Donald Trump and Joe Biden are seen in a composite image from a presidential debate in September 2020. Both men will be visiting Luzerne County this week.
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Hail to the chiefs!
No, not the Kansas City football team, but the current and former Presidents of the United States who will be visiting Luzerne County this week.
For anyone who missed it, Joe Biden is scheduled to speak at Wilkes University on Tuesday, while Donald Trump is slated to headline a rally at Mohegan Sun Arena on Saturday.
If Biden had not come down with COVID-19 last month the visits would have taken place over a month apart; nevertheless, both point to the enduring significance of our region and Pennsylvania as a whole as potential kingmakers in some of the nation’s most important political contests.
Trump carried Luzerne County in 2016, besting Hillary Clinton by more than 26,000 votes, or 57.9% to Clinton’s 38.6%. In 2020, he defeated Biden here by roughly 57% to 42%.
The key difference was that Trump carried Pennsylvania in 2016 but not 2020, and that was a major factor in putting Biden in the White House. Luzerne County was pivotal to Trump’s 2016 victory, and he did slightly less well here in 2020.
We know stating these simple facts will spawn hundreds of unhinged comments about conspiracy theories. Nothing we say here will change the minds of those who falsely believe that the 2020 election was rigged, so we’re going to get to the point.
The reality is that voting matters, from the national level down to the neighborhood level. It’s the reason huge numbers of Americans, from lawyers and politicians to ordinary folks on social media, are engaged in heated battles over redistricting, mail-in ballots, drop boxes and just about everything related to elections.
Some of those arguments take place in good faith. Sadly, some do not. We’ve been in the midst of just such bitter battles with our County Council and citizen Election Board in recent months.
But if voting didn’t matter, these two powerful men would not be bringing themselves and their messages to our corner of the commonwealth this week. If democracy didn’t matter, powerful people wouldn’t be spending so much time trying to influence voters and the process by which they vote.
And it means that in the coming days media from around the country, perhaps from around the world, are likely to be touching down here in search of “ordinary voters” in this pivotal county that has been the subject of so much analysis since it helped put Trump in the White House nearly six years ago.
Some of this will be useful and enlightening.
Some of it will no doubt trade on tired stereotypes about us being angry residents of “a former coal town” that was left behind.
We know that the local story is much more subtle and nuanced than that. Hopefully the better journalists visiting here this week will see that, too.
Yes, coal mining used to be the dominant industry here. It’s also effectively been dead for over 50 years.
This is a vibrant and diverse place with an economy that has, often with great pain, progressed beyond its heavy industrial past. Where once there were mines and railroads, now there are warehouses and other logistics jobs, light manufacturing, hospitality and service industries, a range of health and medical employers including one of the state’s major healthcare providers, a healthy higher education sector, many retail jobs, and a wealth of small businesses that have shown great resilience during the pandemic and its aftermath. Lest we forget, Luzerne County even has agricultural areas.
Also, for those outside reporters who may be reading this: We’re not Scranton. Nearby neighbors, yes, but the imaginary line between Lackawanna and Luzerne counties is very real — both as a stock joke locally, and as illustrated in the electoral differences between those two counties, with Lackawanna remaining more blue as Luzerne has been trending increasingly red.
Neither county, however, is a monolith. Biden’s team understands this, as does Trump’s. It’s why they court our votes, because voters can and do change their minds: The fact that Luzerne County twice supported Barack Obama before overwhelmingly backing Trump twice is proof of that.
We wish everyone observing and commenting on this week’s visits would remember those essential facts about democracy: It’s messy, it’s imperfect, but it is our birthright as Americans.
— Times Leader