PHILADELPHIA — There’s a reason Joe Biden sometimes points out he used to be called “Pennsylvania’s third senator.”
The Keystone State’s 20 Electoral College votes are crucial to the White House hopes of Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, and the reelection prospects of President Trump. Pennsylvania backed Trump in 2016, the first time a Republican nominee won it since 1988. Along with Michigan and Wisconsin, Pennsylvania proved crucial in making Trump president.
Biden grew up in Scranton and was a senator in neighboring Delaware for 36 years before two terms as vice president in President Barack Obama’s administration.
Biden, his family, and supporters are now playing up his Pennsylvania ties to the max. They hold campaign events there frequently and emphasize his decadeslong tie to the state. That includes the candidate’s late son, Beau, who for several years worked in Philadelphia for the Justice Department before getting elected Delaware attorney general in 2006.
“Thank you for welcoming me home,” the candidate’s wife, Jill Biden, told supporters in her own Pennsylvania hometown, Willow Grove, just outside of Philadelphia in Montgomery County. The former second lady’s appearances earlier this month was aimed at encouraging suburban women to cast their ballots for her husband.
In an increasingly polarized political climate, Grant Reeher, a political science professor at Syracuse University, says the “friends and neighbors” effect of politics hasn’t been so effective in recent cycles. It’s unclear how strongly that message can sway voters in 2020.
“It makes perfect sense that Biden’s going to play that up, especially when he has the advantage of being from one of the most important battleground states,” Reeher said. “He can use that connection. How much it resonates with people in an election that is so deeply nationalized and polarized is probably less than it would be maybe 20 years ago.”
But, the message has the potential to resonate with suburban areas that backed 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton after decades of supporting Republicans, including Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery counties.
Mustafa Rashed, a Democratic strategist with Philadelphia-based Bellevue Strategies, said Biden needs to build on the winning margins for Clinton for years ago in those suburban areas, a task helped by his relatively centrist message.
“There’s an authenticity to his familiarity with Pennsylvania,” Rashed told the Washington Examiner. “There’s an authenticity with him being here. He’s literally from here. I think that resonates. I think voters see that as authentic and real.”
Biden, 77, has throughout his public life faced personal tragedies, first losing his first wife and 1-year-old daughter in a car crash just weeks before he was set to join the Senate, after winning an upset victory over a Republican incumbent in 1972. More than four decades later, Biden again faced grief in a public role, when, as vice president, Beau died in 2015 at 46.
Those grim experiences helped Biden form an even closer bond with fellow residents in Delaware. Whether that close relationship trickles over into Pennsylvania remains in question.
With the Trump campaign pushing messages painting a dire picture of the suburbs with Democratic control and attacking Biden’s younger son, Hunter, over his foreign business dealings, some voters are hesitant to view the candidate with a guy-next-door feel.
“I never was in favor of Biden as a senator,” Rose Politano Franchetti of Packer Park near South Philadelphia told the Washington Examiner. “I would say most people here and around the four suburbs don’t have any loyalty or respect for him because he’s from upstate (Pennsylvania). I can speak 100% for those I personally know, (they) don’t look at him as a guy with a good history in his career.”
President Trump has even accused Biden of abandoning his roots in Scranton, telling his supporters in Pennsylvania that Biden had left them behind for another state.
To some extent, Terry Forrester, 59, of Jenkintown in Montgomery County, agrees with that.
“When he says he’s originally from Scranton, that makes me laugh because he left Scranton when he was a little kid,” said Forrester, who plans to support Trump. “He hardly grew up in Scranton. To me, that’s just his way to act like he’s from this area and understands us.”
Franchetti and Forrester both expressed concerns over the rising crime rate of Philadelphia and blame Democratic leadership for its growth, a message that Trump has been working to push out across his campaign.
Forrester also isn’t happy about some of the controversies surrounding Hunter Biden, who’s become the subject of Republican-led investigations into his business affairs at Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy firm he was on the board of during the time his father was serving as vice president.
“Even before these stories that just came up, I thought he had some involvement with his son,” Forrester, who works as a paraprofessional at a local school district, said. “It basically bothers me with a lot of politicians. I definitely think a lot of them, not just Biden, get paid by people and do favors and all that.”
But the level of interest seen by potential voters across the Philadelphia area is telling, says Dick Bingham, chairman of the Chester County Democratic Committee. Bingham says he’s seen a sharp rise in voter registration as well as increased demand for yard signs this year.
“Suburban voters, I believe, certainly in the Philadelphia area, support Joe Biden overwhelmingly,” Bingham said, adding that it doesn’t hurt that the candidate praises his Scranton roots but doesn’t believe that’s the sole factor for his support.
