Pennsylvania primary could decide Democratic Party’s direction

Allentown, Pennsylvania, is the kind of place the national media cites when discussing working-class struggles. The city serves as a proxy for America’s blue-collar blues, immortalized in a Billy Joel song. Nearby Bethlehem once hosted the world’s largest steelmaking operation, which closed in 2003 and was replaced by a casino.

The Lehigh Valley has seen better days. But this blue-collar bastion could this week determine the Democratic Party’s future.

Pennsylvania’s seventh congressional district is among the most competitive in the nation. In the last election, just one percentage point separated Democrat Susan Wild (49.5%) and Republican Ryan Mackenzie (50.5%), with slightly more than 4,000 votes deciding the outcome. The Democratic primary here has drawn national attention with implications for the party’s direction: whether to embrace blue-collar populism or stick with political insiders and liberal institutionalists who have failed in the past.

The candidates illustrate the choice. Lamont McClure Jr. served two terms as Northampton County executive. He is a lawyer whose father was executive director of the Carbon County Housing Authority. McClure emphasizes his qualifications, saying, ‘I’m the only one that’s ever been an elected official.’ He has endorsements from local elected officials and Carbon County Democratic insiders.

Carol Obando-Derstine worked as a top renewable-energy engineer and now leads a nonprofit. She served as U.S. Senator Bob Casey’s senior Latino affairs adviser. She argues her high-level government and nonprofit experience make her suited for Congress.

Ryan Crosswell, another lawyer and former registered Republican, served in Barack Obama’s Justice Department as a federal prosecutor. Previously, he worked at Littler Mendelson, a management-side labor firm that often represents companies fighting union organizing campaigns (Crosswell says he did not work on union-busting). He campaigns on an anti-corruption message: ‘I have more expertise in anti-corruption laws … than anyone in Congress.’

These are the type of insiders Democrats often elect, and they tend to lose in tough swing districts like this. The party is caught in a trap: as liberal voters become wealthier and more educated, candidates like these — lawyers, nonprofit executives, senior advisers, policy advocates, MBAs — proliferate. These professional-class progressives appeal to primary voters based on credentials, expertise and experience. While effective among well-educated and well-heeled primary voters, that approach fails to attract working-class voters in a general election. Most voters do not identify with the credentialed elite; many working-class voters resent them.

Only 33% of voters in Pennsylvania’s seventh district hold a college degree — 10 points below the national average. Some 38,000 work in manufacturing, about 27,000 in warehousing and trucking, and another 12,000 in construction. Compared to roughly 14,000 professionals, white-collar workers are outnumbered.

Working-class voters prefer blue-collar candidates. They favor electricians and schoolteachers over attorneys and executives because such candidates address economic challenges plainly.

Enter Bob Brooks. Brooks lacks a college education. He is a veteran firefighter and head of the statewide firefighters union. His grandfather was a Teamster truck driver; he was raised by a single mother who worked as a bartender. He coaches varsity baseball at Nazareth High School. His campaign is unambiguously populist: ‘The Democratic Party has become the party of elites,’ he said. ‘Our politics are being bought and paid for, and we have to stop that.’ He also stated, ‘We’ve fought three wars since the minimum wage was last raised.’

Given his labor record and union credentials, he has won endorsements from a long list of local unions and labor federations. More surprisingly, he also has backing from Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders. He has support from Congressman Chris Deluzio of western Pennsylvania and Congresswoman Madeleine Dean of the Philadelphia suburbs. Elizabeth Warren and Ruben Gallego also back him. These endorsements span party factions, from the Working Families Party to the moderate Blue Dog PAC.

One way to understand the intra-party struggle is as a fight between progressives and moderates or liberals and centrists. But the biggest challenge for the left is a broader social concern: how to win back the working class. Populism has emerged as the obvious answer: blue-collar outsider energy, a bold pro-worker program, focus on jobs and wages, a ‘Made in USA’ industrial policy, and an end to free-trade and free-market excesses that left only the wealthy better off. That combination fueled ironworker Brian Poindexter’s primary victory in Ohio’s seventh district, powers industrial mechanic Dan Osborn’s independent U.S. Senate bid in Nebraska, and props up ironworker Trey Martin’s dark-horse campaign in Oklahoma’s fifth district.

Brooks fits that profile. He advocates for Medicare for All, repealing Citizens United, banning congressional stock trading, raising the minimum wage, new infrastructure investments, labor law reform and free childcare. Unlike many progressives, he also supports a secure border and better resources for overburdened police and first responders. And unlike many elite liberals, he talks about winning back blue-collar MAGA voters rather than sneering at them as ‘deplorables.’ He blasts his own party for becoming out of touch and avoids liberal culture wars. He drives a Chevy diesel work truck for his lawn care side gig — saying if anyone feels pain at the pump, it is him.

Brooks has what it takes to flip this district. That is why the Republican Party is already spending heavily to influence the election. That is frustrating but signals that Brooks is a real threat. Now primary voters will decide if he has convinced them.

Dustin Guastella is a research associate at the Center for Working Class Politics and director of operations for Teamsters Local 623.