President Trump’s extended anti-Baltimore tirade could help him juice up support in neighboring Pennsylvania, a top-priority Electoral College state where many former city residents have moved.
Many ex-Baltimore residents flee north to the Keystone State, particularly neighboring York County, Pennsylvania. Residents there have long commuted to jobs in Baltimore while enjoying cheaper homes and lower violent crime rates.
“People still work there in some cases or travel there quite a bit, but they don’t live there anymore. There has been a migration to places like Pennsylvania,” said Republican strategist John Brabender, adding that places like York County and Allentown are almost like suburbs of bigger cities like Baltimore and Philadelphia.
“I’m guessing that there’s a lot of people who do live in some of these areas that say that what the president is saying is resonating with them,” Brabender said.
Baltimore’s population declined by over 7,300 people, or about 1.2%, from August 2017 through July 2018, according to census estimates. It was the largest annual population drop since 2001.
An April 2018 op-ed in the Baltimore Sun cited the city’s high homicide rate, high property tax rate, aging infrastructure, and poor leadership as factors that drive residents out of the city.
Trump alluded to some of these problems in his weekend tweets criticizing Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, whose district includes part of Baltimore.
“Baltimore’s numbers are the worst in the United States on Crime and the Economy,” one Trump tweet said.
Trump continued his anti-Baltimore remarks on Tuesday, saying city residents of Baltimore are “living in hell.”
Brabender said the tweets demonstrate the Trump campaign’s strategy to reach African American voters by highlighting favorable economy while pointing out areas where Democrats failed to deliver. But the message could also appeal to Trump’s base in Pennsylvania that agrees with the criticisms.
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Winning Pennsylvania is widely considered central to Trump’s path to victory in 2020. In 2016, the Keystone State, along with Michigan and Pennsylvania, backed Trump for the first time since the 1980s, helping him clinch victory over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
While southern Pennsylvania leans Republican — Trump won nearly 62% of the vote in York County in 2016 — it is important for him to ensure turnout across the state in both Republican-leaning areas and in battleground counties.
“I don’t think he can give up on either since the margin of victory is so narrow,” Alex Conant, a Republican strategist with Firehouse Strategies, told the Washington Examiner. Trump won the state by fewer than 50,000 votes in 2016.
“He needs to win independents like he did in 2016 and have really high base turnout — and it would help if Democrats’ base is a little depressed,” Conant said.
Trump’s success in Pennsylvania, Conant said, is heavily dependent on who the Democrats nominate to challenge him. Recent polls show former Vice President Joe Biden leading Trump in Pennsylvania.
Brabender noted that Trump’s base is not necessarily other Republicans. “It’s really a lot of blue-collar Democrats who live in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan,” he said. “What I find amazing is when [Democrats] accuse the president of being racist, and at the same time accuse him of playing to his base, what they’re really doing is accusing a lot of Democrats, particularly blue-collar, what we would’ve called ‘Reagan Democrats,’ of being racist.”
Conant warned, however, that Trump’s comments could motivate African American voters who stayed home in 2016 to vote against him rather than for him. “Trump is effectively motivating key parts of his base, but he risks driving up the opposition’s turnout too,” Conant said.
