PITTSBURGH — Rep. Chris Deluzio confronted the identical financial headwinds as Vice President Kamala Harris, Sen. Bob Casey and two different swing-district Home Democrats, however he survived the pink wave that swept Pennsylvania — and the nation.
Democrats can draw many classes from the seventeenth Congressional District race, however Deluzio instructed The Submit they boil down to 1: “You’ve got to have a clear economic vision.”
For Deluzio, meaning his lefty model of financial populism: battle company energy, shield the union lifestyle. And although it’s impressed by Bernie Sanders, his supporters don’t appear to note.
He simply needs Harris and different Democrats would have embraced it.
The financial system was prime of thoughts within the 2024 election. Years of inflation underneath President Biden had made Individuals poorer, and polls repeatedly confirmed they trusted President-elect Donald Trump greater than Harris to proper the ship.
But the Harris marketing campaign prioritized attacking Trump as a menace to abortion rights and democracy.
“That’s not what people needed to hear. People needed to hear more about the economy,” Hilary Flint, an environmental organizer in economically depressed Beaver County, which Harris misplaced by 21 factors, instructed The Submit.
And what individuals did hear about Harris’ promised “opportunity economy” — with its smorgasbord of insurance policies from housing subsidies to small-business tax breaks, went over their heads, Flint mentioned, whereas voters clung to Trump’s repeated phrase “tariffs” like a moth to a flame.
Democrats misplaced the working-class vote — each non-college-educated voters and and people making lower than $100,000 a 12 months, exit polls present.
“They just aren’t communicating with working-class people and just aren’t trying to win back the people they lost to Trump,” mentioned Flint, a Harris voter who criticizes the veep for preaching to the choir and campaigning with Mark Cuban, Taylor Swift and different elites.
“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” Democratic Socialist Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders mentioned the day after Harris misplaced.
However Deluzio received — partly due to Sanders’ affect.
Deluzio centered his marketing campaign round union staff and railed towards company “jagoffs” — Pittsburgh-ese for jerk.
With this technique the Dem received the endorsement of the Pittsburgh Regional Constructing Trades Council — and even the votes of some Trump ticket-splitters.
The freshman rep outperformed the vp throughout his sprawling swing district, together with the college-educated suburbs northwest of Pittsburgh.
However his largest margin over Harris was in blue-collar Beaver County, the place the metal trade pulled out way back and slowly turned the previous union Democratic stronghold Trump-red.
Although Deluzio misplaced Beaver by about 13,600 votes, Harris misplaced by practically 20,000.
Which means one thing stopped these Trump voters from voting straight GOP to stay with Deluzio, Democratic strategist Mike Mikus instructed The Submit.
Interesting to voters exterior extra affluent Pittsburgh who really feel screwed over by Washington and Wall Avenue, Deluzio and Trump have been “basically fighting over the same turf,” Mikus mentioned.
Deluzio admitted he faucets into the identical populist anger Trump does — however from the left. He bashes Washington for “lousy trade deals” that killed union jobs and politicians shilling for company America.
Fairly than blaming inflation on Biden’s historic spending, Deluzio slammed companies for price-gouging and praised the administration’s trust-busting — whereas Harris campaigned with billionaire Mark Cuban, who mentioned he’d hearth Biden’s Federal Commerce Fee chair, Lina Khan.
“There has to be much more of a commitment to fighting monopolies and taking on corporate power,” mentioned Deluzio, who was a Bernie Sanders delegate to the 2020 Democratic Nationwide Conference.
He sees that battle linked with giving staff extra bargaining energy, defending small companies and decreasing costs for shoppers.
Regardless of as soon as confessing his “Bernie Bro” sympathies on a podcast, “he doesn’t come across as a socialist,” mentioned Erin Gabriel, chair of the Beaver County Democrats.
Whereas Sanders ran for president in 2020 on changing non-public medical health insurance with government-run Medicare for All, Gabriel mentioned Deluzio “understands we need to fix our health-care system before we shift to something bigger.”
The 40-year-old rep is a Navy veteran who served in Iraq and arranged the College of Pittsburgh school union with the United Steelworkers. And the Italian-American father-of-four additionally refuses to be lumped in with anti-Israel progressives like Pittsburgh’s Squad member Rep. Summer time Lee, as an alternative calling himself a “western Pennsylvania Democrat.”
“We feel that Chris was more for the center,” mentioned Mike Slawianowski, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Allegheny County Lodge 91, which endorsed each Deluzio and Republican Sen.-elect Dave McCormick.
That notion made it troublesome for Deluzio’s GOP opponent Rob Mercuri to color him as a “liberal extremist” or defund-the-police Democrat — messaging that labored to take down different Pennsylvania Democrats, like McCormick’s opponent Sen. Bob Casey, mentioned GOP marketing consultant Dennis Roddy.
However most vital, Deluzio put his concepts into motion and made his presence identified.
Coming to Congress after Democrats misplaced management of the Home within the 2022 midterms, Deluzio was handed the political present of a lifetime: a poisonous practice derailment throughout the border in East Palestine, Ohio.
“He was on the ground, in people’s living rooms, holding hands with families” virtually on Day One, Gabriel mentioned, recalling Deluzio working together with her on bringing ingesting water to affected residents in his district.
Deluzio labored with the volunteer hearth division, launched bipartisan railway-safety laws in Congress and railed towards the trade in adverts tying his anti-monopoly politics to the plumes of smoke billowing from the tracks.
It left an impression on the Trump-supporting county, which this election went one other level in direction of Deluzio since his final triumph.
“We disagree over what to have for breakfast, but we agree there needs to be rail regulations,” mentioned Mike Carreon, the Republican supervisor of Darlington who didn’t vote for Deluzio however was his visitor at Biden’s State of the Union.
“The people in Beaver will really vote for the person they know rather than the political party they love,” Gabriel mentioned.
Biden didn’t set foot in East Palestine for greater than a 12 months, which “hurt how people viewed the Democratic Party,” specifically Harris, Flint mentioned.
However Deluzio defied that pattern.
“He’s for the people,” mentioned Donnie Breeden, an 82-year-old truck driver who refused to vote for Trump or Harris this election cycle, however solid his poll for Deluzio, whom he known as a Kennedy Democrat.
“He’s got a job to do, and he’s trying to do it,” Breeden mentioned, commending Deluzio’s efforts to not solely rebuild the crumbling water methods on the Ohio River however shield unions and battle company “price-gouging,” which he blames for his inflated grocery payments.
Mikus likened Deluzio to a mayor.
Deluzio’s web site boasts $2.2 billion secured for his district, largely for tasks funded by Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure legislation, and greater than 2,000 instances serving constituents.
The issue for the larger names up the Democratic slate is swing voters didn’t know them or what they did to assist them.
“There was a real push to get the urban voters out,” Gabriel added, “and the rural voters did not feel prioritized” — Harris solely visited the district as soon as.
Gabriel mentioned Harris, as a lady and a San Francisco liberal, was seen as “abstract” in contrast with Joe Biden from Scranton, Penn.
Even seasoned Sen. Casey, who shares Deluzio’s financial populism, underperformed in Deluzio’s district and narrowly misplaced to McCormick, whose dizzying adverts painted the incumbent as “weak,” ineffectual and out of contact with Pennsylvanians after practically 18 years in Washington.
“[Casey’s] running by name only,” mentioned Michelle, an Allegheny County suburbanite who voted for McCormick, Trump and Deluzio, wh she mentioned helped enhance parks in her neighborhood.
Even Breeden, who voted for Casey, mentioned he “was leaning towards Chris a lot more than Casey” as a result of he felt Casey had been within the Senate too lengthy.
Regardless of pushing progressive insurance policies, “he’s working very closely with the working class,” Flint mentioned.
“That’s what you need to do to survive in Beaver County.”
And maybe Rust Belt America.
