ERIE, Pa. — Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump deployed their running mates to a Rust Belt bellwether county to make their case to swing voters in a critical battleground state.
But was anyone swung?
History shows Erie County picks presidents — it went for Barack Obama twice, Trump in 2016, then Biden in 2020.
Sen. J.D. Vance made his pitch there for the Trump ticket at the end of August, and voters said his story of growing up in a left-behind Ohio town resonated with them. Then Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz made his Erie working-class overtures last week for the Democratic ticket.
“I’m on the fence on both candidates,” Vince Palermo, a 45-year-old Millcreek Township small-business owner, told The Post at a gas station across the street from where Walz’s “New Way Forward” jet landed just moments before.
Filling up his tank, Palermo noted that under Trump’s administration, “we didn’t have these price gouges.” Now “everything goes up.”
Palermo, formerly on the Erie County Democrats’ board, registered as a Republican in 2020 and voted for Trump “to see what an outsider could do.”
But in 2024, he’s struggling to support Trump and believes his attacks on judges have “made a mockery” of the criminal-justice system: The ex-prez “just doesn’t care.”
Still, Palermo admitted it was “tough” to say if he could be swayed toward Harris.
“I don’t think she has enough experience,” he said — unlike Hillary Clinton, for whom he voted in 2016.
Palermo wasn’t too impressed with Walz’s Erie remarks but conceded the VP hopeful is “more of a person” than current VP Harris, noting he turned down salary increases as governor in 2023 and 2024.
“He comes across as an average Joe, but I have my suspicions of the average Joe talk,” he said. Dems picked him “just because he has gray hair.”
Palermo wasn’t the only undecided voter who stopped for gas in Millcreek Township that day.
Chuck Jones, 40 and a box stacker from Erie, said he voted “straight Democrat” in 2020 but isn’t sure where his vote is going this year.
“Everybody’s not who they say they are,” Jones told The Post. “They tell you one thing one minute, another the next minute.”
Harris in her first interview as nominee said she wouldn’t ban fracking, which is big business in Pennsylvania — and denied she was flip-flopping after saying at a CNN town hall when running for president in 2019, “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking.”
Lehualani Rounds, a 43-year-old Erie health-care worker, told The Post Harris “is too showy. She’s fake.” She plans to vote for Trump again because he “doesn’t sugarcoat things.”
She’s not alone in her feelings on the race’s theatrics. Barry LaCastro, 50 and the business agent for Erie’s local International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees union, isn’t impressed with the Vance-Walz mudslinging: “Why can’t you just run on your platform?”
“People like me are tired of the name-bashing,” LaCastro told The Post, as his men broke down the set of the Walz rally and loaded equipment onto trucks headed for Pittsburgh.
Harris is in a “verbal tug of war” because she says she’ll bring down costs, but “you are vice president,” he said.
Still, “my soul can’t vote for” Trump and his “venom,” LaCastro said, even if he liked Trump’s economy.
While his employees are evenly split between Harris and Trump, he said 30% are like him: undecided.
Palermo knows a lot of “very disappointed” Americans “who are not going to vote.”
He voted twice for Obama because “he could relate to the people.” He had the “essence of Kennedy.”
“I’d like to see someone who can bring us together,” Palermo declared. Harris “just doesn’t have it, and I don’t know if she’s ever going to get it.”
Kasheen Henderson, 58, a retired pipe fitter who’s voted predominantly for Democrats and works with a renters’ association to keep rents down in the area, is also undecided. “I’m up for grabs when it comes to this election. I don’t trust either party right now. I can point the finger at Trump a million times. Kamala, we can do the same,” adding the VP doesn’t have the experience he’s looking for in a president.
“She’s a beautiful woman. She’s intelligent. Can she run this country? No,” Henderson said.
His vote will come down to trust: “Too many people promise too many things.”
His pocketbook will also play into his decision — he’s “not saving any money right now.”
“How can I vote this person in when she’s part of that administration?”
Henderson was set to meet with Walz while he was in town for the renters’ association, but the VP hopeful canceled.
He says if and when the group does meet with Walz, “I might be able to make up my mind.”
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