From the outside, political conventions look like public events where you sign up, get your pass, show up at the arena, and get in for speeches by prominent public figures.
That couldn’t be further from the truth: They are exclusive events catering to the elite of the elite – to the party’s movers and shakers, the media, donors, and lobbyists. If you aren’t in that world or connected to it, you aren’t inside.
In Chicago this week, we learned how this worked. Amid that, we realized something about ourselves. This “revelation” came on Monday, after we arrived in Chicago after a week spent driving around and talking to voters in Wisconsin.
We dropped our rental car off in downtown Chicago at the Hyatt Regency, where dozens of delegates and journalists were waiting in the lobby, preparing to board shuttles to the DNC. These shuttles bring the attendees from their four- and five-star hotels in Chicago’s central business district to the arena, where suites go for $500,000+. When the speeches end, the shuttles return and bring the attendees back downtown, where nights of parties at high-end restaurants, hotels, and museums await them. On Friday, the delegates and journalists head to the airports and fly home.
That was not the case for your correspondents at RocaNews.
After we dropped our car off at the Hyatt, we boarded the L train (Chicago’s metro) and rode seven stops east to Kedzie station, where we walked down a street lined by crumbling buildings and fenced-in pit bulls. Eventually we reached our Airbnb, which had six security cameras and three dead-bolt doors. Inside, a Google search revealed that the neighborhood – East Garfield Park – has the highest homicide rate in Chicago, aka “Chiraq.” A week prior, a 17-year-old had been murdered four blocks from our apartment.
You might think such an Airbnb rents for a pittance, but you’d be wrong: This cost $275 a night. To get in with the big boys downtown, rooms started around $500.
Each day, we passed a gun violence prevention center, had conversations with neighbors who had seen the area devastated by crime, and heard stories about how the collapse of manufacturing had impoverished hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans. One day, on the way into the city, we saw a man smoking crack inside the L train. Then we disembarked in the nice parts of Chicago and got to work covering the news.
So the revelation: Living the hotel-arena-party cycle lets one see only a fraction of the world. To paint the world as it actually is, journalists must see both the rich and the poor, the beautiful and the ugly. But why would someone voluntarily stay in East Garfield Park when they could stay at the Hyatt? Why would they talk to the gang member when they can talk to the delegate?
So we realized that our job – as a hungry and raw news startup – is to fill the void that the shuttle passengers can’t possibly fill; to go to places the shuttle passengers won’t or can’t go and to share our learnings here.
That’s what we will be doing in this newsletter in the months ahead.
Now, back to our coverage from Pennsylvania.
In Erie, Pennsylvania, a Donald Trump mannequin sat in an abandoned Walgreens parking lot. Next to it was a man hoping to swing the 2024 election.
Erie – named for the Great Lake on which it sits – is Pennsylvania’s fifth-most populous city. Equidistant from Buffalo, NY, Pittsburgh, PA, and Cleveland, OH, it, like them, is an old Rust Belt manufacturing city.
The county around Erie is one of Pennsylvania’s swing counties. In 2016, it went Trump, 48.6% - 47%. In 2020, it went Biden, 49.8% – 48.8%. Right now, it’s a toss-up that could decide the outcome of the 2024 election.
To understand how this happened, we’ll tell the story of the man in the parking lot. For his story is that of American politics over the past decade and explains how Trump was elected in 2016 and why he may be elected again this year.
Erie, like the other Rust Belt cities, has lost manufacturing and entered a steep economic decline. Since 1960, its population has fallen 45%. Its politics have also changed: After going blue in every election since 1984 – including voting 58% for Obama in 2012 – it flipped to Trump in 2016.
This trend – traditionally Democratic manufacturing areas flipping Republican – is what enabled Trump to win Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan in 2016. It’s redrawn the electoral map and is what Trump hopes will get him elected in 2024.
The embodiment of this was Brian, who we met in an abandoned Walgreens parking lot with a life-size Donald Trump mannequin in the back of his truck.
“It’s just our way of showing our support, getting people registered to vote,” he explained of the mannequin. “I have the official PA registration form so people should come up, they get a picture. we can hand them a registration, change their party affiliation, request a mail-in ballot.”
Brian was an Army veteran, volunteer firefighter, and union member. Generations of his family worked for General Electric, traditionally one of Erie’s largest employers. He was a lifelong Democrat and was registered as one in 2016. But Trump converted him to the Republican party and he’s since sat on the Erie County Council and become focused on getting Trump elected one more time.
On the back of Brian’s pick-up truck was a sign headlined, “Say Their Names.” It listed the names of 13 American troops who were killed in Afghanistan during the withdrawal. He accused Biden of telling a “bold-faced lie” days prior, when he claimed during the debate that no soldiers had been killed on his watch.
Brian’s politics were undoubtedly representative of countless Democrats-turned-Republicans in the Rust Belt.
“People are tired of working their asses off for somebody else,” he said. “We have an open border…I have no problem calling them illegals. My ancestors came from Ireland. They came here legally. They came through Ellis Island. They didn’t come in the back of a pickup truck That’s not America. We have to have rules. People are like, ‘Well the wall’s racist.’ I say, ‘I’ll make you a deal: The minute the Pope takes the wall down around the Vatican, I’ll make sure I won’t fight one on the border.’”
Erie County has the highest opioid overdose rate in Pennsylvania and one of the highest in the country. As a council member, he had sat on the county’s opioid task force.
“Fentanyl is directly linked to the failed policies of Joe Biden. We have an open border. I saw that video of those illegals coming across the border ripping down the fence, physically pushing our soldiers to the ground and walking over like they were just dog shit.”
He views the Democrats as anti-Constitution: “They’re now mad at the Supreme Court for upholding this – what’s that funny paper we like? – oh, yeah the Constitution. And now they want to – AOC wants to – take them out. You can’t take them out! They’re appointed to a life seat.”
He then gestured across the street: “GE is literally across the tracks over here. Everybody’s dad, brother, uncle worked at GE. At one time, they had 4,000 people working there. Now, it just changed hands to a company called WebTech. Do your research. It’s a good company, you know, and they still make locomotives, but they’re down to about 1,200, 1,500 people.”
“These were all Union 506 workers. My dad did 39 years there. You know, kept the teeth in my head and a roof over my house when I was a kid. So, when those type of jobs leave a community, it hurts.
“We had Hammer Mill papers right on the lake. You can go down off the East Lake Road, you can see the three smokestacks. That’s where Hammer Mill was there. Generations of people lived and worked there. These whole communities were built – if you go right down the road here to Lawrence Park, you’ll see all the row houses. Those row houses were built for the GE upper management so they could walk to work. Now, they’re sold off.”
“That was the heart and soul of Erie County, was GE…they’re still, you know, pardon the pun here, trucking along and making locomotives.”
But “it’s different,” he said. “Different owners, different rules.”
“I’ve always been pushing forward about manufacturing and jobs,” he concluded. “And you know, do I always agree with President Trump? Absolutely not. I wish I’d call him and say, ‘Hey Don, Brian…Put your Twitter account down and just do your job. Have a nice day.’”
One thing he didn’t agree with Trump on was that the 2020 election was stolen: Trump had alleged fraud in Erie County, Brian said, but he himself had helped count ballots and said there was nothing unusual or suspicious.
“So I don’t agree with everything he says,” Brian concluded. “People are like, ‘You guys are in a cult.’ And it’s so far not even true. There’s a million things he says where I just go…” He put his face in his hands.
But without a doubt, he’ll be voting for Trump this November.