ERIE, Pa. – Richard Speicher and Mary Gensheimer are longtime Republicans and Erie County residents. A yard sign that sat, until recently, on the front lawn of their suburban home showed the political homelessness they feel in their party and their community.
The couple put up a “Republican Voters Against Trump” sign, only to discover it was gone one night when they returned from dinner. Speicher and Gensheimer say they’re not sure if it was a prank or if a neighbor sent a message about their political views. Regardless, they decided to send their own message in the Pennsylvania primary this spring by voting for Nikki Haley — even though she had dropped out of the race weeks earlier.
“Trump is not a representative candidate for the Republican Party. He may be what they represent now, but as longtime Republicans, we both come from a very different tradition,” Speicher said. “The only choice available was Nikki Haley.”
“I think the hope was that there would be enough people who would at least indicate their dissatisfaction with a candidate to send some kind of message, even if she wasn’t in the race,” Gensheimer added.
The couple represents a critical bloc of voters — in this key county in a battleground state and across the country — who are jockeying for what is expected to be an extremely competitive general election. While many of these voters will end up returning home and supporting the Republican ticket, others are considering supporting President Joe Biden – or casting another protest vote in November.
Haley won nearly 20% of the vote in Erie County in Pennsylvania’s April presidential primary, six weeks after ending her candidacy. That’s a warning sign for former President Donald Trump, given Erie’s leading status: The county has voted for the state’s winner, and the president in general, in the last four elections.
Statewide, Haley won 16.4% of the vote, almost 159,000 votes in total, in a state that Trump won by 44,000 votes in 2016 and Biden won by 80,000 votes in 2020.
Haley has since said she will vote for Trump in November. But not all of her supporters are ready to go that far.
“I was disappointed. I expected her to hold her ground,” said an Erie voter named Kurt, who voted for Haley in the primary and asked that NBC News not use his last name to avoid backlash from his neighbors.
“I can’t imagine a scenario where I would vote for President Trump,” he said. “For me, it’s really the character issues. I think it’s his erratic decision-making style, leadership style. And I think in a lot of political cases, he doesn’t really represent what would be traditional Republican or conservative values. It’s really more about him than really traditional principles.”
“Right now, my vote would probably be between Biden and a protest vote,” said Kurt, who voted for Biden in 2020.
Opportunity for Biden
The Biden campaign is increasing its reach with voters like Kurt in key battleground states. She poured money into ads in which Trump is quoted as saying he’s not “sure we need many” Haley supporters to rejoin the group.
“Republicans who voted for Haley are curious about voting for Biden. We have a lot of important things to talk about,” a Biden campaign adviser in Pennsylvania told NBC News. “We will have honest, robust organizing efforts and candid conversations with voters who may not agree with us on every issue, but agree with us on the fact that America is a democracy and we can continue to hold values that unite us, not let any aspiring dictator throw it all away.”
According to a Biden official, the campaign is also developing its recent signing of Austin Weatherfordwho served as chief of staff to former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ky., as his national director of Republican engagement, planning an outreach program aimed at Republican voters as the general election campaign heats up.
In addition to paid staffers, the campaign also points to grassroots efforts to turn Republican voters to Biden, enlisting the help of groups like the “Haley Voters Working Group,” a group of Republicans who supported Haley in the primaries.
“We will communicate directly with these voters, ‘early and often,’ as they say, and we will provide them with the messages that we believe will get them over this last hurdle,” said an official with the Haley Voters Working Group. tells NBC News. “We’re not trying to make them Democrats. What we need to do is have them say that the things I don’t like about Donald Trump and the things that lead me to vote against him in the Republican primaries are actually important enough for me to take tough action. see the vote for the only practical alternative route.”
Looking for a third option
But for Dave Langdon, an Erie County voter who supported Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020, “nothing” could get him to vote for either candidate again in 2024. From now on, he plans to write in Haley on November vote.
“I assumed Biden would be much more moderate than he is. But when he took office, he became far left,” Langdon said. “And I was actually happy with what Trump did. I was happy with his policies. It’s just the excess crap that came with it.”
Langdon said he believes many of his neighbors who are skeptical of Trump will ultimately vote for him, citing inflation and immigration as the reasons.
“There are a lot of people who don’t like Trump, but they are right-wing and they have to vote for him because they won’t vote for Biden,” he said.
Dan, who spoke to NBC News at a restaurant in Erie and also declined to give his last name for fear of backlash, is one of those voters. He supported Haley in the primaries but is already resigned to voting for Trump this fall, saying he can’t bring himself to vote for a Democrat.
“I voted for Haley because I’m fed up with the chaos. But as a Republican, I simply cannot vote for Biden. I trust Trump’s policies more,” he said.
Trump’s campaign counts on more voters like him.
“The Biden team is focused on the process because Crooked Joe is weak, failed and dishonest. The American people implore you to focus on strengthening the economy, reducing costs, closing borders, and unleashing American energy. That’s why they will end up electing President Donald J. Trump in November,” a campaign official said in a statement to NBC News.
Still, local political scientist Jeffrey Bloodworth of Gannon University said there is a broader shift occurring among voters, both in Pennsylvania and other key states. While Democrats won over white suburban and college-educated voters during the Trump era, the Republican Party has made inroads with white working-class voters as well as black and Latino voters.
“What Donald Trump bequeathed to the Republican Party is to rethink what it means to be conservative, what it means to be Republican. And people are having to let go of an enduring personal identity,” he adds. “This isn’t your mom or dad’s Republican Party, and some people don’t feel at home anymore.”
This change in coalition is evident among voters like Gensheimer, who said that women in her social group are “silent Biden voters.”
“We don’t want to talk about it, but we’re all going to vote for Joe Biden,” she said. “I don’t think women like being grabbed by the pussy. And that’s what we talk about, if one of our husbands went and did that to one of us, there would be hell to pay. And we had a president who joked about all these things. And then there are a lot of women who may not, may not say it as openly or discuss it because it might get heated, but they will vote for Joe Biden.”
“The Republican Party as I knew it is dead,” Speicher said. “I’m just not sure where I’m going next.”
They know what they will do with the lost signal.
“We’re going to get a Biden signal,” Speicher said.
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
