The city of Butler, a blue-collar town that was built on steel, has been trying to get a foothold economically in recent years after struggling to reinvent itself following a loss of industry in recent decades.
Home to about 13,000 people, the city is perched on the banks of Connoquenessing Creek, about a 50-minute drive northeast of Pittsburgh. It retains a relatively high poverty rate compared with the nation and the rest of Pennsylvania.
The county that the city sits within has been changing over time, however, becoming both more educated and more prosperous.
Broader Butler County’s population of nearly 200,000 remains about 95 percent white, according to the Census Bureau, but the nonwhite share of the population has been slowly growing. About 38 percent of adults there now have a bachelor’s degree, slightly higher than the 34 percent average nationally.
The county’s unemployment rate is well below the national level: just 2.8 percent. And per capita earnings in Butler County surpassed the state average in 2007, after being below it ever since records had begun to be kept.
Professional and business services are now the county’s largest employer. The southern part of the county is accessible to Pittsburgh, which makes it popular among commuters into the city. New housing developments and businesses have sprung up in recent years.
But Butler County retains large swaths of rural farmland and wooded forests. Gun ownership in that corner of Western Pennsylvania is pervasive, and hunting is such a major pastime there that local schools long took off the first day of deer season.
“We’re a little overwhelmed,” Bob Dandoy, Butler’s mayor, said in an interview late Saturday, after the shooting. “This is a small town.”
The area skews heavily Republican, and Trump signs dot local roadsides. Voter registration data from the local Bureau of Elections shows that just under 40,000 Democrats are registered in the country, and nearly 80,000 Republicans. About 20,000 voters are not registered as members of either party.
Trump voters outnumbered Biden voters nearly two to one in the 2020 election.
Mr. Dandoy is a Democrat, but he said the trauma of the shooting transcended parties.
“Politics aside, the people at that rally were exercising one of the most basic freedoms of our country,” he said. “An attack on their rights is an attack on all of our rights.”
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