Suburbs of small cities like Harrisburg are shifting blue -- and could help Kamala Harris win Pa.

LOWER ALLEN, Pa. — Joseph Swartz began identifying himself as a disaffected Republican in 2008, over what he saw as a more adversarial Sarah Palin-esque brand of GOP politics.

Come 2016, Swartz voted for Hillary Clinton — the first time he ever supported a Democratic presidential candidate.

Soon after, he left the party altogether.

“I didn’t feel good about having to do, you know, sort of, logical gymnastics in order to explain how voting for Republicans is consistent with my Christian faith,” said Swartz, 37. “… I started getting tired of it, and that culminated with leaving the party in 2017.”

Last year, he was the first Democrat elected in nearly two decades to the five-member board of commissioners in Lower Allen, a suburban town of about 20,000 people just south of Harrisburg in Cumberland County.

The township is narrowly divided in national elections, and has shifted left but stayed shy of flipping Democratic.

Former President Donald Trump won Lower Allen by more than 1,000 votes in 2016, but by only 129 votes in 2020. Those Democratic gains reflect a shift in suburbs of small cities across the state that have long been solidly red. The Philadelphia suburbs have gained attention for becoming increasingly Democratic in recent years and helping President Joe Biden win in 2020, but an Inquirer analysis of election results shows that smaller cities’ suburbs are also key to either party’s chances of winning the White House in November.

While Trump is still favored to win Cumberland County, which is majority Republican and largely rural and suburban, Vice President Kamala Harris’ ability to continue her party’s gains in areas like Lower Allen will be a critical factor to watch.

And Democrats like Swartz are hopeful about their chances.

“The ideological shift might be happening more rapidly than I think we were expecting,” Swartz said.

Democrats hope to make inroads in Cumberland County

The Republican Party still has a strong presence in the Harrisburg area.

West of Lower Allen, Trump signs are prominently displayed in downtown Carlisle, the county seat, including outside the county Republican committee headquarters.

At the nearby Democratic headquarters, residents walked in on a recent Monday afternoon to put their names on a list for Harris-Walz lawn signs, which had not yet arrived. Party officials are hoping to mobilize their base — and attract independents and persuadable Republicans.

“We often say to voters, ‘This isn’t your father’s Republican Party,’” said Matt Roan, chair of the Cumberland County Democratic Committee.

Roan said the county party is also focused on down-ballot races like Democrat Janelle Stelson’s effort to unseat U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, and a state House race in which Democrat Sara Agerton is challenging Republican State Rep. Sheryl Delozier. And he hopes Harris can improve on Biden’s 2020 performance in the county.

“Kamala Harris may not win Cumberland County, but if she loses by five instead of 10, it’s going to go a long way towards delivering Pennsylvania for the Democratic ticket,” he said.

But Democrats will face an uphill battle in the county, as Republicans still strongly outnumber Democrats in voter registration, 81,000 to 55,000.

Frank Hancock, 73, has lived in Carlisle for almost 30 years and said he agrees with Trump about “almost everything.” Hancock, a veteran, even spoke at the former president’s Harrisburg rally in July.

He said he thinks the Democratic shift will reverse this year because of the cost of living, and criticized Harris for not discussing policy specifics at the Democratic National Convention.

“Take a look at what they said, and it was primarily, you know, ‘we’re going to have joy and hope,’ which is fine, except there ain’t no joy or hope out here,” he said.

Some suburban voters say they’re sick of Trump

Richard Schin, 74, a former Lower Allen Republican commissioner, said his complaints about Biden to people at the gas pump are typically well received.

“It’s just not uncommon for me to look over and say, ‘Do you ever think you’d be pumping your own gas and paying this kind of money? Thanks, Uncle Joe,’” he said. “You know, they go, ‘Agh, this is crazy.’ Maybe it’s because of the circles I run in, you know. They say, you know, white stallions run around with other palominos.”

Trump wasn’t Schin’s first choice. He voted for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in the primary, and noted Trump is “not an altar boy.”

But life was easier four years ago, he said.

“I just can’t not support him because he’s my only choice on the side that has done well by me,” he said.

Others in the area have pulled away from the Republican Party.

Mary O’Donnell of Upper Allen, which borders Lower Allen, said she always voted for Republicans because her parents supported the GOP. A teacher and a mother, O’Donnell, 83, didn’t pay much attention to politics. That changed with Trump.

O’Donnell had a bad impression of Trump in 2016, but her friend — a die-hard Trump supporter whom O’Donnell doesn’t see much these days — persuaded her to vote for him. In 2020, O’Donnell voted for Biden, and she plans on voting for Harris.

“I voted for Donald Trump the first time he ran, and it was very shortly after the election that I was regretting that I had voted for him,” she said. “He’s such a blowhard, he thinks he knows everything, and nobody else does anything right.”

Christine Rigling, 54, of neighboring New Cumberland, is also a former Trump voter. Rigling, who is married to the Lower Allen fire chief, said she and her husband both voted for Trump in 2016 even though they didn’t necessarily like him. They are now both Democrats and voted for Biden in 2020.

“We thought maybe he would listen to those surrounding him that were more educated and understood,” said Rigling, who works as a medical transcriptionist. “And it was not what happened.”

‘Republican like all my friends’

Dean Villone, 55, president of the Lower Allen Board of Commissioners, flipped the other way — he is a Republican who used to be a Democrat.

Villone grew up in a Democratic family, but changed his registration to run his first campaign in 2017 because he aligned better with Republican fiscal policy.

He declined to share how he voted in the last few presidential elections, or how he will vote this year.

He believes the Democratic shift in Lower Allen is the result of new people moving in and, potentially, older Republicans moving away to retire. He said he wouldn’t be surprised if Lower Allen eventually flips blue.

Villone said he stopped putting up lawn signs for national races after some constituents seemed uncomfortable with them. He described Lower Allen as a place where people generally tread lightly when it comes to politics.

“I think the people that are dug in on both sides that hate the other side so much are always going to get charged up,” he said. “But I think if you look at the bulk of the people — I think this group is growing — they’re just numb to it.”

On a sunny Tuesday evening, Seth Matson, 26, a field organizer for Agerton, the Democratic candidate for state representative, knocked on doors in a Lower Allen neighborhood. Most people didn’t answer their doors, and the neighborhood was quiet except for barking dogs. There were no lawn signs in sight.

Matson moved from a Democratic stronghold in California to the Harrisburg suburbs at age 9, attended Cedar Cliff High School in Lower Allen, and now lives in neighboring Lemoyne. In 2016, he founded a young Democrats club at the high school, and there were only three members. At the end of last school year, there were seven.

“If I didn’t have my own set of beliefs that I made pretty early on, I would have been Republican like all my friends,” he said.