, Cruz’s claim is plain false.
Counties of all kinds across the country – including, as PolitiFact noted, some Republican counties in Cruz’s state of Texas – do not complete their vote counts on the night of the election. In fact, it is impossible for many counties to have final counts on election night.
Even some of the country’s most Republican states count absentee ballots (or, in some cases, specifically absentee ballots from members of the military and overseas citizens) that arrive days after Election Day, as long as they are postmarked by Election Day. And some states, including some led by Republicans, give voters days after Election Day to fix issues with their signatures or to provide the proof of identity they didn’t have on Election Day.
American elections authorities do not declare winners or official vote totals on election night. Rather, media outlets make unofficial projections based on incomplete data.
The health challenges of the Democratic candidate in Pennsylvania’s Senate race, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, have also been used to cast preemptive doubt on the possible outcome.
After Trump was defeated by Joe Biden in 2020, some right-wing personalities insisted the election must have been stolen because Biden was such a poor candidate. On Fox last week, as Media Matters noted, prime-time host Tucker Carlson made a similar argument about Pennsylvania’s Senate race – suggesting people should not accept a Fetterman win because it would be “transparently absurd” for a candidate who has had difficulties with public speaking and auditory processing since a stroke in May to legitimately prevail.
But there would be nothing suspicious about Fetterman winning in a state Biden won by more than 80,000 votes in 2020. Fetterman has led in many (though not all) opinion polls – and polls have repeatedly found that Pennsylvania voters continue to view him far more favorably than they view his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz.
The city of Detroit, like other Democratic-dominated cities with large Black populations, has been the target of false 2020 conspiracy theories from Trump and others. And now the Republican running to be Michigan’s elections chief is already challenging the validity of tens of thousands of Detroit votes in 2022.
Less than two weeks before Election Day, Kristina Karamo, a 2020 election denier and the Republican nominee for Michigan secretary of state, filed a lawsuit asking a court to “halt” the use of absentee ballots in Detroit if they weren’t obtained in person at a clerk’s office and declare that only those ballots obtained via in-person requests can be “validly voted” in this election. That request would potentially mean the rejection of thousands of votes already cast legally by Detroit residents – in state whose constitution gives residents the right to request absentee ballots by mail.
Karamo’s lawyer vaguely softened the request during closing arguments on Friday, The Detroit News reported. And other prominent Republicans have so far kept their distance from the lawsuit.
Nonetheless, the suit sets the table for Karamo, who is trailing in opinion polls, to baselessly reject the legitimacy of a defeat.
Other Republican candidates have vaguely hinted at the possibility that Democrats might somehow cheat on Election Day or during the counting of the votes.
Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin told reporters this week that “we’ll see what happens” when it comes to accepting the results of his reelection race, The Washington Post reported, adding: “I mean, is something going to happen on Election Day? Do Democrats have something up their sleeves?”
The Daily Beast reported that Blake Masters, the Republican Senate candidate in a tight race in Arizona, told a story at an October event about how he can’t prove it’s not true that, if he beats Democratic incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly by 30,000 votes, unnamed people won’t just “find 40,000” for Kelly. He told a similar story at an event in June.
There is no basis for the suggestion that there could be tens of thousands of fraudulent votes added to any state’s count. But Masters’ comment, like Karamo’s lawsuit, achieves the effect of many of Trump’s pre-Election Day tales in 2020: prime Republican voters to be distrustful of any outcome that doesn’t go their way.
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Sickness affecting 48 at charter school still unexplained
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HANOVER, Pa. — Authorities say they still don’t know what caused several dozen children and adults to fall ill at an eastern Pennsylvania school last week, prompting an evacuation.
Chief Scott Van Why of the Hanover Township Volunteer Fire Department told The (Allentown) Morning Call on Sunday that tests of the air turned up nothing to explain what affected 48 children and adults Friday at Lehigh Valley Academy Regional Charter School.
Emergency responders were sent to the school after nearly a dozen people were reported sick in one of the three buildings. Officials said that building, which houses seventh- through twelfth-grade students, was evacuated “out of an abundance of caution,” but normal operations continued at other buildings where younger students are taught.
Susan Mauser, CEO of the Lehigh Valley Academy Regional Charter School, said most of those taken to hospitals for evaluation had been released as of Friday night, LehighValleyLive.com reported.
Fire and hazmat officials checked for oxygen, carbon monoxide, hydrogen fluoride and flammable gases and found all within normal ranges, Mauser said. A visual inspection for hazardous materials also failed to turn up anything and the HVAC unit was found to be operating properly, she said.
The building owner was scheduled to bring in air quality specialists in coming days to further evaluate the building, Mauser said.
The charter school has 1,825 students who come from 16 school districts in the area.
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Philadelphia police say 9 wounded in shooting outside bar
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PHILADELPHIA — At least nine people were wounded in a shooting outside a Philadelphia bar Saturday night, police said.
Inspector D.F. Pace said the victims were shot shortly before 11 p.m. near Kensington and Allegheny avenues, WCAU-TV reported.
WPVI-TV reported that gunmen emerged from a black vehicle parked in the middle of the block and shot nine people, according to police.
All nine victims were hospitalized. Police said two were critical and the others were in stable condition, WPVI-TV reported.
Pace said there were likely to be more victims.
There were no immediate arrests.
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Obama, on the Pennsylvania campaign trail, tells Democrats
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The Democratic Party’s most powerful voices warned Saturday that abortion, Social Security and democracy itself are at risk as they labored to overcome fierce political headwinds — and an ill-timed misstep from President Biden — over the final weekend of the high-stakes midterm elections.
“Sulking and moping is not an option,” former President Barack Obama told several hundred voters on a blustery day in Pittsburgh.
“On Tuesday, let’s make sure our country doesn’t get set back 50 years,” Obama said. “The only way to save democracy is if we, together, fight for it.”
Obama was the first president, but not last, to rally voters Saturday in Pennsylvania, a pivotal state as voters decide control of Congress and key statehouses. Polls across America will close on Tuesday, but more than 36 million people have already voted.
By day’s end, voters in the Keystone State also were to have heard directly from Mr. Biden as well as former President Donald Trump. And former President Bill Clinton was campaigning in New York.
Each was appearing with local candidates, but their words echoed across the country as the parties sent out their best to deliver a critical closing argument.
Not everyone, it seemed, was on message, however.
Even before arriving in Pennsylvania, Mr. Biden was dealing with a fresh political mess after upsetting some in his party for promoting plans to shut down fossil fuel plants in favor of green energy. While he made the comments in California the day before, the fossil fuel industry is a major employer in Pennsylvania.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said the president owed coal workers across the country an apology.
“Being cavalier about the loss of coal jobs for men and women in West Virginia and across the country who literally put their lives on the line to help build and power this country is offensive and disgusting,” Manchin said.
The White House said Mr. Biden’s words were “twisted to suggest a meaning that was not intended; he regrets it if anyone hearing these remarks took offense” and that he was “commenting on a fact of economics and technology.”
Democrats are deeply concerned about their narrow majorities in the House and Senate as voters sour on Mr. Biden’s leadership amid surging inflation, crime concerns and widespread pessimism about the direction of the country. History suggests that Democrats, as the party in power, will suffer significant losses in the midterms.
Clinton, 76, addressed increasing fears about rising crime as he stumped for New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, whose reelection is at risk even in deep-blue New York. He blamed Republicans for focusing on the issue to score political points.
“But what are the Republicans really saying? ‘I want you to be scared and I want you to be mad. And the last thing I want you to do is think,’” Clinton said.
In Pittsburgh, Obama accompanied Senate candidate John Fetterman, the lieutenant governor who represents his party’s best chance to flip a Republican-held seat. Later Saturday, they appeared in Philadelphia with Mr. Biden and Josh Shapiro, the nominee for governor.
Trump will finish the day courting voters in a working-class region in the southwestern corner of the state with Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Senate nominee, and Doug Mastriano, who is running for governor.
BRANDON BELL / Getty Images
The attention on Pennsylvania underscores the stakes in 2022 and beyond for the tightly contested state. The Oz-Fetterman race could decide the Senate majority — and with it, Mr. Biden’s agenda and judicial appointments for the next two years. The governor’s contest will determine the direction of state policy and control of the state’s election infrastructure heading into the 2024 presidential contest.
Shapiro, the state attorney general, leads in polls over Mastriano, a state senator and retired Army colonel who some Republicans believe is too extreme to win a general election in a state Mr. Biden narrowly carried two years ago.
Polls show a closer contest to replace retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey as Fetterman recovers from a stroke he suffered in May. He jumbled words and struggled to complete sentences in his lone debate against Oz last month, although medical experts say he’s recovering well from the health scare.
Obama addressed Fetterman’s stroke directly when appearing with him in Pittsburgh.
“John’s stroke did not change who he is. It didn’t change what he cares about,” he said.
Fetterman railed against Oz and castigated the former New Jersey resident as an ultrawealthy carpetbagger who will say or do anything to get elected.
“I’ll be the 51st vote to eliminate the filibuster, to raise the minimum wage,” Fetterman said. “Please send Dr. Oz back to New Jersey.”
Oz has worked to craft a moderate image in the general election and focused his attacks on Fetterman’s progressive positions on criminal justice and drug decriminalization. Still, Oz has struggled to connect with some voters, including Republicans who think he’s too close to Trump, too liberal or inauthentic.
Obama acknowledged that voters are anxious after suffering through “some tough times” in recent years, citing the pandemic, rising crime and surging inflation.
“The Republicans like to talk about it, but what’s their answer, what’s their economic policy?” Obama asked. “They want to gut Social Security. They want to gut Medicare. They want to give rich folks and big corporations more tax cuts.”
Obama and Fetterman hugged on stage after the speeches were over.
Saturday marked Obama’s first time campaigning in Pennsylvania this year, though he has been the party’s top surrogate in the final sprint to Election Day. He campaigned in recent days in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona, while Mr. Biden has spent more time in Democratic-leaning states where he’s more welcome.
Mr. Biden opened his day in Illinois campaigning with Rep. Lauren Underwood, a two-term suburban Chicago lawmaker in a close race.
The president ticked through his administration’s achievements, including the Inflation Reduction Action, passed in August by the Democratic-led Congress. It includes several health care provisions popular among older adults and the less well-off, including a $2,000 cap on out-of-pocket medical expenses and a $35 monthly cap per prescription on insulin. The new law also requires companies that raise prices faster than overall inflation to pay Medicare a rebate.
“I wish I could say Republicans in Congress helped make it happen,” Mr. Biden said of the legislation that passed along party lines. He also vowed that Democrats would protect Social Security.
Yet his comments from the day before about the energy industry — and Manchin’s fierce response — may have been getting more attention.
“It’s also now cheaper to generate electricity from wind and solar than it is from coal and oil,” Mr. Biden said Friday in Southern California. “We’re going to be shutting these plants down all across America and having wind and solar.”
Pennsylvania has largely transitioned away from coal, but fossil fuel companies remain a major employer in the state.
As for Trump, his late rally in Latrobe is part of a late blitz that will also take him to Florida and Ohio. He’s hoping a strong GOP showing will generate momentum for the 2024 run that he’s expected to launch in the days or weeks after polls close.
Trump has been increasingly explicit about his plans.
At a rally Thursday night in Iowa, traditionally home of the first contest on the presidential nominating calendar, Trump repeatedly referenced his 2024 White House ambitions.
After talking up his first two presidential runs, he told the crowd: “Now, in order to make our country successful and safe and glorious, I will very, very, very probably do it again, OK? Very, very, very probably. Very, very, very probably.”
“Get ready, that’s all I’m telling you. Very soon,” he said.
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Democrats have slight lead in Pennsylvania Senate, governor’s races
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Democrats have slight lead in Pennsylvania Senate, governor’s races – CBS News
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11/4: CBS News Weekender
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11/4: CBS News Weekender – CBS News
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Over half of Republicans running for federal, statewide office have raised unfounded doubts about 2020 election
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Over half of all Republican midterm candidates running for federal and statewide office have raised unfounded doubts about the validity or integrity of the 2020 election results, and according to CBS News’ analysis, all of the states but two — Rhode Island and North Dakota — have a candidate on the the ballot who is an “election denier,” that is, who denies the results of the 2020 election were valid.
Among the 597 GOP candidates running for state or federal office this November, 308 have raised unfounded doubts about the results of the 2020 election.
Here’s the candidate breakdown:
- 20 out of 37 Republicans running for governor (2 Republicans are running for Alaska’s gubernatorial seat under the state’s ranked choice voting)
- 9 out of 31 Republicans running for lieutenant governor
- 9 out of 30 Republicans running for attorney general
- 12 out of 27 Republicans running for secretary of state
- 20 out of 36 Republicans running for the U.S. Senate (2 Senate races in Oklahoma)
- 238 out of 436 Republicans running for U.S. House (2 Republicans are running for the Alaska at large seat under the state’s ranked choice voting)
Many GOP candidates have voiced support for continued “Stop the Steal” efforts, falsely claiming that President Biden is in the White House illegitimately and must be removed. Others acknowledge he’s the president but won’t say whether he was legitimately elected, and they incorrectly suggest there was wide-ranging fraud in the 2020 election. Some objected to the 2020 Electoral College certification or signed an amicus brief in a Texas lawsuit arguing electoral votes in battleground states Mr. Biden won should be tossed.
Other candidates backtracked after their primary races, hoping to appear less extreme to a wider electorate. CBS News still considers these candidates to have questioned the integrity of the election, even if they have since changed course.
Should GOP election deniers who are running for governor or secretary of state in the 2020 battleground states of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin win on Nov. 8, it’s possible that state-level certifications of the 2024 presidential election will be in the hands of officials who continue to propagate the idea that Joe Biden did not win in 2020.
In Arizona, where there are election deniers running for governor, secretary of state, and attorney general, Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake and secretary of state nominee Mark Finchem could have the final say in certifying the state’s 2024 election results. Lake has already said that she would not have accepted the state’s results in 2020 had she been Arizona’s governor, and Mark Finchem has suggested that he wouldn’t either.
The same is true in Michigan, where Tudor Dixon and Kristina Karamo, running for governor and secretary of state, have also said they wouldn’t have certified Mr. Biden’s 2020 victory.
Other races to watch include the governor’s races in the battleground states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where the far-right Republican nominees Doug Mastriano of Pennsylvania and Tim Michels of Wisconsin are on the ballot.
Below are profiles of some of the candidates who meet one or more of the following criteria:
- Said they believe the 2020 election was stolen;
- Repeated disproven claims of widespread voter fraud in 2020;
- Supported a type of post 2020-audit, sometimes following recounts or canvassing;
- Signed onto the Texas lawsuit looking to overturn the 2020 election results in several battleground states;
- Objected to certify the 2020 electoral college results in Arizona and Pennsylvania on Jan. 6, 2021; or
- Have at least once, if not more, been unclear when asked if they believe President Joe Biden was legitimately elected.
U.S. Senate candidates: 20 of 36 GOP candidates
Adam Laxalt (Nevada): Former Nevada Attorney General and Trump Nevada campaign co-chair Adam Laxalt said in a radio interview in August 2021, “There’s no question that they rigged the election.” He also worked with the 2020 Trump campaign in filing a lawsuit in November 2020 with Ric Grenell, the Trump-appointed former director of national intelligence to try to convince a judge to “stop the counting of improper votes.” Laxalt also spread a false claim about thousands of illegal votes in an op-ed after Mr. Biden had been certified as the winner.
Laxalt has since acknowledged Mr. Biden is the president, but has not explicitly said he was legitimately elected. “I know you want to make this entire election about this. We have major issues going on in our country right now,” he said, avoiding the question in October 2021.
JD Vance (Ohio): “I believe the election was stolen too, but why are we talking about the past,” JD Vance said during a campaign event in January. When asked by Spectrum News Ohio that same month if he felt the election had been stolen, Vance affirmed that he does. “The fundamental problem is we had a massive effort to shift the election by very powerful people in this country. I don’t care whether you say it’s rigged, whether you say it’s stolen, like I’ll say what I’m going to say about it,” he said.
Herschel Walker (Georgia): While he was aggressive in saying the election was stolen in 2020, Herschel Walker has since softened his tone. Days after the election, on Nov. 6, 2020, Walker was suggesting several battleground states should vote again. On Dec. 27, 2020 he said on Fox News that he was certain “Biden didn’t get 50 million people voting for him, yet people think he won this election.”
Walker expressed doubt that the Jan. 6 rioters were Trump supporters, calling them “Trojan horses” and tweeting that Trump has the power “right now to see who they really are and to get the bottom of who stole this election!” In May, Walker claimed he’d never heard Trump say the election was stolen.
Don Bolduc (New Hampshire): In August, Don Bolduc said, “I signed a letter … saying that Trump won the election, and, damn it, I stand by my letter.” He added: “I’m not switching horses, baby. This is it.” After winning his primary, Bolduc reversed course “I’ve come to the conclusion, and I want to be definitive on this: The election was not stolen,” he said, adding that while he still believes there was fraud, “elections have consequences and, unfortunately, President Biden is the legitimate president of this country.”
Rep. Ted Budd (North Carolina): As a congressman, Budd voted to object to the Electoral College results in Arizona and Pennsylvania on Jan. 6, 2021. He also voiced support for the Texas lawsuit that tried to contest Mr. Biden’s victories in several battleground states in the Supreme Court. “Millions of Americans do not have faith in the November election. One of the best ways to air out the legitimate concerns over voter fraud, machine irregularities, and mail-in ballots is at the Supreme Court,” he tweeted in December 2020.
But more recently, Budd has said that he does believe Biden is “the legitimate president.” He told Fox 46 in April, “He is the president, but I have tremendous constitutional concerns about how the election of 2020 happened.”
Mehmet Oz (Pennsylvania): While he said during a debate in April that “we cannot move on” from the 2020 election, he also said on conservative network “Real America’s Voice” that he wants “to be careful” about how he talks about the 2020 election. “I know for sure we’ve got to deal with 2020, but this is about knowing what exactly the diagnosis is so we can give it the right treatment,” he said. During the general election campaign, however, Oz said that he would have voted to certify Mr. Biden’s election. In September, Oz said that he would have certified the 2020 election for Joe Biden. “I would not have objected to it,” Oz said. “By the time the delegates and those reports are sent to the U.S. Senate, our job was to approve it. That’s what I would have done.”
Blake Masters (Arizona): Before his primary, Blake Masters said in a campaign ad, “I think Trump won in 2020,” and he called the 2020 election “really messed up.” He also claimed, “If we had had a free and fair election, President Trump would be sitting in the Oval Office today.” But after winning the GOP primary, he shifted his stance to say that Joe Biden had won — with help from and interference by the FBI and the media.
Gubernatorial candidates: 20 of 36 GOP candidates
Doug Mastriano (Pennsylvania): In addition to being near the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and spending thousands of dollars from his campaign account to arrange buses from Pennsylvania to Washington, D.C., that day, Doug Mastriano, a state senator, held a hearing weeks after the 2020 election and called Trump campaign lawyer Rudy Giuliani to testify “on election issues.” Mastriano and other Pennsylvania Republicans challenged the state’s new mail ballot law all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court — which upheld the legality of the rules. On Nov. 27, 2020, he introduced a bill asking Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar “to withdraw and vacate the certification of the presidential election.”
In Pennsylvania, the governor appoints the secretary of state and in April, Mastriano said he already has someone in mind, though he hasn’t released a name. He’s also contemplating forcing all voters to re-register in Pennsylvania. He said on “The John Fredericks Show” that he has the power to decertify or certify “any machines or anything else involved with elections… with the stroke of a pen, I can decertify every single machine in the state.”
Kari Lake (Arizona): Kari Lake has never backed away from remarks she’s made denying the 2020 election’s legitimacy. She has said, “If you think that election was fair, put down Hunter’s crack pipe.” She has also said she would not have certified Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in Arizona if she had been governor. She called late-night ballot counting that favored Mr. Biden over Trump “magic.” On “Face the Nation” in October, Lake refused to say whether Mr. Biden is the legitimate president, and she has also appeared on QAnon-affiliated talk shows.
Gov. Greg Abbott (Texas): In December 2020, Gov. Greg Abbott supported the Texas lawsuit led by Attorney General Ken Paxton that sought to toss the election results of four battleground states that Mr. Biden won (Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin). Abbott said of the case, which was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, that Paxton was trying to “accelerate the process, providing certainty and clarity about the entire election process.”
In Sept. 2021, the Texas secretary of state’s office announced an audit of the 2020 election. Abbott defended the audit in an interview with “Fox News Sunday,” saying, “Why do we audit everything in this world, but people raise their hands in concern when we audit elections?” Abbott approved $4 million in funding for the audit in Nov. 2021, which found very few issues with the 2020 election, according to the Texas Tribune.
Tudor Dixon (Michigan): In a primary debate, Tudor Dixon raised her hand along with the rest of the Republican gubernatorial field when they were asked if there was enough fraud to impact the 2020 election results. In another debate, she was asked if she believed Trump had legitimately won Michigan. She replied, “Yes,” even though Mr. Biden had won the state by about 154,000 votes. After his victory, Dixon, in a since-deleted tweet, wrote the election had been stolen and claimed Democrats had committed “sloppy and obvious” voter fraud, according to MLive, but she offered no evidence to support her accusation.
Dan Cox (Maryland): In December 2020, Dan Cox suggested on Facebook that Trump should seize voting machines as a way to prove fraud had occurred. Cox also sponsored buses to take people to the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6. That afternoon, Cox tweeted: “Mike Pence is a traitor.” Cox later deleted the tweet. In a July 2021 Facebook post, Cox wrote: “I was in Philadelphia with President Trump’s team for three weeks during the 2020 election and witnessed PA election fraud.” Cox also posted tweets containing QAnon rhetoric ahead of the 2020 election.
Secretary of state: 12 of 27 GOP candidates
Kristina Karamo (Michigan): In December, Kristina Karamo tweeted that “corrupt politicians with the help of the lying media were trying to steal the election, ain’t going to happen.” Karamo gained a following after the 2020 election, when she claimed to have witnessed fraudulent activity where Detroit was counting absentee ballots. She made several cable news appearances to spread unfounded claims of widespread fraud and filed to intervene in Texas’ lawsuit to overturn the election. One of Karamo’s central fraud claims was about a ballot that had straight-ticket voting bubbles filled out for both Democrats and Republicans. She claimed a worker had wanted to count the ballot for Democrats and a supervisor told the worker to “push it through.” Chris Thomas, the longtime elections director in Michigan who was at the absentee counting facility in Detroit, told CBS News that “push it through” meant that the ballot would be registered as an overvote and would not count for either party.
During New Jersey’s gubernatorial election last November, Karamo claimed that ballots for Democrat incumbent Governor Phil Murphy were “magically” appearing. “Can’t make this stuff up, but again you’re ‘insurrectionist’ and a ‘big lie proponent’ for pointing out the obvious,” she tweeted. Ahead of her election this November, Karamo has claimed that election machines in Detroit are illegal.
Mark Finchem (Arizona): “The 2020 General Election is irredeemably compromised, and it is impossible to name a clear winner of the contest,” Mark Finchem, a state House member, wrote in a resolution he introduced in the Arizona Legislature to decertify the 2020 election results in Maricopa, Pima and Yuma counties. Finchem attended Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally and was in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6. He also supported the Maricopa County GOP-led state Senate-mandated audit that ultimately found President Biden had won the county by about 45,000 votes, a handful more than the original count. He has also attended conferences and fundraisers hosted by QAnon influencers.
Jim Marchant (Nevada): Jim Marchant, who was the Republican nominee for Nevada’s 4th District in 2020, falsely claimed that the election had been “stolen” from him and from Trump and filed a lawsuit over his own 33,000 vote loss in 2020. The challenge was dismissed. He lost to Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford in 2020. Now, as the GOP nominee to be secretary of state, Marchant has told The Guardian that he would be open to sending an alternate slate of electors to Congress in 2024. Marchant and former Clark County District Court Judge Richard Scotti, another Nevada Secretary of State Republican candidate in the race, have said they would push to decertify Dominion voting machines, which are used by nearly all of Nevada’s counties. Like Mastriano, Marchant also said he supported a proposal to “re-register” voters, which was used by segregationists to restrict the votes of Black Americans during Reconstruction and through the 1960s. Marchant has also attended QAnon-affiliated conferences and spoke on panels about election fraud- and has falsely claimed that Nevada has not “elected anybody since 2006,” but politicians in the state have been “installed by the deep state cabal.”
Audrey Trujillo (New Mexico): In June, Trujillo called for county commissioners to remove all Dominion machines and all drop boxes, and said the state’s primary results couldn’t be certified until counties did a hand recount, forensic audit and a cast vote record has been provided. In a Facebook interview in March, she said the 2020 election “was a huge, huge, I would say coup to really unseat a president who had the best interests of Americans.”
House candidates: 238 of 436* GOP candidates
*2 Republicans are running for the Alaska at large seat under the state’s ranked choice voting
Sarah Palin (Alaska): When broadcaster Piers Morgan asked her if she accepted that Biden won the election “fair and square,” she said, “Evidently he did because he is sworn in as our president, but no one will convince me, nor anyone else with common sense and a sense of justice — no one will convince us that there was not shenanigans.”
Kevin McCarthy (California): The House minority leader and potential future House speaker voted to object to the Electoral College certification and said on Fox News right after the election that “President Trump won this election, so everyone who’s listening, do not be quiet. We cannot allow this to happen before our very eyes.” At a press conference June, McCarthy said that Joe Biden was president, but did not say if he was legitimately elected.
Lauren Boebert (Colorado): Before the 2020 election, Boebert wrote in a tweet that “the only way Democrats can win [in 2020] is through election fraud.” Ahead of Jan. 6, she tweeted about “video footage, voice recordings, data analysis, statistical improbabilities,” and more disproven allegations of mass election fraud. She also objected to the Electoral College certification the morning of Jan. 6. Rep. Boebert, now the incumbent in 2024, was at Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse and tweeted that morning, “Today is 1776.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene (Georgia): Marjorie Taylor Greene was also one of the 10 Republican members of Congress who attended a Trump White House meeting that focused on efforts to overturn the 2020 election. She voted to object to the Electoral College Certification on Jan. 6 and continues to incorrectly insist that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
John Gibbs (Michigan): During a debate with his primary opponent, incumbent Rep. Peter Meijer, in late June, John Gibbs made the unfounded claim that there were “anomalies” in the 2020 election results “that are simply mathematically impossible.” On his campaign website, Gibbs calls for a “full forensic audit” of the 2020 election and writes that there should be an ID required to vote and an elimination of the early voting period. He also says the “mass mailing of ballots to every voter… would be considered corrupt if used in any developing country.”
JR Majewski (Ohio): JR Majewski was in Washington, D.C.,on Jan. 6 and in since-deleted tweets first reported by CNN, Majewski tweeted ahead of the Capitol Hill riot that “it’s going down” on Jan. 6. He also has shared QAnon memes and language on his Parler social media account that was later deleted.
Mayra Flores (Texas): Mayra Flores has suggested that the Capitol riot was caused by Antifa and “infiltrators.” A CNN review of – tweets leading up to January 2021 that have since been deleted, noted that Flores had shown admiration for Trump attorney Sidney Powell, calling her an “American hero.” Powell filed a number of baseless lawsuits that alleged massive fraud in the 2020 election. Powell is being sued for defamation over some of her claims and has been sanctioned by a federal judge for a failure to do her due diligence before submitting one of her lawsuits. Flores wrote that “this election is not over” in late November 2020.
Harriet Hageman (Wyoming): Harriet Hageman, who defeated incumbent Rep. Liz Cheney in the GOP primary, said the 2022 election was “rigged” and told a primary debate audience that “we have serious questions” about the 2020 election.
Contributions by Sierra Sanders, Grace Kazarian, Fritz Farrow, Scott MacFarlane and Major Garrett
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Oprah Winfrey endorses Fetterman in Pennsylvania Senate race
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CBS Evening News, November 3, 2022
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Doug Mastriano’s Prophets In Pennsylvania
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PENNSYLVANIA — LifeGate Church is nestled in a wooded area of Elizabethtown, 6 miles from the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant that partially melted down in 1979, almost rendering this pretty patch of central Pennsylvania along the Susquehanna River a radioactive wasteland. The church was formed in 2010, and now a half-acre of trees behind the building lay on their sides, cut down to make room for an expansion that will include a new youth center.
On an overcast Sunday morning last month, about 80 congregants pulled into the parking lot underneath brilliant orange and yellow foliage and filed in through the church’s red front doors, sharing warm greetings and smiles. I also pulled into the parking lot, glancing in the rearview mirror to see a car pulling in behind me with a sticker on its front windshield declaring, “CRT MARXISM SUCKS.”
I was welcomed by Pastor Don Lamb, a tall, gray-mustachioed man who had recently recovered from a heart attack. (He’d collapsed in a nearby diner and technically died, he told me. But people rushed to his aid and performed a “miracle,” resuscitating him.) Lamb had made it clear before I arrived at LifeGate that he was wary of journalists like me, but that the church would stand by its promise to welcome anybody for Sunday service. I took my place in the rows of adjoined chairs as a full band — keyboardist, guitar player, bass player, drummer — started to play worship songs. The congregants rose to their feet, some with palms facing upward and eyes closed, singing.
Lamb then introduced a visitor to the day’s service, Calvin Greiner, a middle-aged white man from over in Lititz who claims to receive prophetic visions from God. Greiner walked to the front of the room carrying a long sword and grabbed hold of the microphone.
“I was instructed years and years ago to make a sword and to put on it specific words,” Greiner said. He recited the sword’s inscription. “Anointed and appointed. Worship. Warfare. Prayer. Intercession by the direction of the Lord Jesus Christ,” he said. “The other side says, The sword of the Lord — my name’s not on here — it’s The sword of the Lord. The sword of the Spirit.”
“This was in the office of Doug Mastriano — some of you might know him — for 225 days,” Greiner continued. Mastriano, of course, is a state senator and Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania.
Greiner explained how God recently told him to retrieve the sword from Mastriano’s office in Harrisburg, take it to Philadelphia, where a pastor at a church blessed it, and then to the nation’s capital. “God said, ‘After Philly, this must go to D.C. This must go to my Capitol in D.C. from Harrisburg,’” Greiner recalled, his voice breaking.
But before D.C., God told him to stop at LifeGate, where he’d meet a man named Jim Emery, a church member who had worked as security for Mastriano during his campaign.
Greiner invited Emery and a couple of other men to join him at the front of the church, where they laid their hands upon the sword and began to pray as the guitarist strummed a soft melody.
“Oh Lord and heavenly father, we thank you and pray to you that you gave us this sword to bind the powers of Satan and cast it out!” one of the men said. “As this sword moves to Washington, I pray by the powers of the Holy Spirit you will send your angels in and around that building, Lord. And you will touch the mighty Angel of God and find the power of Satan in Washington and run him out of town, Lord!”
The guitarist continued playing as Greiner closed the prayers by exclaiming: “So let God arise! Let his enemies scatter! Let those who hate God flee right now!”
Lamb took hold of the microphone again.
“We welcome you all to LifeGate, the church in the country that’s trying to affect the country,” he said. “We truly believe that God has called the church to be more than a house of offerings, a house of sermons, a house of hymnals. This will be a house of activating people to be engaged in the world we will live in.”
Lamb asked the congregation: “How many of you look forward to the return of Christ?” The crowd erupted into cheers and amens.
“That’s coming,” Lamb assured them, “but you got work to do until then.”
Doug Mastriano, GOP nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, holds a sword at an event hosted by QAnon conspiracy theorists in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in April 2022. In April, Mastriano spoke at an event in Gettysburg hosted by believers in the QAnon conspiracy theory. He told the crowd that he would be the next governor of Pennsylvania because “my God will make it so.”
The event’s organizer, Francine Fosdick, then gave him what she called “the Sword of David.” She explained that she was giving him the sword because of the “warfare” Mastriano would have to wage on the campaign trail. “You’ve been fighting for our country, and you’re fighting for our religious rights in Christ Jesus,” Fosdick told him.
“Oh yeah,” Mastriano replied, holding up the blade. “Where’s Goliath?”
Mastriano’s campaign did not answer any questions for this story, including whether this sword was the same one I saw at LifeGate.
Mastriano has run an insular campaign for governor, often outright refusing to engage questions from a mainstream media eager to press him about his apocalyptic Christian worldview. He has preferred instead to remain in a conservative media bubble, almost solely granting interviews to far-right figures like Steve Bannon.
To better understand Mastriano, I traveled to central Pennsylvania to see the Christian nationalist extremists in his orbit up close. His supporters, some of whom are self-anointed “prophets,” see Mastriano as ordained by God to be governor of the Keystone State at a crucial moment in American history. Along the way, I joined a traveling far-right roadshow and neo-Charismatic Christian revival called the Great ReAwakening, hosted by former Trump national security adviser Gen. Michael Flynn and Oklahoma businessman Clay Clark.
It’s a festival of MAGA and QAnon conspiracy theories — about the 2020 election, vaccines, the COVID pandemic, 5G, critical race theory and a globalist cabal of Democratic Satan-worshiping pedophiles — so outlandish that it’d be easy to dismiss as fringe if it weren’t regularly attracting thousands of people. It’s also routinely endorsed by some of the most powerful Republican figures in the country, including Mastriano.
If polls, not prophecies, are to be believed, Mastriano will be clobbered by his Democratic opponent, Josh Shapiro, in Tuesday’s election. But his likely defeat shouldn’t distract from what Mastriano represents: The ongoing radicalization of the Republican Party into a sect that sees its victory as inevitable and predestined from above, and which paints its opponents as the literal incarnations of the Devil in need of vanquishing. In this view, democracy is merely a roadblock in a divine quest for domination.
Waiting For Mastriano
Manheim, PA – October 21 : Attendees are baptized at the Great ReAwakening America Tour held at the Spooky Nook Sports Complex on Friday, Oct 21, 2022 in Manheim, PA. Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Early on a Friday morning last month in Manheim, a small town in the fertile farmland of Lancaster County, a few thousand people — almost all white, most middle-aged — entered the sprawling Spooky Nook Sports complex, laying their coats down on white folding chairs as a band on stage broke into song.
“Way maker, miracle worker, promise keeper, light in the darkness. My God that is who you are,” the band sang as the crowd joined in. They wore T-shirts emblazoned with slogans like “Jesus is my Savior, Trump is my President,” and “FAUCI LIED.”
Pastor Dave Scarlett took the stage, flanked by half a dozen people holding shofars — rams-horn trumpets traditionally used by Jews in religious ceremonies. In recent years the far-right has appropriated the instrument for its battle cry, a way of commencing “spiritual warfare.” Shofars were seen frequently during the violent Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“Let’s go to war,” Scarlett told the crowd, the shofars sounding off seven times.
So began the 17th stop of the Great ReAwakening tour. Attendees were told by speaker after speaker that they — the true, real Americans — are under attack on all fronts, and their salvation lies in seizing political and cultural institutions to pave the way for the Second Coming of Christ.
Many speakers claim they have a direct line to God. Bo Polny describes himself as an “experienced cycles timing analyst” in “Gold, Silver and Cryptocurrency” who uses “prayer and prophetic dreams” to forecast the markets.
“The U.S. Stock Market Crashed 38% in March 2020, as forecast,” his website claims. “NEXT comes the OCTOBER 2022 WORLD ECONOMIC COLLAPSE followed by the return of President Trump… how will Bitcoin, Gold, Silver and Cryptocurrencies react in the turmoil? Become a PRIVATE MEMBER TODAY and get all the DETAILS!” (A 14-day trial is “only” $99.)
Polny spoke at the Great ReAwakening show on Oct. 21. After a hard-to-follow explanation about the Biblical significance of the number “24,” Polny told the crowd that something big was going to happen soon, on Nov. 24 — perhaps the crash of the American dollar. “The system is a fraud, people!” Polny said. “It’s a fraud. Haggai 2:8 states that ‘the silver and the gold are mine, saith the Lord.’ Not the U.S. dollar!”
He then added: “The seven mountains that are built — the financial system, the church, education, the government, arts, entertainment, media — all of it is coming down, and seven new mountains will be built!”
The crowd — which knew this prophecy well — cheered.
The “Seven Mountains Mandate” is at the core of the New Apostolic Reformation. This relatively new evangelical movement believes in miracles, the supernatural, and the existence of modern-day apostles and prophets. It’s a movement characterized by Christian dominionism, the belief that Christians must gain control of the “seven mountains” of societal influence to form a perfect world. Only then, the prophecy goes, can Christ return to Earth.
This theocratic philosophy makes no room for equal governance in a pluralistic society like that of the United States. Yet the GOP candidate for governor of the country’s fifth largest state is a devotee. Though Mastriano has attempted to distance himself from New Apostolic Reformation, he has appeared repeatedly on the campaign trail with its apostles and prophets, allowing them to lay hands on him in prayer.
Mastriano was scheduled to speak at this Great ReAwakening in Manheim — organizer Clay Clark said Mastriano’s campaign asked to include him on the speaker list — but he wouldn’t appear until the end of the second day of the conference, after 16-plus hours of songs, baptisms, healing ceremonies and the casting out of demons.
And wild speeches like Polny’s.
“We’re about to witness the Third Seal of Revelation,” Polny told the Great ReAwakening crowd. “The angel of death is coming to visit these people before the end of the year.”
A graphic appeared on the screen behind him showing photos of Hilary Clinton, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, President Joe Biden, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), billionaire George Soros, former First Lady Michelle Obama, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and others.
A graphic projected onto a screen at the far-right Great ReAwakening show in Manheim, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 21, 2022 prophesying that the “angel of death” will visit twenty-four political figures by the end of the year. “These people are going down!” Polny exclaimed as the audience cheered and clapped. “These people who think they are pharaohs! Present-day pharaohs who you shall never see again!”
“This is coming with the greatest wealth transfer in human history,” he continued, making sure to plug his business. “Gold and silver are going to explode in value…”
Polny’s hit list, which included many of the MAGA movement’s stated political opponents, was taken from “Julie Green Prophecies,” according to the graphic on the projector.
Green, a fixture of the Great ReAwakening tour, is a “prophet” whose prophecies are reliably pro-Trump. They are sometimes violent too, like her prophecy that God — any minute now — is going to strike down Democratic politicians “for their planned pandemic, shortages, inflation, mandates and for stealing an election.” She has also falsely alleged that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “loves to drink the little children’s blood” and that the federal government is performing “human sacrifices.”
She nevertheless enjoys a close relationship with Mastriano. The GOP nominee for governor once shared a video of Green prophesying that Pennsylvania is a “hornet’s nest of corruption” but that “I, the Lord, am cleansing your state.”
Mastriano has been photographed with Green and once invited her to give a prayer at a campaign rally. At the Patriots Arise conference in Gettysburg — where Mastriano accepted his sword — Green delivered another prophecy. “Yes, Doug, I am here for you, and I have not forsaken you,” Green said, speaking as God. “The time has come for their great fall; for the great steal to be overturned. So, keep your faith in me.”
I knew all this about Green when she took the stage at the Great ReAwakening in Manheim. I did not expect to witness how much her followers adored her and how excited they were to watch her reveal prophecies on stage.
“Says God, ‘you can’t stop my son, who is the rightful president, and his name is President Donald Trump…” she said, as the crowd broke into hysterical cheers. “He is on his way back, and how he takes his position back on center stage, you will never see that coming because you won’t see me coming. And I am with him.’”
Green said that Trump’s return to the White House might happen before 2024. “God said he can take this country back in unconventional ways. He doesn’t need an election to do it,” she added.
Later, I saw Green wafting around the conference like a celebrity. She, at times, placed her hands on people’s heads, casting out their demons, causing her followers to break down in tears and even collapse. She and other “prophets” performed these rituals frequently.
They claimed to heal the sick. A woman in a wheelchair stood up and walked, saying this Great ReAwakening was the first time she’d done so in 13 years.
Attendees are prayed over during a worship and prayer time at the Great ReAwakening America Tour held at the Spooky Nook Sports Complex on Friday, Oct 21, 2022 in Manheim, Pennsylvania. Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Valeri Boland, who coordinates volunteers for Mastriano’s campaign in Dauphin County, told me I had a demon.
I had been watching the failed U.S. Senate candidate Kathy Barnette speak on stage when Boland sat next to me. She had seen my tweets about the conference. She whispered in my ear that they were “trash” and “full of lies,” pointing her finger toward my chest. She said she would pray for me to have a “radical encounter with God” so that the “demons inside me” causing me to lie would leave.
She went back to her seat. Twenty minutes later, she found me again and apologized, offering to pray with me, an invitation I declined. She was joined by Francine Fosdick, the QAnon believer from Gettysburg who had gifted Mastriano the sword. The pair both wore “Mastriano” pins on their shirts and launched into a series of conspiratorial rants that they asked me not to record — including about the COVID vaccine and the Georgia Guidestones — while trying to convince me to accept Jesus into my heart.
I walked over to where various MAGA vendors were hawking their wares. There were prophetic paintings, one of Jesus hugging an American flag and another of a lion, surrounded by American flags, and the text: “What storm Mr. President? You’ll find out” — an apparent reference to the QAnon “storm” prophecy that Trump will mass-arrest his political enemies one day.
Other vendors sold $100 metal crosses, handbags shaped like guns, and “Trump is still my president, but Christ is King” sweatshirts. There were various questionable health supplements for sale, vitamins and anointing oils, and a blanket that purportedly protects you from 5G’s radioactive waves.
One woman, who had hurt her wrists working as an Amazon delivery driver, showed me the bottle of “micronic silver” she had just bought, which she claimed instantly stopped her pain.
Mastriano’s campaign had a booth amidst all this snake oil where supporters could sign up to volunteer. A nervous campaign worker moved aside as I took photos of the booth, stacked with literature about Mastriano’s pledge to restore “voting integrity,” “end mask and vaccine mandates,” and “put parents in charge of education.” I asked the campaign worker if Mastriano would still speak at the conference, and she said probably not. He was too busy. Clark, the conference organizer, kept telling me that Mastriano was still on the schedule.
“I identify as a man today — is it OK to be in here?” a man in the men’s bathroom loudly joked as he used a urinal, with three other grown men next to him guffawing. (Nearly every speaker at the conference had gone after transgender people, some calling gender dysphoria the work of the devil.)
Outside, I found Pennsylvania state Rep. Dave Zimmerman, who I’d interviewed a few weeks prior at a small rally for Mastriano in Harrisburg. At that rally, he had admitted to being subpoenaed by the FBI, likely over his involvement with Mastriano’s scheme to install fake electors after the 2020 election to give the presidency to Trump.
I showed Zimmerman a photo of the “angel of death” prophecy that had been projected on stage, making sure it was close enough so he could read the text above the faces of the 24 people prophesied to die in the next couple of months: “Angel of Death coming for them by year-end. ’TREASON will be written on them for ETERNITY.”
Is this OK? I asked Zimmerman. He demurred.
“I don’t know what was said. But there’s no question there’s, you know, there’s good things, and there’s bad things happening in our country, and some individuals promote good things, and some individuals promote bad things.”
I asked him: “Do you believe in modern-day prophets who have a direct line to God?”
”You know, throughout the Old Testament, New Testament scripture, God used prophets, and I’m sure he’s using prophets today as well. There’s clearly prophets that can talk to God, I’m sure,” Zimmerman said.
“QAnon’s actual core is that you need mass murder to save America, and that part hasn’t died.”
Outside the building, I eavesdropped as about a dozen attendees smoked cigarettes while chatting about their favorite far-right media personalities.
“I go to sleep listening to InfoWars.”
“That BS with the Sandy Hook lawsuit fucked him over.”
“We were listening to Ben Shapiro on local radio — he talks too fast, though.”
“Tucker Carlson — he is so funny sometimes. He just cracks me up. And that laugh of his!”
Lisa, from Elizabethtown, lit a second cigarette after agreeing to explain her “Save The Children” T-shirt to me. The Illuminati, she said, are harvesting adrenochrome from the blood of sex-trafficked kids in underground tunnels. She’d seen video evidence of these rituals via DuckDuckGo — a Pennsylvania-based search engine. She turned around so I could see the back of her shirt, replete with a map of “THE TUNNEL SYSTEM OF THE UNITED STATES.”
A woman at the Great ReAwakening show in Manheim, Pennsylvania, shows off a shirt mapping out underground tunnels across the U.S. where she believes the Illuminati are harvesting children’s blood. Christopher Mathias / HuffPost
This conspiracy theory is at the heart of QAnon, the authoritarian fantasy that one day Trump will destroy this cabal of pedophiles, who incidentally are his political foes. Support for QAnon was evident at the Great ReAwakening — with one speaker leading the crowd in reciting the movement’s slogan, “Where we go one, we go all.” But it was far less pronounced than it might’ve been at a MAGA event two or three years ago.
I called Thomas LeCaque, an associate professor of history at Grand View University who studies apocalyptic religion and political violence, to ask him whether this was because QAnon’s brand, with all of its wild prophecies and numerologies, and its association with the Jan. 6 insurrection, had simply become too toxic. “I think it’s much worse than that,” he said. “I think QAnon became so normalized in the far right that you don’t need the specific banners of Q to announce it’s already there.”
When you peel away all the “genuinely batshit crazy prophetic aspects,” LeCaque explained, QAnon at its core is a “mass murder fantasy” about the coming “storm” when all of the MAGA movement’s enemies will be arrested and lynched.
“The ideology that your enemies are literal monsters and that something needs to be done about them — that part has unfortunately become far too mainstream,” LeCaque said. “I think that’s the part that should worry us a lot more. Like it’s really easy to make fun of QAnon in its purest state, but QAnon’s actual core is that you need mass murder to save America, and that part hasn’t died.”
Hand gun and rifle themed American flags, hats and other MAGA gear is sold during the ReAwaken America Tour held at the Spooky Nook Sports Complex on Saturday, Oct 22, 2022 in Manheim, Pennsylvania. Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Inside the conference, there was excitement about the arrival of Trump’s adult son. “Does anybody in this room not think that we won Pennsylvania?” Eric Trump asked the crowd after taking the stage. “It was the biggest fraud.”
He then gave a speech similar to the ones he’s given at other ReAwaken tour stops — the election was stolen, Christianity is under attack, liberals are indoctrinating your kids in schools — before taking out his phone and calling his dad.
Eric Trump held the phone to the microphone so the crowd, growing ecstatic, could hear the former president say, “We love you. We’re going to bring this country back because I think our country has never been in such bad shape as it is now.”
The crowd started to chant: “Trump! Trump! Trump!”
Then Eric Trump thanked Clark, the conference’s organizer, who had joined him on stage. “I love you guys,” he told Clark, “the job you’ve done…” The crowd started to cheer loudly for Clark. I was close enough to the stage to see the tears welling up in Clark’s eyes.
Clark is a far-right podcaster and business consultant from Tulsa, Oklahoma, who believes that a 2013 prophecy from a self-anointed Christian “prophet” named Kim Clement about “a man by the name of Mr. Clark and… another man by the name of Donald” was about him and Trump.
He interpreted this prophecy as a call from God to launch the Great ReAwakening, holding the show’s first iteration in Tulsa last April. He has used the tour to push the unhinged conspiracy theory that the COVID vaccine is a trick by billionaire Bill Gates to alter our DNA, making the number of genes a variant of the devil’s number — 666, also known as the “Mark of the Beast.”
“The shot, the injection, the bioweapon, what is being called the vaccine —everyone needs to look this up — it’s called SM-102,” Clark said. “A core ingredient of the shot, SM-102, also contains a technology called luciferase—Lucifer race.”
Now, here he was being thanked by Eric Trump in front of thousands of people. “He doesn’t need to be doing this crap, and neither do I, frankly,” Eric Trump said of Clark. “But the guy doesn’t stop because he loves this nation, and he loves everything this country stands for. And you are incredible at everything you put together.”
After Eric’s speech, many in the crowd started to filter out of the Spooky Nook complex, walking back to their cars as the sun set. A middle-aged white couple named Carl and Lori were driving a red, white and blue pickup truck covered in decals spelling out, “Doug Mastriano For Governor.”
“He’s gonna do all he’s gonna say he’s gonna do,” Carl said of Mastriano. “No same-sex marriage, no killing babies, that’s the main thing, and taking care of the schools and not having teachers teaching what they’re teaching. All this transgender goings-ons and all that crap.”
Carl loved all the speakers at Great ReAwakening. Lori particularly liked the prophet Julie Green.
“She’s a very good, strong Christian woman,” Lori said. “God speaks to her.”
Carl from Hershey, Pennsylvania, stands with his truck covered in decals supporting the far-right GOP nominee for governor Doug Mastriano on Oct. 21, 2022 in Manheim. Christopher Mathias / HuffPost
On day two of the Great ReAwakening, I met Micki Witthoeft, the mother of Ashli Babbitt, the woman fatally shot by Capitol police as she tried to crawl through a shattered window into the Speaker’s Lobby during the insurrection.
Witthoeft carried a small, 19-year-old dog named Fuggles in a backpack as she walked around the conference. She wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the letters “J4J6” — Justice For Jan. 6 — next to a photo of her daughter outside the Capitol building.
“That’s my daughter an hour before she was murdered by the United States government,” Witthoeft said.
This was her fourth time at a Great ReAwakening event. She was here with Randy Ireland, who led the New York chapter of the Proud Boys, a violent neo-fascist gang that played a major role in the insurrection. She and Ireland had joined forces to raise awareness about the mistreatment of Jan. 6 prisoners, who they said were being “robbed” of their due rights under the Constitution.
Every month they host a candlelight vigil outside the prison in D.C. where a few dozen alleged insurrectionists are being detained. “We pray,” Witthoeft said. “We sing hymns. We have call-ins from the prisoners that we put out over livestream through a microphone and the telephone, and then at nine o’clock, we all sing the National Anthem.”
I asked her how she felt about the Great ReAwakening.
“I think there’s a lot of different people here with a lot of different messages, but one consistent message is we need God in this country. We need God in our lives. We need God to move us forward in our paths, individually and collectively. And so I believe, you know, it’s a feel-good moment for a lot of people that are here.”
Micki Witthoeft, mother of Ashli Babbit, wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the letters “J4J6” — Justice For Jan. 6 — next to a photo of her daughter outside the Capitol building. Illustration: Benjamin Currie/HuffPost; Photo: Getty
Nearby people lined up to be healed by prophets, to have their demons cast out. Over on the main stage, a murderer’s row of bigots, grifters, COVID-deniers, and QAnon influencers gave speeches. It became clear that Mastriano wasn’t going to show. He was speaking at a rally up in Scranton and likely wouldn’t have time to get here. Not that he was going to sway any voters here, anyway. He had their votes. His campaign workers packed up their booth and walked out of Spooky Nook.
In his scheduled time slot, Donné Clement Petruska, the daughter of the late “prophet” Kim Clement, took to the stage and played videos of her dad “prophesying” Sept. 11, the rise of ISIS, and the election of Trump.
The crowd oohed and aahed.
The Sermon
The next morning at LifeGate church in Elizabethtown, Pastor Pete Ogilvie used part of his sermon to talk about the Great ReAwakening conference. “It was like drinking water from a firehose, the release of all the information and things — I couldn’t take it all in,” he said.
“It was a disturbing conference,” he said. “It was lovely and disturbing all at once.”
I had come to LifeGate because of its close ties to Mastriano and its involvement with the GOP. Lancaster Online, the local newspaper, had reported that four LifeGate members, including one with direct ties to an armed militia, had been working as a security team for Mastriano on the campaign trail. One of them, Jim Emery, along with two other LifeGate members — Stephen and Danielle Lindemuth, who were at the Jan. 6 rally that turned into the insurrection — also won seats on the local school board.
The church was making real inroads into local politics. I noticed Emery sitting in the back of the church during the sermon, holding the sword that had recently been in Mastriano’s Harrisburg office. Emery raised the sword aloft when he felt moved by the pastor’s words.
“These are the things that we come against in the name of Jesus, that we wage war with, and these are the things that we will declare victory over today!” Ogilvie declared. On the wall behind him, a projector displayed a long list of the church’s enemies:
“Mail-in Ballots, Dominion Machines, Election Day lasting longer than a week, Stolen elections, An illegitimate Administration in the WH….Human-Trafficking, Fentynol flooding our country, opioid addiction rampant, sexual immorality being the standard, Greed, Satanic Worship… Doctrines of demons, Critical Race Theory in our schools, Porn in our libraries, Boys competing in girl’s sports, pronoun protocols, Liberal media lies and canceling the conservative voices…”
Ogilive clicked through to the next slide:
“Medical Tyranny, Mask mandates, Vaccination Mandates, Covid Testing… Clause Schwab, George Soros, Fauci, Bill Gates, Hunter Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Tom Wolf, Richard Levine, Gerry Nadler, the Jan. 6 Committee, Liz Cheney, The rest of the swamp in Both Parties, and Both Houses of Congress and the Senate….”
“Lord, we believe that all these enemies of Your Word will fall, all your enemies will cower,” Ogilive said.
Someone in the back of the church blew through a shofar.
“Lord, we thank you, we only have enemies because you have enemies,” he added. “All your enemies are under your feet, and therefore they’re under ours.”
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Oprah endorses John Fetterman over Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania Senate race
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TV icon Oprah Winfrey on Thursday endorsed Democrat John Fetterman in Pennsylvania’s hotly contested Senate race and rejected Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz, whom she had helped launch to stardom nearly two decades ago when she brought him on her popular daytime talk show as a regular guest.
Until now, Winfrey had said she would leave the election to Pennsylvanians, but she changed that position in an online discussion on voting in next Tuesday’s election.
“I said it was up to the citizens of Pennsylvania and of course, but I will tell you all this, if I lived in Pennsylvania, I would have already cast my vote for John Fetterman for many reasons,” Winfrey said, before going on to urge listeners to vote for Democrats running for governor and Senate in various states.
The Pennsylvania seat has for months been seen as the most likely pickup opportunity for Democrats in the evenly divided Senate.
Polls show a close race between Fetterman and Oz, a celebrity heart surgeon who is endorsed by former President Donald Trump.
In a sign of how high the stakes are, Trump will return to Pennsylvania on Saturday to campaign for Oz, while President Biden and former President Barack Obama will campaign for Fetterman that same day.
Oz left Oprah’s show after five years and 55 episodes to start his own daytime TV program, “The Dr. Oz Show,” which ran for 13 seasons before he moved from New Jersey to Pennsylvania to run for the Senate.
The seat is being vacated by retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey.
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John Fetterman defends record on crime
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11/3: Red and Blue
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Oprah Throws Support Behind Fetterman In Pennsylvania Senate Race, Abandoning Oz
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Oprah Winfrey threw her support behind Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman in his race for a U.S. Senate seat on Thursday, a major loss for his Republican competitor, Mehmet Oz.
Winfrey made the comments during a virtual voting event with community leaders Thursday, part of her OWN Your Vote initiative to encourage Black women to participate in elections.
“If I lived in Pennsylvania, I would’ve already cast my vote for John Fetterman, for many reasons,” Winfrey said during the Zoom call, The 19th News’ Jan Staley reported.
HuffPost has reached out to Winfrey’s team for comment.
The endorsement is a notable shift for Winfrey, a longtime friend of Oz who helped vault him to national fame, initially as doctor guest on her talk show.
When she first welcomed Oz onto her daytime show in 2004, she referred to him as “America’s doctor” and gave him a national platform to promote health advice. She was responsible for launching his “Dr. Oz Show” in 2009 under her Harpo Productions banner, which made Oz a household name.
Winfrey has been relatively quiet on Oz’s bid, simply saying last year: “One of the great things about our democracy is that every citizen can decide to run for public office.”
“Mehmet Oz has made that decision,” she said at the time. “And now it’s up to the residents of Pennsylvania to decide who will represent them.”
Oz has said he asked Winfrey to “stay out” of the race and not to “support me” because he didn’t want her to get hurt.
On Thursday, Winfrey said she supported many Democrats running around the nation, including Rep. Val Demings, who’s running for a Senate seat in Florida; Beto O’Rourke, challenging the Texas governor; and, in Georgia, Sen. Raphael Warnock, who’s running for reelection, and Stacey Abrams, who’s seeking the governorship.
“If we do not show up to vote, if we do not get fired up in this moment, the people who will be in power will begin making decisions for us,” Oprah said during the event, according to Today. “Decisions about how we care for our bodies, how we care for our kids, what books your children can read, who gets protected by the police and who gets targeted.”
“And right now, you have a say in these things we do,” she added.
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John Fetterman’s Legacy As Mayor Of Braddock
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BRADDOCK, Pa. ― John Fetterman has no shortage of fans in the small steel town where he served as mayor for 13 years.
The Democratic Senate nominee’s most dedicated supporters often have stories of his gallantry.
When Marcie Gans was fired from her job a few years ago, she fell $1,200 behind on her mortgage. To avoid foreclosure, Gans began selling her worldly possessions in a yard sale.
Gans invited Fetterman to check out her sale items, but he offered to lend her the money, rather than purchase items he didn’t need. Months later, having recovered financially, Gans tried to pay Fetterman back. He refused.
“He said, ‘It’s nobody’s business, but I live off a big trust fund, and I help other people with it. And I appreciate you. Help somebody with your money,’” Gans recalled. “That’s the type of person he is!”
(Fetterman does not technically have a trust fund, but his parents’ insurance industry fortune heavily subsidized his work in Braddock.)
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman takes photos with supporters Aug. 12 following a rally for his U.S. Senate bid at the Bayfront Convention Center in Erie. Nate Smallwood via Getty Images
Denise McClinton, a resident of neighboring Rankin, remembers Fetterman’s work helping her children graduate from high school and get jobs while he was running a program for high school dropouts prior to becoming mayor. “He did more than anybody else would for them.”
Rodney Surratt, who owns a small landscaping business in Braddock, credits Fetterman with giving him paid work to beautify the town. “He got my vote ― I wish I could vote again and again.”
After more than three terms as mayor, Fetterman was elected lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania in 2018. He now faces Republican Mehmet Oz in the U.S. Senate contest.
Fetterman’s tenure as Braddock mayor has been a cornerstone of his pitch for higher office. He promises to champion Pennsylvania’s forgotten cities and towns because, he says, he already has the experience of reviving a borough that much of the state had written off as irreparable.
A map of Braddock from the late 1800s hangs on the wall at Peppers N’At, one of the town’s few restaurants. Justin Merriman for HuffPost
A “For sale” sign hangs on a storefront in Braddock; a large sign for the local Rotary Club chapter stands along the main street in Braddock; and horse shoes are advertised in a vacant lot in the business district. Justin Merriman for HuffPost
Fetterman used his family wealth to found a nonprofit, Braddock Redux, that circumvented the local government to buy up and revive abandoned properties that could then be leveraged for additional private and public investment. The result is a revived downtown artery, Braddock Avenue; the arrival of popular community services like the Free Store erected by Fetterman’s wife, Gisele Barreto Fetterman; and a national interest in the town that has even lured new employers.
“There has been some change since he was here,” Hope Pickens, who grew up in neighboring North Braddock, said after Sunday services at the Holliday Memorial AME Zion Church in Braddock on Oct. 16. “There’s light and traffic and people moving around, and you can go shopping and go into a store.”
But some residents say that Fetterman generated more hype for his achievements than they deserved, especially given the persistence of poverty and crime in the town.
“The gentrification that you see around has never really reached the people, so that there are people here who are still struggling while there are businesses that are thriving,” said Demetrius Baldwin, a diversity, equity and inclusion consultant who grew up in Braddock and still lives here.
Annette Baldwin (left) listens to the sermon at Holliday Memorial AME Zion Church on Oct. 16 in Braddock. At right, Demetrius Baldwin sits on steps along the street where his grandmother Annette lives. Justin Merriman for HuffPost
Doing ‘A Lot In A Short Time’
Growing up, Annette Baldwin, 84, remembers Braddock Avenue as a bustling strip of commercial activity. There were three movie theaters, “shoe stores galore,” and plenty of places to dine and enjoy an adult beverage. On at least one occasion, Frank Sinatra performed at one of the night clubs, according to Baldwin, a retired school district secretary and Democratic Party activist.
“Everybody came to Braddock because it was here,” Baldwin, who is Demetrius’s grandmother, told HuffPost over coffee after services at the Holliday Memorial AME Zion Church.
Braddock thrived for so many years as a hub for neighboring boroughs along the Monongahela River ― a region known locally as the “Mon Valley” ― thanks to its central place in the steel industry. In 1875, Andrew Carnegie chose Braddock as the site for his Edgar Thomson Plant, his first steel mill.
As the steel industry declined, Braddock’s fortunes fell as well, first gradually and then precipitously, in 1978, when the Carrie Blast Furnaces in neighboring Rankin ceased operation.
U.S. Steel’s Edgar Thomson Plant has been active in Braddock since 1875. Justin Merriman for HuffPost
Braddock is now home to just over 1,700 residents ― down from its peak of nearly 21,000 in 1920. About 70% of the town’s residents are Black descendants of Southerners who migrated north for opportunity in the early and middle 20th century. The plumes of smoke that emerge periodically from U.S. Steel’s Edgar Thomson Plant, which operates with a fraction of the workforce it once employed, are the last living remnant of Braddock’s storied industrial past.
It was this Braddock where Fetterman arrived in 2001 in the hopes of helping disadvantaged kids. He started a GED program for the community’s high school dropouts.
Fetterman, a conspicuously tall white man from central Pennsylvania, encountered his fair share of skepticism.
“When he first came here, he came kind of with a black cloud,” recalled Lisa Baldwin, an Allegheny County employee and real estate broker, who was also at Holliday Memorial AME Zion Church. (Lisa is Annette’s daughter, and Demetrius’ mother.)
“This is a Black town,” she said. “And so here’s another white male coming into our town ― like, ‘Who is this?’”
Lisa Baldwin sings during a service at Holliday Memorial AME Zion Church. She’s Annette’s daughter and Demetrius’ mother. Justin Merriman for HuffPost
But Fetterman slowly won residents over through his dedication to the young people and his use of his family’s insurance industry fortune to host giveaways of Christmas gifts, school supplies and bicycles for Braddock’s children.
When two of Fetterman’s GED students were gunned down, Fetterman decided to run for mayor in 2005. He ended up surpassing Virginia Bunn by one vote in the Democratic primary. (Both candidates outperformed incumbent Mayor Pauline Abdullah.)
The structure of Braddock’s borough government does not give mayors much power beyond overseeing the police department and breaking tie votes on the council.
Once elected, Fetterman nonetheless came into conflict with members of Braddock’s political establishment, who saw him as a self-interested white interloper.
Rather than work with them, he used his Braddock Redux nonprofit, erected with his share of the family fortune, to circumvent them. The nonprofit would buy up properties that were either abandoned or in disrepair and use them to subsidize private development or turn them into community spaces.
Some locals resented that Fetterman’s plans were not the product of a democratic process.
For example, in 2009, Fetterman agreed to let Levi’s Jeans film some TV ads in the town that made the town’s decaying infrastructure seem like an exciting frontier of American reinvention. Rather than pay the borough government for the privilege of filming, Levi’s contributed more than $1 million to Fetterman’s nonprofit. The money went toward the funding of a community farm, the town library and the renovation of an old church that opened as a community center in 2010.
Filmmaker Tony Buba, who now lives in West Braddock, takes issue with the decisions Fetterman made when spending money from his own nonprofit. Nate Smallwood for HuffPost
The Braddock Carnegie Library, seen through the stained-glass windows of the Braddock community center. Nate Smallwood for HuffPost
“There was no community discussion of where that million dollars was going to go,” said Tony Buba, a filmmaker who grew up in Braddock and now lives in neighboring Braddock Hills. More community input might have prompted Fetterman to prioritize making the building accessible for people with disabilities over restoring the old church’s stained-glass windows, Buba lamented.
In fact, local Braddock government agencies solicited community input for the church renovation plan beginning in 2004, though it is unclear how much influence community stakeholders had once the Levi’s money came in.
The building does lack complete wheelchair accessibility and is undergoing additional renovations to become more wheelchair accessible.
Regardless, many residents of Braddock say that improvements in the town’s infrastructure would not have occurred without Fetterman’s leadership, including his willingness to work around the borough council for the sake of efficiency.
Referring to the members of the borough council during Fetterman’s early years as mayor, Gans said, “These are people who finally got on council and did nothing ― nothing!”
The community center is now home to Aunt Cheryl’s Café, a lunch spot that opened in 2016. Cheryl Johnson, a former Braddock resident who now lives in Penn Hills, would not be able to sustain the business without the discounted rent she receives from Fetterman’s nonprofit, which still owns the community center building. For several years prior, Fetterman had allowed her to use the space free.
“He’s done a lot in a short time,” Johnson said.
Cheryl Johnson, owner of Aunt Cheryl’s Cafe, pays a discounted rent for her restaurant space in the community center building. Nate Smallwood for HuffPost
‘A Really Loving, Supportive And Dignified Space’
Walking down Braddock Avenue, there’s now an Italian restaurant at the entrance to town and a boutique brewery farther down.
The old Ohringer Building, a shuttered furniture store with a classic neon sign, has become housing for artists, with a gallery on the ground floor. The building that once housed Hollander’s drug store has become the Hollander Project, a co-working space and business incubator founded by Fetterman’s wife, Gisele.
The Ohringer, which once housed an eight-story furniture store, now has apartments for artists. There’s an art gallery on the ground floor. Justin Merriman for HuffPost
And, of course, even Fetterman’s harshest critics admit that the Free Store ― another Gisele brainchild ― is one of the lasting achievements of Fetterman’s mayoralty. The store, housed in recycled shipping containers, is a depot of donated clothing and other household items ― from dog food to baby formula ― that provides all comers a chance to walk away with whatever necessities catch their eye, free of charge.
When HuffPost visited the Free Store on Oct. 18, there was a line of people waiting outside on an unusually cold day to peruse the day’s offerings as Gisele Fetterman and other volunteers organized the items and tended to customers.
Following her husband’s nearly fatal stroke in May, Gisele campaigned in his stead while he recovered for a few months and she continues to engage with the press frequently on behalf of the Senate campaign.
In an interview just outside of the store, Gisele, an immigrant from Brazil, told HuffPost that she came up with the idea to start the Free Store in 2012 because when she first arrived in the United States, she had been a “dumpster diver” and “curbside shopper.”
Gisele Barreto Fetterman, the wife of Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman, came up with the idea for the Free Store, drawing on her experiences as an immigrant. Nate Smallwood for HuffPost
“I just knew that that could help so many other people as well,” she said. “So I wanted to create a space where all that can happen and be a really loving, supportive and dignified space.”
For Terrance Murtaza, a retired school bus monitor, who walked away with several items, the Free Store also provided an essential gathering place. And while the facility is Gisele’s brainchild, Murtaza identified it as a part of her husband’s legacy as well.
“He accomplished a sense of unity within the community where people can come out and not only come to the Free Store, but they can come out and help each other and they can also see exactly what’s going on with people, how bad things are for them, especially older people,” he said.
Volunteers sort donated goods outside the Free Store. Nate Smallwood for HuffPost
Goods offered at the Free Store in Braddock come from donations, and volunteers help run the facility. Nate Smallwood for HuffPost
Other Fetterman family projects have elicited a rockier reception. In 2013, Fetterman began collaborating with star chef Kevin Sousa to launch what, at the time, would have been Braddock’s only sit-down restaurant. He agreed to give Sousa free use of part of a former Superior Motors car dealership for the business. (Fetterman and his family live in a separate part of the shuttered car dealership compound.)
After several delays, the restaurant, simply named Superior Motors, got up and running in 2017. Sousa, who agreed to train and employ Braddock residents, served small and pricey haute-cuisine dishes that catered mostly to more affluent diners from outside of the borough.
Braddock residents were entitled to a 50% discount on every dish, but few Braddockites who spoke to HuffPost seemed aware of that.
“Superior Motors was a failure,” said Shayla Wolford, who works at Aunt Cheryl’s Café and was otherwise extremely positive about Fetterman’s tenure. “People that live here can’t afford it.”
Amid the strain of a COVID-19-related closure, Sousa severed ties to the restaurant in August 2021. Despite some indications from the project’s investors that the restaurant would reopen in a new form, nothing has yet taken shape.
A sign on the side of the former site of Superior Motors, a shuttered high-end restaurant that closed in Braddock a year ago. The chef had been given free use of the space. Justin Merriman for HuffPost
Starting around 2009, Fetterman began getting national attention for his work in Braddock.
Rolling Stone called him the “mayor of hell.” The New York Times used the gentler moniker “Mayor of Rust.” And The Atlantic hailed Fetterman’s “record of success in revitalizing Braddock.”
The magazine profiles, along with some TV segments, tended to exhibit a kind of lurid fascination with Fetterman, a 6-foot-8 graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School of governance who wore Carhartt and Dickies apparel because he was a man of the people. Fetterman’s forearm tattoos, with Braddock’s ZIP code and the dates of violent deaths that occurred on his watch as mayor, also figure prominently in those accounts.
“The audience was enchanted,” the Times wrote of the reception to a speech Fetterman delivered at the 2010 Aspen Ideas Festival. “Here was a guy in biker boots bringing the Park Slope (Aspen, Marin, Portland, Santa Fe) ethos — organic produce, art installations, an outdoor bread oven — to the disenfranchised.”
Fetterman’s aesthetic and knack for public relations were unique. But in some ways, he was simply taking a trendy model of local governance in post-industrial towns to new heights.
In the absence of a national economic development strategy for struggling municipalities or the ability to deficit-spend their way onto sounder fiscal footing, cities and towns are forced to compete with one another for corporate investment or financing from nonprofit benefactors.
“That’s the menu of options that Fetterman or anyone else in his situation has at their disposal,” said David A. Banks, a lecturer in geography and planning at the University at Albany.
That predicament is especially acute in the Mon Valley, where there are myriad small and impoverished municipalities that sustain their own public services rather than pooling their resources for maximum efficiency.
Shuttered businesses along the main street in Braddock on Oct. 16. Justin Merriman for HuffPost
Fetterman himself acknowledged the reality of courting philanthropists with whatever tools he had.
Praising Levi’s for its contribution to Braddock through his nonprofit following the filming of their TV ads, Fetterman told NPR in 2010, “If someone wants to give me $100 million, I’ll kiss their ass and call it ice cream.”
“These small towns’ only competitive advantage that can’t be outsourced is fundamentally their own history and identity,” said Banks, author of the forthcoming book “The City Authentic,” which examines how cities commodify their history to woo young professionals. “Braddock being very central to the history of manufacturing, and specifically steel, in the United States, Fetterman found a way to both turn that into a positive by taking that history and making it a theme that artists and restaurateurs could use to do the things they’re already doing.”
But if Fetterman was simply playing the hand he was dealt as mayor of a troubled small town, the criticism his approach elicited is also a common reaction to these public relations-fueled development strategies.
Part of the strategy of attracting private or nonprofit investment in a town like Braddock is to play up its mystique in the press and paint a picture of the town in the imagination of investors, nonprofit donors and prospective newcomers that is not necessarily the same as the reality experienced by longtime residents.
“Any mayor in these sorts of situations will always take more credit than they’re due. It’s part of the job,” Banks said. “A lot of it is faking it ’til you make it.”
Rev. Vincent Martin, pastor of Holliday Memorial AME Zion Church, says he has mixed feelings about the credit Fetterman gets. Justin Merriman for HuffPost
Rev. Vincent Martin, the pastor of Holliday Memorial AME Zion Church and a resident of Pittsburgh, described having mixed feelings about the credit that Fetterman received for his mayoralty. He suggested that Fetterman’s identity as a white man had helped draw attention to Braddock that it had not previously received. That was ultimately a positive thing, even if the reasons for it were unfair, according to Martin.
“There’ve been workers and people trying to do things, but it never broke through until he became the face of that thing and that became a point of recognition for the outside,” Martin said.
Years after his mayoralty, though, some Braddock residents told HuffPost that they tire of media outlets continuing to depict Fetterman as a larger-than-life white rescuer.
“A reporter asked me, ‘What is it like to be rescued?’” said Chardae Jones, who succeeded Fetterman as mayor of Braddock from 2019 to 2021 and is supporting his bid for Senate.
“They were serious,” she recalled. “And I was like, ‘Have you ever seen the interior of Braddock? Because it’s like ‘The Twilight Zone.’ It’s been the same forever.’”
Indeed, even as Braddock Avenue became a livelier thoroughfare for commerce under Fetterman’s leadership, the town’s progress on core human-development indices has been mixed at best.
Braddock’s population declined from more than 2,000 people in 2010 to just over 1,700 people in 2018, the last year of Fetterman’s tenure as mayor.
Over that same period, the percentage of people in the town with incomes below the federal poverty level declined modestly, according to census data. But when the poverty rate drops from 37.4% in 2010 to 35.7% in 2018, economic hardship remains so prevalent that some residents do not see much progress.
“He didn’t have to live here in Braddock. Why would he come slumming if he didn’t have an interest in us?”
– Marcie Gans, retired home health aide
“Nothing’s been done. There’s been no jobs created. It’s not safe,” said Isaac Bunn, founder of the nonprofit Braddock Inclusion Project and son of the late Virginia Bunn, whom Fetterman defeated by one vote in his first mayoral race. “The only ones who’ve benefited from him being a famous politician on the backs of saving the Black community is him and his family and his nonprofit. Other than that, nothing really tangibly has been done.”
In her interview with HuffPost, Gisele Barreto Fetterman mocked the idea that her husband had moved to Braddock in 2001 with a scheme to leverage his work there into a career in higher office.
“Four terms he spent as mayor ― that was his long-term plan, right? He came here to teach GED so that one day he could run for lieutenant governor,” she mused sarcastically. “I think it’s important to look at who the critics are and what their motives are, but it’s a free country.”
Fetterman’s many defenders also note that the Fetterman family decided to stay in Braddock in 2019, rather than move into the lieutenant governor’s mansion in Harrisburg. Gisele also spearheaded an effort to open the mansion’s pool up to the broader public.
“He never left,” observed Annette Baldwin.
The Fetterman family’s commitment to the town is simply something that cannot be faked, according to Gans.
“Why would he pick us? He didn’t have to live here in Braddock,” she recalled replying to Fetterman’s skeptics on the borough council. “Why would he come slumming if he didn’t have an interest in us?”
A padlock secures a door on a shuttered storefront in Braddock. Justin Merriman for HuffPost
‘Running On My Record On Crime’
Fetterman has touted his success in reducing violent crime in Braddock more than any other aspect of his 13-year tenure as mayor.
From the moment Oz, his Republican Senate opponent, began accusing him of trying to free too many convicted criminals as chair of Pennsylvania’s board of pardons, Fetterman shot back with TV ads recounting how two of his GED students’ murders inspired him to run for mayor in the first place.
“I worked side by side with the police, showed up at crime scenes,” Fetterman says in one 30-second spot. “We did whatever it took to fund our police ― and stopped gun deaths for five years.”
Braddock indeed went more than five years, from 2008 to 2013, without a murder in its boundaries.
“I am a Democrat that is running on my record on crime,” Fetterman has taken to saying in his stump speech.
Today, when asked about Fetterman’s public safety legacy, people living in and around Braddock focus on the same tattoos marking local deaths that have become an indelible part of his national image.
A billboard in Braddock, with a line at the bottom that says “Paid for by Doctor Oz for Senate,” takes a shot at John Fetterman’s campaign. Justin Merriman for HuffPost
Some Braddock residents told HuffPost that they fondly remember Fetterman’s efforts to make the town safer simply through his constant presence on the town’s streets.
“He just did the work,” Shayla Wolford said. “He was out here all the time ― crime scenes, things like that, funerals ― he was there. He tried to make everybody else care.”
But Fetterman’s zeal for reducing violence in Braddock led to the biggest scandal of his political career.
While standing outside with his son on a late afternoon in January 2013, Fetterman heard what he describes as a “crushing burst of gunfire” coming from an area known as a hub for gun violence. Spotting a man jogging nearby with a face mask, Fetterman, armed with a shotgun, pursued him in his pickup truck and detained him until the police arrived. The man, Christopher Miyares, was Black and turned out to simply be jogging, unarmed.
Miyares claimed that Fetterman pointed the shotgun at his chest, but Fetterman denied it. Fetterman has refused to apologize for his actions, claiming that he was trying to faithfully execute his duties as mayor and that due to Miyares’ attire, which concealed most of his skin, he was unaware of Miyares’ race when he decided to pursue him.
“I made a split-second decision to call 911, get my son to safety and intercept an individual, the only individual out running from where the gunfire came, and intercept him until our first responders arrived as Braddock’s chief law enforcement officer and as the mayor,” Fetterman said in a Democratic primary debate in April, shortly before his stroke.
Most people with whom HuffPost spoke in Braddock were either ambivalent about the 2013 incident or outright sympathetic to Fetterman.
Lisa Baldwin characterized herself as “right in the middle” between his critics and his fiercest defenders.
“I understood why he did it, but at the same time, had it been a white guy, would you have done it?” she wondered. “Because that’s always in the back of our minds.”
Gans believes that Fetterman responded reasonably.
“If I couldn’t take the crime … and I live way up on the border [of town], how do you think he felt, and he had young kids?” asked Gans.
Chartia Worlds, 36, the sister of Christopher Miyares, an unarmed Black man whom John Fetterman pursued after hearing gunfire in 2013, stands near her home in Turtle Creek, Pa., on Oct. 16. She criticizes Fetterman for not apologizing for the mistaken pursuit. Justin Merriman for HuffPost
But Chartia Worlds, Miyares’ sister, is still angry about the incident ― and Fetterman’s response to it.
“The problem is, he didn’t get in any trouble,” she told HuffPost. “He didn’t apologize.”
Worlds, a food service worker, grew up in Braddock but now lives with her kids in neighboring Turtle Creek. She still frequents the Free Store from time to time and describes Gisele as “lovely.”
Worlds is not sure she can bring herself to vote for Fetterman, though. If she does cast a ballot for him, she won’t do it enthusiastically.
“You just pick the lesser of two evils,” she said. “That’s how I feel.”
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Why Democrats Are Beginning to Panic About a Typically Safely Blue Pittsburgh House Race
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The final stretch of Summer Lee’s congressional campaign is feeling familiar. With less than a week to go until the election, a super PAC tied to the pro-Israel lobby the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is planning on spending hundreds of thousands to defeat her—reportedly the group’s first investment in a general election race between a Republican and a Democrat. This isn’t Lee’s first time having to face off with the AIPAC-affiliated United Democracy Project; last spring the PAC poured millions into attacking her and boosting her main Democratic opponent, Steve Irwin, whom she defeated by less than 1%. Her primary victory was seen as an incredible rebuke of dark money. That was supposed to be the end of the drama in this traditionally safe Democratic district encompassing Pittsburgh and its surrounding suburbs. But Democrats are starting to panic that a red wave, aided by outside money and a confusing ballot (we’ll get to that later), could be coming to western Pennsylvania.
According to a poll provided to Vanity Fair by Lee allies, the progressive is polling at 44% among likely voters. Republican candidate Michael Doyle is closely trailing at 40%. But what’s perhaps most interesting—and of biggest concern to Democrats—is that 16% of those polled said they were undecided. Over the weekend, UDP spent just shy of $80,000 on mailers targeting Lee’s campaign. Then on Monday, it was announced that the PAC would spend more than $999,000 on new television ads, according to AdImpact Politics.
“This is scary,” Hannah Fertig, who manages independent expenditure for the progressive group Justice Democrats, said. “We can’t let conservative outside groups steal this election.”
The shifting dynamics of the Pennsylvania congressional race have forced national Democrats to go on the defense. Per The Intercept, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee—the official campaign arm for House Democrats—hadn’t planned to invest in the Lee-Doyle race, but a spokesperson told the outlet that it now plans to invest six figures in support of Lee. It’s the kind of race Democrats can’t afford to lose, especially in a midterm cycle already favoring Republicans.
UDP’s campaign against Lee isn’t the only thing making Democrats panic. In a twist almost too ridiculous to be true, the Republican candidate—who goes by Mike Doyle—bears the same name as the retiring Democrat currently in the seat…Rep. Mike Doyle (no relation). Lee’s campaign has sounded the alarm that this could create voter confusion. It has even cut an ad to clear things up:
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Meanwhile, the UDP ads against Lee have painted her as “extreme,” anti-Israel, and, somewhat ironically given the group’s decision to back a Republican in the general, “not a real Democrat.” In an interview with Jewish Insider, Patrick Dorton, a spokesperson for UDP, said the decision to back the Republican Doyle was part of a broader effort “to build the broadest bipartisan pro-Israel coalition in Congress possible.” On Twitter, AIPAC recycled these previous attacks: “We oppose Summer Lee because of her dangerous views of the US-Israel alliance.” Lee has repeatedly pushed back on these attacks, saying she “absolutely” believes in Israel’s right to be an independent Jewish state. AIPAC’s tweet came in response to criticism from Senator Bernie Sanders, one of Lee’s prominent backers, who said that “Democrats must unite and condemn” the organization’s super PAC.
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Other Lee allies have similarly come to her defense. “Pennsylvania has a representation problem,” Kadida Kenner, the chief executive of the New Pennsylvania Project—which works to expand the electorate—said, citing Pennsylvania’s overwhelmingly white, male state legislature. If elected, Lee, a state representative, would become the first Black woman to represent Pennsylvania in Congress. “It’s shameful what AIPAC is attempting to do to disrupt Lee’s ascension to the House in DC,” Kenner said. “AIPAC says Lee is too extreme, but it is AIPAC throwing their financial support behind a candidate who is anti-abortion rights, anti-gun safety, [and] anti-Social Security and Medicare.”
Nationally, Republicans need to net only five seats to take back control of the House—math that does not factor in a possible win in a historically liberal enclave of Pennsylvania.
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Abigail Tracy
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What Happened When Far-Right Republicans Took Over A Pennsylvania School Board
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BUCKS COUNTY, Pa. ― It all started with COVID.
When the coronavirus began spreading in the United States, the 23 schools in the Central Bucks School District were forced to shutter to keep students and staff safe. When students eventually returned to classrooms, they were still following safety measures like masking and social distancing.
Many parents in the wealthy, majority-white Bucks County refused to accept the new reality — and they made their opposition known at school board meetings.
“We had this fairly active group that was coming in to make public comments, speaking at every meeting,” Karen Smith, who represents some of the towns that make up the district for the board, told HuffPost. “And they were adamantly opposed to wearing masks.”
The battles over masks and COVID safety measures — which Smith saw as commonsense steps to keep kids and staff safe — became so heated that they inspired her to become a Democrat after six years on the school board as a Republican.
As time went on, Smith noticed school board meetings that were supposed to be about pandemic policies veering in very different directions: primarily, toward anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and panic over “critical race theory.”
Residents would come to public meetings and read excerpts from books they wanted to ban, cherry-picking explicit passages so they could accuse the libraries of having pornographic material.
“They take ‘Genderqueer’ and they open it up to the page where there is a dildo blow job, but they don’t talk about the rest of the book or what the book is even about,” Smith said, referring to Maia Kobabe’s bestselling book that describes their journey to figuring out they’re nonbinary.
The entrance to the Central Bucks School District’s administrative building in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Rachel Wisniewski for HuffPost
When the school board election rolled around in November 2021, and five seats were up for grabs, the divide was clear. Democratic candidates generally ran on COVID safety, while Republicans candidates bolstered their campaigns by claiming the mantle of “parental rights,” which included anti-masking, vitriol about gender identity and outrage about CRT, a college-level academic theory that conservatives claim is being taught in public schools and used to teach white children to hate themselves.
The parental rights crowd won out, and the Central Bucks school board became a 6-3 conservative majority.
With that came a tangled web of proposals designed to silence anyone who isn’t white, straight, cisgender and conservative, including rules to dictate what teachers can wear and how students can express their gender identity and sexuality.
Conservatives may be preaching about specific issues — like so-called sexually inappropriate library books being made available to students — but the whole movement is about destabilizing public institutions like schools.
This dynamic is playing out in school districts across the country, especially in reliably red states. But in perennially purple Pennsylvania, the moral panic over social justice and books with LGBTQ themes is happening against the backdrop of critical midterm races that could determine the state’s political leanings for years to come. Republican Mehmet Oz, a TV doctor who is vowing to fight cancel culture, is facing Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) in a tight Senate race. And for governor, far-right state Sen. Doug Mastriano, a Christian nationalist who has advocated for banning books, is up against Democratic state Attorney General Josh Shapiro.
The school board proposes a controversial new library policy
About eight months after the conservative majority took over the school board, dozens of Bucks County residents gathered before a vote on Policy 109.2, which lays out the criteria for removing books from school libraries and, critically, allows anyone in the district to challenge any book and potentially get it pulled from circulation.
More than two dozen people made public comments during the meeting, mostly to voice their opposition to the proposed policy.
“An apology to the three of you who are trying your damnedest to live up to your oath and protect the lives of children,” English teacher Stephen Albert said to the Democrats on the board. “But to the majority: At long last, have you no sense of shame?”
The room erupted in applause.
But the conservatives weren’t swayed, and the policy passed. There was scattered applause in the room, as well as a few boos. Meeting attendees yelled “Shame!” and “Shame on you!” as they filed out.
“Look at the adults we have in the room,” a Republican board member said sarcastically, reprimanding the people opposed to the policy.
Policy 109.2 was enacted in July, but educators, staff and residents are still waiting for the board to clarify who will be in charge of determining the fate of challenged books.
Smith voted against a proposal to allow anyone in the school district to challenge any library book and potentially get it pulled from circulation. Rachel Wisniewski for HuffPost
Smith was one of the votes against the library proposal. “No, absolutely not,” she said when she stepped up to vote.
The evidence of Smith’s new liberal leanings are clear both inside and outside of her home: She has a big rainbow flag flying outside, pro-reading bumper stickers on her cars and a tote bag declaring “READ BANNED BOOKS” next to her desk.
“These are human rights issues and the rights of our students,” Smith said. “I’m not going to be quiet about that.”
During the public comment section of one school board meeting last November, two residents made transphobic and antisemitic statements. Smith tried to cut off a man making antisemitic comments, but other board members pushed back and said she was infringing on residents’ First Amendment rights.
Many of those same conservative school board members were throwing their support behind the book-banning and censorship policy just a few months later.
Bucks County parents fight back
Kate Nazemi, who has two children in Central Bucks schools, is in staunch opposition to the new book policy. In September, she organized a parade against book banning.
Like Smith, she noticed a shift on the school board when the pandemic began. When experts said masking and social distancing would keep staff and students safe, conservatives pushed back and said they were wrong. When school librarians chose books with care for their students, the conservative majority said those books were inappropriate or pornographic.
“I called it the COVID formula: Belittle the experts in the field, and then say we don’t need to listen to them, we can figure it out our own way,” Nazemi said while sipping coffee in a busy cafe in Doylestown, the county seat.
“There’s this narrow worldview that is being applied to all 17,500 kids. It’s limiting kids’ access to books, materials and discussions in the classrooms,” she added. “How are these kids supposed to think critically about issues and develop as humans, if they are so limited in what they’re able to read and discuss and learn?”
Kate Nazemi, a mother of two children in the Central Bucks School District, is seen at her home in Doylestown on Nov. 1. Earlier this year, she organized a local parade in protest of book bans. Rachel Wisniewski for HuffPost
Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania filed a complaint against the school board on behalf of seven students, alleging widespread discrimination and hostility toward LGBTQ students.
In the complaint, the lawyers say that the school board does things that actively harm LGBTQ students, including removing Pride flags and directing teachers not to use preferred names. They specifically call out the library book policy, saying it’s “a thinly disguised effort to censor LGBTQ+-themed materials.” The school board president responded by asking the ACLU to reveal the names of the students filing the complaint.
The U.S. Department of Education has opened up an investigation.
“The board members are not interested in a democracy,” Nazemi said. “What they want are either one of two things: public schools with Christian values, or public schools that fail so badly that we can then use our tax dollars to pay for private school.”
Some parents are worried that schools will be more likely to go down this path if Mastriano is in the governor’s mansion.
At an October hearing at the statehouse, parents from all over Pennsylvania testified in support of a parental rights bill that Mastriano had put forth. The bill says it aims to give parents more say in how public schools are run, but critics say it’s an attempt to silence and bully LGBTQ students and families.
His supporters showed up with campaign buttons on their clothing. Mastriano, who was present at the Jan. 6, 2021, riot but maintains he did not enter the U.S. Capitol building, is running a far-right campaign that aims to stoke fear of immigrants, liberals and transgender people among his fan base.
“What’s happened to us where bureaucrats get to decide how your kids identify? Pronoun games have no place in schools,” Mastriano said at the statehouse, apparently forgetting that grammar is a core part of schooling. “This has to end. Madness has come in. Parents have the last say, period.”
Various parents expressed similar thoughts. “School administrators all over the country, including Pennsylvania, have decided parents should be excluded from vital conversations with regard to their child’s education and well-being,” said Megan Brock, a parent from Bucks County.
Democratic state Sen. Maria Collett represents the 12th District, which includes CBSD. She didn’t participate in the parental rights bill hearing, even though she is a member of the state government committee.
“The people of the 12th District elected me to use my time, energy and resources to better their lives,” she said. “Not to legitimize horseshit.”
She is unabashed in her criticism of the conservatives leading the charge in the outrage over books.
“They distract, they deflect, and they make up a story about a boogeyman that is trying to lure your kid into an alley with a pornographic book,” Collett said from her office desk, which features a photo of herself and President Joe Biden.
“They don’t have answers to the problems that are plaguing Pennsylvania,” she added. “That’s why they’re so fixated on identity politics.”
Collett said her constituents aren’t calling her to complain about library books or rainbow flags in schools — they’re more worried about issues like Social Security benefits and unemployment plans.
Evidence of the “anti-lockdown” to “critical race theory panic” to “book-banning” pipeline can be found all across the country. What began as the idea that wearing a mask was an affront to freedom morphed into a panic about teaching kids about racial privilege in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, then seamlessly became an effort to censor books with racial justice or LGBTQ themes.
Conservatives on the Bucks County school board want “one of two things,” Nazemi says. “Public schools with Christian values, or public schools that fail so badly that we can then use our tax dollars to pay for private school.” Rachel Wisniewski for HuffPost
The book bans came first as a trickle, then as a storm. According to PEN America, the past year saw a record number of book challenges in schools and libraries across the country. State lawmakers proposed bills and made lists of books they wanted to ban; parents claimed that schools and libraries were filled with sexually explicit books, and that anyone who didn’t stand with them was aiding and abetting child abuse.
Why are books in school libraries the latest target for conservative ire? Books are democratizing. They help students expand their worldview. And if your end goal is control over society by any means, having a well-read and well-educated public is not in your best interest.
Although the Bucks County border is just 10 miles from Philadelphia, more than 80% of the 646,000 residents are white. The wealthy suburb typically leans Democratic, but the school board has lurched to the right in just one election cycle ― and some residents worry that the shift will only continue, especially considering Mastriano’s influence on the state.
Even if he loses the race, Mastriano and the CBSD are setting the stage for Pennsylvania to become a blueprint for conservatives in other states, not unlike how conservative education policies in Florida and Texas have provided a playbook for Pennsylvania’s GOP.
“We will still have like Mastriano-style politics here on the school board until the next election,” Nazemi said.
And if Mastriano does win, the effects are sure to be felt across the state. On the campaign trail, he has vowed to turn Pennsylvania into the Florida of the north.
“We have one of the candidates saying, ‘I want to model us after a state we’ve seen pass really damaging legislation that is hurting children, teachers and parents,’” Collett said. “If we don’t stand up and say, ‘No, not on my watch,’ then we all become complicit.”
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Assessing key midterm races in Pennsylvania
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