Illustration by Rich Hauck.
How’s the election playing out on your block?
In a recent Washington Post story, five contributors wrote short essays about election season on the most hyper-local level: their own neighborhoods.
Writers took the political pulse in Seattle, rural Georgia, Irvine, Calif., and, not too far away, in the Lehigh Valley.
The humorist Dave Barry wrote a hilarious piece about how his Florida neighbors seemed more interested in the search for a missing tortoise than in the presidential election.
So, I thought about my small, Capitol-area neighborhood in Harrisburg. How was the election playing out there? I set out on a grand tour around the block to find out.
It’s a month before election day, and all’s quiet on the river front.
Some trees are beginning to show signs of color, though most remain stubbornly green. The usual geese root around in the grass, and the groundhogs scamper away before I can ask them who they would vote for, if the election were held today.
Back along the street, I spot the occasional campaign sign for Democratic candidates: president, Congress, legislature. If there are any Republicans around—and I know there are a few—they’re not publicly stating their preferences.
I run into a neighbor out walking his dog and ask him to assess the local vibe.
“Vibe?” he says. “I don’t think there is a vibe.”
Touché.
I point to a nearby window plastered with campaign signs for Democratic candidates and one that reads, “Dictator or Democracy.”
“Well, yeah,” he says to me, “there’s that guy.”
“That guy” is Jamie Earl, who may be the most overtly political person on my block. Even when there isn’t an election, Jamie hangs signs in his large front window, often supporting or decrying some politician or taking a street-level stand on legislation. When I caught up with him, he proudly sported a “Harris Walz” T-shirt.
Jamie is a 63-year-old former IT guy who, in his semi-retirement, started a custom button-making business called Keystone Buttoneer. From his Etsy store, he sells all types of buttons—special occasion, humorous, etc.—but specializes in those espousing liberal politics and left-leaning causes.
Unlike me, he enthusiastically discusses politics with our neighbors. A few, he informed me, had voted for Donald Trump in the past but were switching allegiances this year.
“Most people I talk to are aware of what’s happening, and most of them are voting for Kamala Harris,” he said. “My vibe is that it’s a fairly progressive neighborhood.”
I nod my head in agreement, and it’s not just the signs. Most of the folks I know from our tight-knit ‘hood surely fall into the category of “progressive.”
Jamie then brings up a concern that I’ve heard from others—that, for our neighborhood, election season may not be over, even when it’s supposed to be over.
He worries that Trump, if he loses, will launch a 2024 version of his previous “Stop the Steal” effort to try to overturn the election results, with our neighborhood, in the shadow of the Capitol, on the front lines.
“We’re the biggest swing state,” Jamie said. “We’re number one on the list. So, I do fear for that. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
It’s a legitimate concern.
After the last presidential cycle, groups protested for weeks, holding up signs showing a jacked-up, Photoshopped Trump as Rambo—chanting, screaming, honking, claiming, as Trump still does, that the 2020 election was stolen. On several occasions, heavily armed men with AR-15s strapped to their chests, often in camouflage, some sporting bandoliers, marched through our streets.
Capitol-area residents don’t want to live through that again. Many fear that they got a taste this past August, when a group of masked neo-Nazis aggressively paraded through the neighborhood.
That concern, more than anything else, seems to unite the neighbors, regardless of partisan lean.
When I moved to Harrisburg from Washington, D.C., I figured that my new capital city home would be as political as my old capital city home.
My old Capitol Hill, D.C., neighborhood pulsated with politics, never more so than on Halloween, when many homeowners mounted elaborate, politically themed displays. Think front-yard graveyards with cardboard tombstones of unpassed legislation and effigies of candidates as the undead.
Not so much my Capitol Hill, Pa., neighborhood. Here, you can walk the streets without encountering a single Trump zombie or Harris witch.
But watch out for Jamie. He might just buttonhole you for a brief, if passionate, political discussion. Then he may even sell you the button.
Lawrance Binda is publisher and editor of TheBurg.
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