Vice-Presidential Candidate Tim Walz at a rally in Bucks, Pennsylvania. Photo / Thomas Coughlan
The Herald’s deputy political editor Thomas Coughlan is in the US for the presidential election. Follow his campaign diary here.
You might not yet have heard of Diane Marseglia, but there’s a good chance you’ll read her name somewhere after Americans go to the polls on November 5.
Marseglia, a Democrat, is one of three elected county commissioners in Bucks county, Pennsylvania a crucial part of a crucial state for this year’s Presidential Election (Republican candidate, former President Donald Trump has made several visits, most recently to “work” at a local McDonalds).
The three commissioners, including Marseglia, sit on the county Board of Elections, which runs elections in Bucks (Pennsylvania’s 67 counties each have their own board that runs elections). It was in this capacity that, earlier this week, the Trump campaign listed her as one of four defendants in a lawsuit alleging an unprepared electoral office had effectively disenfranchised voters by denying them mail-in ballots.
The Trump campaign sought a one-day extension for people to apply in person for mail-in ballot papers. A judge ordered the commission permit applications through to the close of business on Friday.
The decision was seen as a win by the Trump campaign. There are fears on the Democrat side that the case and Trump’s online fulminations about alleged voter fraud across the state, are laying the groundwork for a suite of lawsuits after the election, particularly in places like Bucks, where the result is bound to be close.
I met Marseglia at a small town hall rally in a Bucks county boilermakers union hall hosted for Vice-Presidential Candidate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and asked her whether she was worried about the Trump campaign’s threat of taking legal action after the election.
“It’s not really a threat, it’s a promise,” she replied.
She said people had been fed “misinformation” about the way the election had been conducted, which was “making them angry”.
These fears were everywhere at the small rally. Standing close by was Congresswoman Madeleine Dean, who was in the Capitol Building during the January 6 insurrection in 2021 and served as an Impeachment Manager (Congressional speak for a prosecutor) during Trump’s second impeachment.
Warming up for Walz, Dean recalled being told to “put your gas mask on they have infiltrated the rotunda, they are coming here” on January 6 as Trump supporters stormed the capitol.
This message is a strong one. When I ask Tim, a younger voter attending the rally, what he’s voting for this election, the first thing he says is, " a return to normalcy”.
“Most people are looking forward to it being over,” he said.
I don’t blame him.
Pennsylvanians are being positively tortured by election. In 2023, New Zealand parties spent about $17 million on advertising during the campaign period (including the broadcasting allocation) - about $6 for every vote cast. By contrast, open secrets, a campaign finance watchdog reckons that about US$15.9b (NZ$26.6b) will be spent this election, or about US$100 ($167) a vote (The comparison isn’t quite apples and apples, “spending” is a far broader category than advertising and American campaigns last far longer than those in New Zealand, meaning the money is spent over a longer period).
Even these figures don’t quite capture the full story. The bulk of that spending avoids most Americans, because it is funnelled into a handful of swing states like Pennsylvania, who are practically drowning in campaigning. Almost every ad on television is about the election. One of the most common feelings people in Pennsylvania seem to have is fatigue.
It was soon time for Walz himself.
His presence on the ticket is ever so slightly controversial in Pennsylvania. The state’s governor, Democrat Josh Shapiro had been a favourite as a potential Harris running mate. Shapiro is quite perfect — too perfect in fact; American comedians have made much of his unusual folksy vocabulary and rolling cadence, like the the soft yaw of a ship, punctuated by unlikely crescendoes, which bares an uncanny, perhaps plagiaristic, resemblance to one Barack Obama. By not picking the popular Democratic governor of a state she desperately needed to win, Harris certainly had many observers scratching their heads.
No one knows the reasons for Shapiro’s snub. He’s among the strongest supporters of Israel in the Democratic Party (a trait he shares with fellow Pennsylvanian and hero-turned-bete noir of the progressive Democrats, Senator John Fetterman), a challenge in an election when Democrats are tearing themselves apart over the war. There’s also the possibility he himself wasn’t so keen on it - his eyes set on running at the top of the ticket at a later election.
If Harris loses Pennsylvania and the election, there’s a good chance some of the blame will land with her decision not to tap Shapiro.
Marseglia can’t help but mention this at the rally.
“As soon as I got over my grief about Josh Shapiro, I immediately loved him,” she said of Walz.
Walz, it must be said, isn’t half bad either. As José, a doctor at the rally who kindly offered to drive me on a tour around the county afterwards, told me, Walz is kind of perfect for a country looking to find itself represented in a candidate.
Trump has recently been making a play for union votes, which had formerly been staunchly Democratic. Walz is trying to win them back (my hotel is full of members of a construction union who are canvassing the state).
“J.D. Vance and Donald Trump know nothing about working-class people other than how to take advantage of them.
“This, they know nothing about manufacturing. The only thing these guys manufacture is bulls***,” Walz yells at the crowd. A man lifted his hard hat, practically papier-machéd in campaign slogans, in salute.
Walz implored people to vote and vote early. Many Pennsylvanians request mail-in ballots, but fail to send them in. The Democrat ground game in the state is focused on ensuring that every mail-in ballot that is requested actually makes its way to a post box. The effort appears to be having some success, with 1.6 million Pennsylvanians having voted early (the total number of votes likely to be cast is more than 6 million). That is slightly lower than at the same stage in 2020, when the pandemic made it a more popular choice, but more than during the 2022 midterms.
Polls from people who had already cast ballots gave Harris a 17-35 point lead in the state. Republicans, particularly Trump-backing Elon Musk, see things differently, and reckon early votes might tilt red.
Walz makes his closing pitch, urging male voters, with whom the Democrats are struggling, to think of the women in their lives.
“Think about those women who are in your lives. This election literally is about their lives; their lives are at stake in this election.
“Donald Trump appointed those Supreme Court justices who lied about supporting Roe v Wade and the protection of bodily sovereignty who went on to overturn Roe v Wade and Donald Trump says he’s glad he did it,” Walz said.
Pennsylvania’s abortion access is currently classed as “restrictive” by Guttmacher, a reproductive rights group (banned, with some exceptions, at 24 weeks and later, and patients forced to wait 24 hours after counselling to obtain an abortion), but most pro-choice people I spoke to in Bucks considered the state lucky for having access to legal abortion at all, so heavy does the spectre of statewide abortion bans hang over the country.
José, the doctor I met at the rally offered to show me some of the prettier sites of Bucks. He works at the ER (A&E) and says abortion will be an issue in Bucks and around the country. It makes life difficult for doctors who face penalties for breaking abortion laws. An ER might need to call the hospital’s lawyer before determining whether a patient can be allowed an abortion or not. A patient’s life could rest on whether or not a lawyer picks up their phone — and what they say, if they do.
About 20 minutes away is Washington Crossing, named after the place where George Washington crossed the Delaware River on Christmas night in one of the most famous episodes of the War of Independence (it was famously painted about a century later by Emanuel Leutze).
The trees burn autumn. Washington Crossing and nearby Newtown are chocolate-box America. The houses are unfathomably large, weatherboard or brick, with neat lawns. Most are decked with elaborate and expensive-looking Halloween decorations.
Everyone seems to know each other. Everyone is polite (I overheard a pair of acquaintances unironically use the honorific “Mr.” before addressing one another), and everyone seems happy, not just over the election, but over the Trump era.
A woman at the cafe in Newtown has her own reasons for wanting the election to be over. Her surname, Trump (no relation), has drawn good-humoured comparisons with her more famous namesake, but things have become slightly more heated now.
A tradie from whom she had sought a quote for some work enthusiastically asked her if, given her name, she was likely to cast a vote for Trump. She declined to answer, intimating “no”.
She waited, but the quote never came.
Thomas Coughlan is Deputy Political Editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018. His travel to the United States was assisted by the US Embassy in Wellington.
Ministers opted to instead set money aside for stakes in new gas fields instead.