The Kamala Harris CNN Town Hall in Delaware County, PA showed us that she embodies the gritty, tough-as-nails county
Kamala Harris took questions from voters during a CNN Town Hall in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Nicknamed “Delco,” a county that borders Philadelphia, Delconians proudly embrace the bare knuckle and hardscrabble reputation that people across the United States have come to know in part through the HBO hit TV series “Mare of Easttown.”
As someone who was born and raised in Delaware County, I know its character a bit more intimately starting with stories told to me as a kid by my family. I recall at about age seven, my grandfather, who worked at the local Westinghouse Plant, telling a story about how someone tried to rob him after work one day. My grandfather punched the bum, and the guy took off without a dime. I remember my dad, who was a shipbuilder at Sun Ship, a shipyard that was about two miles down the road from Westinghouse, telling me about a ship he was helping to build that had a giant crane that would extend to the ocean floor. At the time, everyone was told that eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes was having the ship built to go after sunken treasure. However, the ship was being built to try and raise a crashed Russian submarine to exploit its technology.
I also remember my dad, who smoked until the day he passed, saying to me back in the late 1980’s that he was “driving around the other day” and thought to himself, “how lucky I am to have been born here.” And for added emphasis, he repeated, “how lucky I am.” That quote will always stay with me, not just because it further displayed my dad’s love of country which was already evident given his eight years of service in the Marines, but because those words could be said by almost anyone from Delaware County.
Folks from Delco don’t care if you’re rich or poor; they don’t care what college you went to or even if you went to college; they don’t care about your six-figure salary, but what they do care about is how you treat others. Are you willing to help a neighbor in need? Are you willing to help shovel the snow off someone’s car? Are you willing to buy a round? Are you willing to stand up to a bully punk? And, perhaps most importantly, are you willing to hold the door open for the person behind you at the local Wawa convenience store? It’s a thing. They may even ask like Kamala often did as a prosecutor, “are you ok?” These are the people from “Delco.” These are the ones that through the drudgery of daily life and small acts of kindness would also say, “how lucky I am to have been born here.” And they would mean, not only the United States but also Delaware County.
I say this as although I don’t know Kamala, I attended public school with kids like Kamala. Whether male or female, black, white, Latino, Hispanic, Asian, etc., those from Delaware County don’t stand on pretense. They know where they come from and will use that to their advantage in working to right a wrong through grit, determination and empathy. Kamala has those qualities. It’s so apparent. The other guy, not so much. We know the stories about Trump or at least we should by now, so you will not find them here. But I will say that to stiff construction workers for work done on his casinos, some of whom still live in Delaware County and across Pennsylvania, is a disservice to folks like my grandfather and father, and those individuals, perhaps just like you, who are working their tails off to provide a path forward for their families. And oh yes, lending a helping hand to a neighbor or friend when it’s needed most.
Kamala will work to provide that path forward, including cutting taxes for small businesses and individuals making under 400k annually, establishing an annual child tax credit of 6k and providing in home care for seniors, thus helping to reduce the burden on caregivers, particularly those in the sandwich generation.
For those reasons, and many others, Kamala gets this Delconian’s vote for President of the United States! I hope you will consider casting your vote for Kamala as well.
