STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Our teams have spent days driving through different parts of Pennsylvania. We've met people in coffee shops like this one, in restaurants, on the streets, knocking on doors, trying to get a picture of this swing state. And, Michel, I want you and our audience to hear three voters from three places. The first is Sam Miller, who sat with us outside a coffee shop in Pittsburgh. She's worked for 17 years as a labor and delivery nurse at a hospital, and before that, she worked as a waitress and bartender.
Did you learn anything from bartending and waitressing that turned out to be useful in nursing?
SAM MILLER: Oh, you know, half of nursing is learning how to talk to people, you know, talk to people on their level and from all different backgrounds. And dealing with difficult people and unhappy customers sometimes really helped me in my nursing career.
INSKEEP: I feel like you have hit at one of the main problems of our time, is how do we relate to each other and understand this person who's coming from a totally different perspective?
MILLER: Yeah, 100%.
INSKEEP: Which is one of the themes of this story. Now, Miller's hospital, West Penn, specializes in high-risk cases, which means that in the delivery room, she sometimes works with patients in desperate situations, which has influenced her politics.
MILLER: Seeing people have to make these decisions firsthand has really grounded my beliefs in a woman's right to choose, because nobody understands what it's like to be in that situation until they are. And it's their decision, and it's not mine to influence them. It's not anybody else's besides the woman and her husband and the doctor in that room giving them the information they need. I've seen a mom who had lupus and got pregnant and ended up being in ICU on ECMO, which is, like, the last stop before a patient dies. And the husband had to decide, do I terminate this pregnancy to save the mom's life?
INSKEEP: And he has to decide because she's in no condition.
MILLER: She's in no condition to decide.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
You can really see how something like that would haunt you.
INSKEEP: Yeah, yeah. And you realize a lot of these issues feel abstract to people. They don't necessarily connect to your lives but in many cases they do. And this is a case where she says it does. Now, we should emphasize, abortion rights have not changed in Pennsylvania. Republicans, in fact, will say in a national election you don't need to vote on that anymore. But Miller thinks of people in other states where abortion is banned, including people from Ohio who now come over to Pennsylvania.
She's voting for Kamala Harris on this issue and others. She also considers Harris pro-labor, and the nurses at West Penn have a union. Her husband is different politically - not the only divided couple we've met here in Pennsylvania. He grew up in a Republican household, she says. He now works in fracking. Four years ago, during the pandemic, he was laid off and spent a lot of time reading online about then-President Trump's false claims of a stolen election.
MILLER: The 2020 election was a little hard because I'd say he got into one-sided news. And, you know, we talked about it after and agreed on reliable news sources that we will get our news from. And, you know, we agreed on, like, common ground - like, OK, I won't listen to this news station if you don't listen to that news station. Let's find a middle of the road, something to agree on. And we do have open and honest conversations. And some things he will never agree with me, and I will never agree with him, and that's OK.
INSKEEP: What news sources did you end up deciding were OK for both of you?
MILLER: I think Reuters.
INSKEEP: I was really hoping she'd say NPR, Michel, but you know - well, anyway. They negotiated their way down to a single, nonpartisan wire service for a while. Miller says she's not sure how her husband's going to vote in 2024, which is not the case with a man we met farther east in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, scene of the most famous battle of the Civil War. I see someone nodding here. About 1 million visitors walk the battlefield outside town each year, and some of them stay in a historic row house in town run by Brian Hodges.
BRIAN HODGES: So our business is a bed-and-breakfast. So we cook breakfast. That's the original dining room, if you want to look in there later. Eighteen rooms in total. Business is actually very good. Travel to Gettysburg, because the battlefield mis still free. Hopefully it'll stay that way forever.
INSKEEP: What concerns, if any, do you have about this community and the way things are going around here?
HODGES: Our biggest issue has been inflation. So obviously, I got to cook for everybody, like a restaurant. So everything I buy in a store is 20%, 30% higher, plus our gas bill, plus our water bill, plus our electric bill. So costs have gone up tremendously.
INSKEEP: As we know, inflation has eased but has not retreated, which is one of many issues for Hodges that make him lean toward Donald Trump, just as he has in the past. Now, I have to mention something, Michel, about the place where we were. Gettysburg is a blue dot in a red sea.
MARTIN: And that's something we're seeing a lot more of.
INSKEEP: Absolutely, absolutely, and it's certainly true in central Pennsylvania. The town voted big for Joe Biden in 2020, but the surrounding county - in fact, most of the surrounding counties - voted big for Trump. We were referred to this Republican voter by his Democratic neighbor, Chad-Alan Carr, who's on the borough council in the blue town. Hodges says their friends.
HODGES: I'm Republican, he's a Democrat, but we get along because we're here in a very small, little community.
INSKEEP: And that's even true in these times that make some people fear conflict. Some people even make references to some kind of new civil war, like the one whose ultimate battle took place at this town.
HODGES: I pray that that doesn't happen because, yes, most of my customers are here to study the battle. And you study it, you're not going to do it again. And I think children should come here, school trips, to learn about how we devastated each other so it will not happen again.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
HODGES: I would hope it would never turn to that.
INSKEEP: Do you think, like, your disagreements with Chad-Alan are ever going to be big enough that you think...
HODGES: No.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
HODGES: I love Chad.
INSKEEP: You're not going to take up arms against Chad?
HODGES: No, no.
INSKEEP: OK.
HODGES: I love Chad. Yeah.
INSKEEP: Is there anything that he has said to you that made you say, wow, I didn't actually think about it that way - maybe I still don't agree with him, but now I understand better.
HODGES: It's more on the LGBTQ side of things and transgenderism, where he's very forward with that here in our local community. He started the Gay Pride Parade years ago, so he's on the forefront of that. So that's the biggest conversations we've had.
INSKEEP: And has that changed your viewpoint or opened your mind about things?
HODGES: Somewhat, somewhat. Yeah, it has.
INSKEEP: Got really choked up - you can hear it there - talking about his friend. Hodges says he's more open-minded than he used to be. Although, he's not changing his vote for Trump, nor does it change his opinion of Doug Mastriano, the local state senator who famously attended the January 6 attack on the Capitol in 2021.
HODGES: With Mastriano, he's a little farther to the right than I would say I am. I know him personally. I think he's a really nice guy and all, but his policies were actually farther to the right of mine.
INSKEEP: OK.
HODGES: Yeah, but I still voted for him.
INSKEEP: When he showed up at January 6, does that bother you?
HODGES: It didn't bother me, but I didn't go. How about that? He got busloads of people to go there, yeah. So I don't think there was any plan to storm the Capitol or anything from him. I think that kind of just evolved. But I don't think it bothered me.
INSKEEP: Just a reminder of the divided country we live in. For some people, January 6 was the ultimate betrayal of the country. For Hodges, it wasn't anything he supported or participated in, but he didn't find it to be the biggest deal, necessarily. So that is one point of view in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. We heard a different one in Pennsylvania's Monongahela River valley out of western Pennsylvania. Several U.S. Steel mills are in the towns that line that river, and at a barber shop in one of them, we met steelworker William Timbers.
WILLIAM TIMBERS: The steel mill has been the fabric of our lives. And it's been how we live the American dream, through the white picket fence, through the home, through, you know, buying a home and your cars and your cards. So for us, the steel mills has been our livelihood.
INSKEEP: I love hearing the buzz of the clippers and the backdrop there. U.S. Steel is part of the presidential campaign, as you know, Michel, because both candidates oppose selling the company to a Japanese firm. William Timbers says most local workers are in favor of this sale, depending on the final details, so that's not really an issue he can vote on. Timbers was the closest we found to a truly undecided voter, although he has a positive view of the Democrat. He's Black and says white workers at his plant have made disparaging remarks about Kamala Harris, views he does not share.
How would you evaluate Harris?
TIMBERS: Strong woman. Very strong woman, independent and strong on her views and her values. And I believe she'd be a good candidate.
INSKEEP: Strong on her values. But the problem for him is she is strong on values that William Timbers does not share.
TIMBERS: What I love about Trump is he's pro-life. And I'm pro-life, and I'm pro-life all the way.
INSKEEP: This steelworker is also a socially conservative pastor. The Trump campaign has been reaching Timbers with a massive advertising by playing a commercial that attacks Harris over her views on transgender issues, which fills him with doubts. But there's one more factor in his thinking. Timbers has followed the former president's many remarks about overturning the law or endorsing police violence.
TIMBERS: Violence begets violence. That's not a way for an answer, you know, to do something. And when he says you'll vote, and this will be the last time you'll vote ever again.
INSKEEP: Oh, that's right, the last time you'll need to vote.
TIMBERS: Yes, that.
INSKEEP: Vote for me one more time, and you don't have to do it after that.
TIMBERS: That's a dictatorship. A dictatorship isn't what we want. We want democracy. That's what our forefathers fought for. And he's saying if you vote one more time, you won't have to vote again. That's a dictatorship. And we don't want no communist country. We don't want a dictator. We don't want - that's not what we want.
INSKEEP: OK, so that is William Timbers, Brian Hodges and Samantha Miller, three of our fellow citizens whose votes this year may help decide the result in Pennsylvania, not to mention the national presidential election, Michel.
MARTIN: And great that you were able to get them to talk with you because one of the other interesting things about this trip is how many people don't want to talk about politics...
INSKEEP: Oh, my gosh, yeah.
MARTIN: ...Because they are afraid, or they are afraid of what their friends and family might say or just people in their community. That is something that I personally have never really seen before.
INSKEEP: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you hear people talking about a divided America and how nobody deals with anybody who has a different point of view. But actually, I'm hearing from a lot of people who say there's someone in my life, there's someone in my family, there's someone at my job with a different point of view.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
