News · Press Release

INQUIRER: Trump’s Strong Support In The Lehigh Valley And Northeast Pa. Is Splintering: ‘He Left Nothing For The Working Man’

Lehigh Valley and NEPA voters sound off on Ryan Mackenzie and Rob Bresnahan’s broken promises and failure to lower costs
New reporting today in The Philadelphia Inquirer features voices from across the Lehigh Valley and Northeastern Pennsylvania who are frustrated that Trump and Republicans in Congress like Ryan Mackenzie and Rob Bresnahan have failed to deliver on their promises to make life more affordable.

One Trump voter who is a nurse from Carbon County told the Inquirer she “plans to take her frustration out on U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie” by voting against him in November because “life is just more expensive.”

The Inquirer reports that this kind of “disillusionment could spell trouble for Pennsylvania Republicans as they look to hold onto two key swing congressional seats in this region in November.”

Read other key excerpts from the Inquirer below:
  • Scowling under a wool cap and a hood, Robert DeJesus stood in the bitter wind outside the Sunrise Diner in Allentown last week and confessed his “big mistake:” voting for President Donald Trump in 2024.
  • “The guy makes ‘cookie promises,’” said DeJesus, 57, a retired construction worker and independent voter from Allentown in Lehigh County. “They’re easy made and easy broken.”
  • Trump’s biggest gains in the state in 2024 were concentrated in the Lehigh Valley and in Northeastern Pennsylvania. But a year into his second presidency, there are signs that his winning coalition is splintering. In interviews across five counties in the region, some voters shared their disappointment with rising grocery prices and what they see as Trump’s failure to keep his commitments.
  • Even while hailing some of Trump’s policies, several Republicans interviewed said they were put off by his manner as well as his stance on key issues. That disillusionment could spell trouble for Pennsylvania Republicans as they look to hold onto two key swing congressional seats in this region in November.
  • Explaining his problems with Trump, DeJesus said the president pledged “but didn’t deliver” lower grocery prices. And at the same time DeJesus and his family are contending with “insane” supermarket costs, he said, Trump cut taxes for billionaires with the sweeping domestic policy packaged he signed last year. It’s made DeJesus feel overlooked and overwhelmed.
  • “He left nothing for the working man,” DeJesus said. “People say it’s good the price of gas went down under Trump. But how we have to live, with high food and high rent, makes no sense.”
  • Diana Kird, 58, a Republican who also pulled the lever for Trump, is experiencing buyer’s remorse much like DeJesus.
  • “I don’t know what we’re doing in Venezuela,” said the nurse from Lehighton in Carbon County as she stood outside a Giant supermarket in town. “We need to stop getting into foreign wars,” a promise Trump made and “ignored,” Kird added.
  • Kird said she has not seen Trump come through on his commitments. “He’s wash-rinse-repeat for me,” she said, “saying the same things over again,” such as promising cheaper groceries, “yet doing nothing.”
  • Trump won’t be on the ballot this year, but Kird plans to take her frustration out on U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, the freshman Republican who won the Lehigh Valley seat by a single point.
  • Bresnahan’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
  • […] Ultimately, Kird, the Lehighton voter, concluded before she entered her Giant supermarket that the good times the president assured Americans they’d see have yet to materialize.
  • “Life is just more expensive under Trump,” she said.

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