The news of an alleged second assassination attempt against Donald Trump felt like a déjà vu In Butler, the Pennsylvania town where the first attack was carried out in July has still not recovered from the consequences of that event, which remains under investigation. According to some residents, political divisions have worsened in a majority Republican town; in a state, Pennsylvania, where every vote counts and which could end up deciding who will be the next president of the United States.
Here, the memory of what happened at that July 13 rally at the local agricultural fairgrounds is still very much alive. Those who weren’t there that day know someone who was. The iconic photograph of a bleeding Trump with his fist raised appears on numerous posters. The cry “Fight! Fight! Fight!” (“Fight! Fight! Fight!”) that the Republican candidate shouted after being injured is reproduced in graffiti on streets and in some mailboxes. A local artist has immortalized the image of the former president at that time, in a sculpture made with thousands of nails.
Last Friday, the Secret Service admitted in an investigative report on the case that there had been failures in communication, technology and in following up on reports of a suspect on the roof of one of the fair’s sheds. The motives for the attack remain unclear: its perpetrator, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was registered as a Republican voter but did not appear to have a strong political ideology.
Approaching Butler, a rural county of about 200,000 inhabitants 40 minutes north of the very Democratic city of Pittsburgh, is to begin to see more and more frequently larger signs supporting the campaign of Donald Trump and his number twoJD Vance. At the entrance to a farm, a trailer holds a full-length, larger-than-life portrait of the former president. On the grounds of another ranch, a large sign proclaims “Trump 2024: Save America Again.” Beyond, a Confederate flag can be seen. On the main street, a picturesque thoroughfare lined with charming shops and American flags, a jewelry store proclaims its support for the armed forces, amid a riot of stars and stripes.
Until this summer, few outside Pennsylvania had heard of Butler. With the possible exception of serious car enthusiasts: the prototype for the Jeep was invented here in the 1940s, a milestone still commemorated with street signs and an annual festival.
Today it is a town in transition. Most of its residents still live on farms with generous acreage. But its relative proximity to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania’s second city, makes it a convenient place to live and work in the city. Manufacturing jobs, once the area’s great economic engine, have disappeared. But others have arrived, in companies related to the frackingthe hydraulic fracturing of shale gas, abundant in western Pennsylvania. A powerful steel mill generates more than a thousand jobs and good salaries. Work is plentiful and well paid. While the trend in the rest of rural Pennsylvania is for young people to leave for the cities, in many cases from other states, Butler’s population continues to grow. After a period of economic depression, the center has been revitalized. New small businesses are proliferating: a flower shop, a restaurant where pork is the specialty.
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Trump Territory
In places like this, Democrats hope to increase their share of the vote and add it to their large majority in the cities to win Pennsylvania and its 19 electoral votes in the presidential elections on November 5. A victory that they urgently need to continue in the White House. And, on the other hand, Trump needs to win by a high number of votes in Butler and similar counties to triumph in a state that he won in 2016 against Hillary Clinton, but lost in 2020 to Joe Biden by just 80,000 votes.
At first glance, the Democrats’ ambition seems almost like a dream. Butler is Trump territory: the Republican candidate won here in 2020 with 65% of the vote. There are around 80,000 registered Republican voters – more than a thousand of them registered after the attack – compared to just under 40,000 Democrats. A local businessman has become somewhat famous in the area for the electronic signs that, from his land and for years, have shown drivers on the highway anti-LGBTQ messages. After the attack in July, the sign displayed messages accusing the Democrats of being behind the event. An image of Kamala Harris showed her with devil horns and the message: “Democrats kill children and dreams.”
“The attack has emboldened a segment of the population that now supports Trump, even more so,” said educator Colleen Smith, 62, a Democrat from Butler. It is not uncommon, she and other residents say, to hear insults from vehicles passing by their pro-Harris signs.
That, Smith says, can be scary for some. “A teenager I knew by sight, a neighbor, recently walked past my house and told me he liked the pro-Harris sign I have at the entrance to my yard. I asked him if he wanted one, but he said no. He said, ‘There are too many Trump supporters in the neighborhood. We don’t feel safe, we don’t want to be targeted,’” he says. He ended up taking a small one, to keep in his room so no one would see it.
But others—or rather, women—have chosen to organize. Heidi Priest, a 42-year-old real estate agent and self-described progressive mother of three, was concerned about the widespread support for Trump. And she decided to act. She used her experience as a mini influencer —who has a baking page on Facebook—to create a group on this social network: “Butler Women for Harris.”
“I felt that we needed it. Until then, traditional Democratic groups were mostly for older women, but there were also many women of my generation who wanted to be involved in some way. Women who sent me private messages to tell me that at home they couldn’t express their opinions because their husband didn’t think the same way,” Priest said during an interview.
The group now has about 1,500 members, who hold regular meetings. The first one was cathartic, they say. About 80 women met in a small park in Butler. “It may seem like a small number, but for this area it’s a huge number,” Smith explains. “Women who showed up to say they were there for their daughters, for their granddaughters. Others said they came because they are mothers of someone who is a member of the LGBT community and they need to know that they will be safe; others, because they have an autistic child and they don’t want to have a leader who mocks the disabled…”
“The group has also attracted younger people who come to defend their children in primary school,” adds the teacher. “There is a real sense of change in the tide. The enthusiasm is palpable, we no longer feel that we are alone.” Priest, who says she has received hostile messages on her office answering machine, is now considering entering politics at a local level.
There are also reports of friction among Republicans. Cindy Hildebrand is the president of the Butler County United Republicans group and was present at Trump’s rally in July. In statements to the local newspaper, Butler Eaglethis week, said: “It’s so sad how divided we are, that we can’t have a civil conversation with people.” He said he had spent the previous two weeks canvassing door to door. “I went to some Democratic houses and before I could even say hello they started yelling at me. All I wanted to do was have a conversation.”
But there are also encouraging moments. The graffiti urging “Fight, fight, fight” was scratched off a few weeks ago. Someone wrote instead: “Love.” “The fact that anyone bothered to try to counter that call to fight with a call to love is huge,” Smith says, smiling.
