Allentown, Pa. — Big-time politicians are descending on Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley in the final weeks of the 2024 election, where voters in the swing 7th Congressional District could determine which party controls the House — if not the White House — next year.
On Wednesday, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., D-Pa. Rep. Joined a Latino small business tour here with Susan Wild. The next day, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., defeated GOP challenger state Rep. Ryan Mackenzie in Hellertown, while Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., took part in a voting rights debate with Wild in nearby Easton.
Next week, D-Mass. Minority Whip Katherine Clark will campaign for Wild at a reproductive rights event in Allentown.
The race between Wild, a moderate Democrat, and Mackenzie, a Republican with a long family history in the district, “rings a bell,” Wild said, for the presidential election — a true swing district in a swing state that will play a critical role in deciding who takes the White House.
“This is a district that, rightly or wrongly, has elected the president for at least the last seven cycles and will do so again this year. I tell outsiders: On election night, if you want to know what the presidential election is going to be like, watch Pennsylvania 7,” Wilde said in an interview with NBC News after making several campaign stops in downtown Allentown with Aguilar.
“This is not an exaggeration. This is not an exaggeration,” he said. “I guarantee you … as the Greater Lehigh Valley goes, so goes the nation.”
The battleground state of eastern Pennsylvania, north of Philadelphia, is evenly split between Democrats and Republicans; and based on updated congressional lines, President Joe Biden narrowly beat former President Donald Trump here in 2020, 49.7% to 49.1%.
Not 80s Allentown
In many ways, the district is a microcosm of the nation as a whole—a mix of urban, suburban, and rural areas and an increasingly diverse region thanks to a rapidly growing Latino community. Latin Americans are moving here from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala and Venezuela, as well as from more expensive areas in New York and New Jersey.
With the support of Aguilar and others, Wild is trying to pick up Latino voters in places like Allentown, a once-proud iron and steel manufacturing center whose population is now 55% Latino, up from about 43% in the 2010 U.S. Census. In neighboring Bethlehem, about a third of the population is Latino.
“People know the Billy Joel song. They consider Allentown a post-industrial city. But the reality is that this is a city that has continued to grow since the ’80s — for example, our low point was probably around the Billy Joel song — and we’ve grown largely on the strength of a growing Latino community,” said Matthew Tuerk of Allentown 2022. made history as the first Latino and Spanish-speaking mayor of
Tuerk met Wild and Aguilar on Wednesday as he dropped off the El Mercadito Grocery in downtown Allentown. Earlier, Wild and Aguilar visited El Tablazo Restaurant, owned by a Dominican family, which serves empanadas, Cuban sandwiches and oxtail stew.
They all ended up at La Cocina Del Abuelo (Grandpa’s Kitchen) for a wide-ranging roundtable discussion with dozens of local Latino leaders, who touched on the subject of Vice President Kamala Harris. long term care offeringreducing prescription drug prices and red tape for small businesses, and the need for more federal services.
Wild served as Allentown’s attorney before winning a 2018 special election to replace moderate Republican Charlie Dent, who, like Wild, served as Ethics Committee chairman. He won the re-election in 2022 by less than 2 percent. Queries now show Wild with a fine lead over Mackenzie but within the margin of error.
Although he is the incumbent and older than Mackenzie, Wilde, 67, called Mackenzie, 42, a “career politician,” noting that he had served 12 years in elected office — more than twice as long. In Harrisburg, she serves alongside her mother, GOP state Rep. Milou Mackenzie.
Both Wild and Mackenzie are white.
Latino leaders at the roundtable said the congressman has spent the past six years building relationships with the community. “He’s been here,” said Greenberg Lemus, a Mexican-American and owner of La Cocina Del Abuelo, adding that Wild has a phone number and often texts him with concerns.
Aguilar, the No. 3 Democrat in the House and the highest-ranking Hispanic member of Congress, told leaders there are “growing pains” as the Latino community in Allentown and around the country matures and learns to enter “doors that weren’t open” before.
“But I can tell you,” he said, “as someone who works with her every day in DC, Susan Wild has your back.”
The fight over immigration
Mackenzie and Republicans have attacked Wild as weak on border security, saying he repeatedly voted against Trump’s border wall and contributed to its number. Unaccompanied Migrant Children in the Lehigh Valley.
“He has a failed record on border security,” Mackenzie said in an interview Thursday after a rally with Johnson in Hellertown. “He calls the border wall ‘ridiculous.’ He called sanctuary cities safer and voted against border wall funding 10 times.
Wild pushed back on that story during a recent debate with Mackenzie, saying he had voted to fund the wall once before and beat her up for opposing it. The Senate’s bipartisan border security bill.
Johnson threw even more red meat at the 150 GOP loyalists who gathered to see Mackenzie and the speaker at the Steel Club, a former venue for Bethlehem Steel executives and supervisors that is now a private golf club.
“Every state is a border state, as they say, they opened the border wide and did it on purpose, right? They wanted to turn these people into voters,” Johnson said, echoing the baseless conspiracy theory that Trump often posits. it is rare for illegals and non-citizens to vote anyway. “Why else would they subject the country to these disastrous consequences, human trafficking, violent crime, known terrorists coming to our country?”
Despite the tough border talk, Mackenzie’s campaign, like Trump’s, sees an opportunity to make inroads among Latino voters. Recently NBC News/Telemundo/CNBC survey Among Latino voters, support for Harris is 54%, the lowest level in the past four presidential cycles. Trump held a rally this week in nearby Reading, where 7 out of 10 residents are Latino.
Mackenzie said she attended the Puerto Rican Parade and Dominican Festival in Allentown. But he has not focused his messaging on Latinos, particularly immigrants or Puerto Rican migrants.
“The issues in the Hispanic community are the same as the regular, larger community. … They talk about the cost of living. They talk about immigration. They also see crime in their communities and drugs from the open southern border,” Mackenzie said.
“The only thing we’re doing differently is writing it in Spanish,” he said. “That’s it. It’s the same message, the same communication.”
Victor Martinez, a radio host and executive who owns Allentown’s popular Spanish-language station La Mega and attended Wild’s roundtable, said he has been “bombarded” by Democrats trying to get on the air. He recently interviewed both Harris and his running mate, Tim Walz, on his show, but he said he hasn’t seen any interest or help from Republicans this cycle. He Harris confirmed in a campaign video last month.
“If they’re seen as over-catering or over-appealing to the Latino voter, I think that could erode their base,” Martinez said. “Wait a minute: Here you’re telling us they’re the ones who’ve got our way in our favor and they’re the ones to blame for a lot of things, and at the same time, you’re telling them to vote for you and offer something to make their lives better?
“I think they’re having a hard time bringing the two together, and that’s why we haven’t seen comprehensive marketing, advertising, trying to get the Latino vote — at least in Pennsylvania. It was silent,” he said.
Abortion rights and trust
The candidates also argued on other issues. Wild tried to portray Mackenzie as bad for women voters. In it advertisementshe suggested and emphasized that he was against in vitro fertilization reports She said she lied about eight years old on her Tinder dating profile.
He also took aim at a past vote in the state Legislature to ban abortions after 19 weeks of pregnancy, except for rape and incest.
Mackenzie said she was trying to “mischaracterize” Wild’s record and “mislead voters” — she fully supports IVF, she said, and said she voted for another bill that would have allowed taxpayers to be used to pay for some abortions in cases of rape. incest and the life of the mother.
Mackenzie, who is now married with one child, called the Tinder issue a “distraction” and said no voters had brought it up to her during any campaign. He said he was focusing on issues such as inflation and border security.
“People want answers about what you’re really going to do to help them and improve their lives,” she said.