BROOKLINE, Pa. — Hundreds of Pennsylvania’s rural Democratic voters spent the weekend at “Demstock.” Think Woodstock in 1969, with some attendees camping out at the venue, but instead of performances from the Grateful Dead and Jimi Hendrix, it was all about politics. Attendees bonded over feeling isolated in their largely Republican communities and their hope to “drive up the margins” in the match-up between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump in the critical battleground state.
U.S. Sen. John Fetterman and state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, a candidate for auditor general, wooed crowds during a “Demstock Dinner,” where Fetterman joked about stolen yard signs — a relatable phenomenon for many of the rural Democrats in the room — and called rural Democrats “unsung heroes.”
“You are the secret,” Fetterman said, adding, “Real power is in red counties with all of you.”
Fetterman told NBC News that Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, know that winning Pennsylvania comes down to “rooms like this.”
“You have red county Dems, and they are doing the hard work, and it’s not necessarily the sexy kind of job, but they are dedicated,” he said. “They are true believers, and that’s why you can fill a room just like this, because they all believe in the Harris and Walz ticket.”
All of this took place in Jefferson County, which Trump won in 2020 by nearly 60 percentage points. A few years ago, some of the original founders started Demstock PA, a Pennsylvania-registered political action committee that supports rural candidates in local elections and college Democratic groups. The event, in its sixth year, was started as a small backyard pig roast, initially dubbed “Swinestock,” and it has increased significance this election cycle given the state’s thin margins in presidential elections.
Both presidential campaigns have fanned out across the state in hope of clearing the path to 270 electoral votes through Pennsylvania. Democrats at the event said that they’re not expecting to turn red counties for Democrats but that they’re aiming to thin out the Trump campaign’s margins in the state.
Those hopes are reflected by the Harris-Walz campaign, which has taken steps to invest in rural voters in Pennsylvania. It has opened 36 coordinated offices across the state, nine of which are in rural counties that Trump carried by double digits in 2020. The Harris-Walz for Pennsylvania campaign said it has deployed nearly 300 staffers across the state.
“This is a campaign that is investing in rural organizing,” said Kenyatta, who is on the Harris-Walz national advisory board. “And that sounds small, but sometimes it’s easy to say, ‘Well, you’re in Columbia County. I don’t need to get you signs and [literature]. We’re not going to win there.’ That’s not what this campaign is doing. They’re showing up, making critical investments.”
Fetterman said: “They are not here in this business to turn, like, a deep-red county blue.” He added that the goal is to “jam things up” to “blunt the kinds of margins that allow Trump to partly win here in Pennsylvania.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s Pennsylvania campaign said key issues this election cycle, such as inflation and the border, have “real salience” in rural areas.
“Rural Pennsylvanians have an easy choice this November: four more years under Kamala Harris of historic inflation and open borders policies that are devastating Pennsylvania communities with crime and drugs, or a return to the prosperity and peace of the Trump administration,” said Trump’s Pennsylvania spokesman, Kush Desai. “Kamala’s record and Tim Walz’s statements blasting rural America as ‘mostly cows and rocks’ are going to be an absolutely critical asset for the Harris campaign to lose rural Pennsylvania by record-breaking margins.”
Thin margins have defined presidential races in Pennsylvania; Trump won it in 2016 by 0.7 points before Joe Biden won in 2020 by a little more than 1 point.
Part of his 2016 success is attributed to overperforming in rural areas across the state. In Pennsylvania, Trump won rural and small towns with 71%, to Hillary Clinton’s 26%; by comparison, Mitt Romney won 59% to 40% for President Barack Obama in 2012. In 2020, Biden cut into those margins, winning 30% of the rural Pennsylvania vote, compared with Trump’s 69%.
The Pennsylvania Democratic Party chair, state Sen. Shariff Street, said he believes a big part of Trump’s win in 2016 was that Democrats didn’t get their “message out to rural Pennsylvania enough, so we’re committed to doing that.”
Street said Democrats have a multipronged approach, which also includes energizing urban bases and suburban voters and making sure “that rural people feel the love and know that we’re here for them.”
The Sunday before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Harris and Walz visited small towns in western Pennsylvania during a bus tour, hitting both Allegheny and Beaver counties.
Trump won Beaver County by nearly 18 points in 2020. Before Harris rose to the top of the Democratic ticket, the Biden-Harris campaign invested in a coordinated field office there in May. During their bus tour, Harris, Walz and their spouses made phone calls with volunteers in Rochester and stopped at a firehouse in Aliquippa.
Democratic officials who attended Demstock say they all hold the same belief: The road to the White House runs through rural Pennsylvania.
“There’s nothing more important than an engaged, rural electorate, especially here in Pennsylvania,” Phil Heasley, the chairman of Demstock, told NBC News. “If we don’t engage the rural electorate in the middle of the state, Democrats can’t win.”
Heasley said Demstock was created to bring politicians to areas that normally don’t get as much attention as major cities like Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.
“We need to make sure that we’re driving up every last margin, because it could be this vote or that person that registered here or that person that came out and decided, ‘You know what, I am energized,’ that could be the vote that determines our election,” he said.
But ruby-red counties haven’t deterred rural Democrats from working to narrow the margins.
After a night of dancing, roasting marshmallows and watching fireworks at Demstock, Andrew Muth, 24, woke up in a tent on the Jefferson County Fairground and spent most of Saturday amping up voters for Kenyatta’s campaign and sharing the latest endeavors of Indiana University of Pennsylvania College Democrats.
“Rural Democrats have to be scrappy,” Muth told NBC News. “Growing up in these red areas, rural Democrats know that you’ve got to talk to every voter. You’ve got to knock on every door to get rural Democrats out to vote.”
