In this special post-election wrap-up of Duty Free Lunch, we break down the latest election results and their impact on Pennsylvania's public education landscape. Aaron welcomes Dan Wiedemer and Sari Stevens from PSEA's Government Relations unit to discuss key issues from the Nov. 5 election, from voter turnout and demographic trends to the policy priorities that could shape our schools’ future. Tune in as we explore the path forward for educators and PSEA’s ongoing commitment to putting students and public schools first.
In this special post-election wrap-up of Duty Free Lunch, we break down the latest election results and their impact on Pennsylvania's public education landscape. Aaron welcomes Dan Wiedemer and Sari Stevens from PSEA's Government Relations unit to discuss key issues from the Nov. 5 election, from voter turnout and demographic trends to the policy priorities that could shape our schools’ future. Tune in as we explore the path forward for educators and PSEA’s ongoing commitment to putting students and public schools first.
Do you have some feedback for us? Send an email to podcast@psea.org.
Learn more and watch for upcoming episodes at psea.org/podcast.
Voiceover:
Welcome to Duty-Free Lunch, the official podcast of the Pennsylvania State Education Association. Join us as we unpack the issues that matter most to you. From cutting edge classroom strategies, to thought provoking policy discussions. If it impacts PSEA members, it's on the menu.
Aaron Chapin:
Hello, and welcome to Duty Free Lunch. I am PSEA President Aaron Chapin, and I am flying solo today because it is a very special Duty Free Lunch. As we're filming this, it's November 7th, 2024, and it's about 2:00 in the afternoon. It's just a couple days after election day. And we figured, what a great vehicle to get the information and breakdown from election day, other than using our podcast. So here we are. We are giving you the latest. But here's a little caveat, things could change since we're recording this at 2:00 in the afternoon on Thursday. So please, don't hold us to this. This is where we are right now at this moment in time. So I want to make something really clear though before we get started today. As we've talked about over and over at PSEA, we don't look across the street at the legislature with D's and R's.
We look at this as E's. It's always about education. So, when we're talking today, yeah, we're going to talk about some of the results from Thursday night, but we're going to be looking at what's at stake for our schools. How is PSEA going to be keeping education front and center in the policy conversation? What can educators and support staff expect as we move forward in the wake of this election? So I've got two guests with me today, because this isn't much fun doing by yourself. So, brought in two guests. Maybe some of you are familiar with them. They're going to help make some sense of all this. We've got our resident political guru, and he calls himself now the Tom Hanks of Duty Free Lunch. It's your fourth visit, I believe. We've got the Assistant Executive Director for Government Relations, Dan Wiedemer. Hi, Dan.
Dan Wiedemer:
Thank you for having me back.
Aaron Chapin:
Well, we didn't have much choice. This is an election topic. I was going to ask Jim Vaughn, but not a good idea. He's all depressed today anyway.
Dan Wiedemer:
Hey, number four, you just keep my street going with the guest appearances and I'll be happy.
Aaron Chapin:
Well, and you brought another one of the gurus from the government relations team. We've got Sari Stevens, who's the Assistant Director of Government Relations. How are you doing Sari?
Sari Stevens:
I'm doing okay.
Aaron Chapin:
And welcome to the podcast. This is your first time.
Sari Stevens:
It is.
Aaron Chapin:
Are you excited?
Sari Stevens:
What a moment.
Aaron Chapin:
It's probably the best moment of the week for you. All right, so welcome back, Dan.
Sari Stevens:
Low bar, low bar.
Aaron Chapin:
Low bar? Well, there's some wins. We'll talk about it though. But welcome, Dan, welcome Sari. We're glad you could be here, because a lot of our members want to know where we're going after this election. They're trying to make sense of it all. So let's just jump right into it. So big picture, what the heck happened on Tuesday? I don't think a lot of us were expecting this in Pennsylvania. And how did we end up with such a strong Republican showing across the board, Dan?
Dan Wiedemer:
Well, I think I'm going to start out big picture, and then I would ask Sari to jump in and share details. Sari is our Political Director in Government Relations, so she has her finger on the pulse of this probably more than anybody. And let's just start here. We knew this was going to be a tough close race, particularly in Pennsylvania. We had the polls at 50/50. We knew there were challenges economically, there were challenges with Joe Biden's approval rating, and Kamala Harris was going to bring forth all of that baggage and then some, frankly, in Pennsylvania. But I will say, and Sari, this is where I would like you to correct me if I'm wrong, or maybe expound on it a little.
I think what really surprised us were some of the demographic drivers that made this such a massive red wave in Pennsylvania. We saw 90% of our precincts move rightward from 2020 to 2024. We saw young men 18 to 29 vote for Donald Trump. The first time in history that a younger generation has voted more conservative than the generation that preceded it. We saw Hispanic voters have 20, 30, 40 point swings in favor of Donald Trump as opposed to Joe Biden. So we saw a really dramatic rightward shift, and critical components of this electorate, and there's a lot to figure out there, right, Sari?
Sari Stevens:
Yeah, absolutely. And I guess, I keep coming back to the idea that fear really trumps all other motivation factors. I was just looking, we don't have accurate polling post-election, because it's been however many hours that it's been. But I was just looking at some exit polls from the Associated Press. And I was really struck by a few stats that I just wanted to read out. So, 6 in 10 voters rated Trump as not honest and trustworthy, but 1 in 10 of those voted for him anyway. 3 in 10 voters want to see the entire government upheaval and changes in government in a way that we've never seen before. Half of those voters were seriously concerned by authoritarianism, and 1 in 10 of those voted for them anyway. So they were willing to put aside their concerns out of fear over the economy, and I guess we could say the betterment of their family, and that was a deciding factor.
Aaron Chapin:
So a lot of changes, things we've never really seen before when it comes to elections. And obviously President-elect Trump now is the big headline here. But we've got other races as well, but we've got other races as well, like Senator Casey's race. Again, we're recording this in the 2:00 hour on Thursday, so a lot can change by the time this is actually released. So, maybe you can kind of give us an idea, where are we with this race, because it's razor-thin, Sari?
Sari Stevens:
Sure. So in Pennsylvania we had about 7 million voters cast ballots on Tuesday. And the difference between McCormick and Casey right now is 31,000 votes. And for listeners who are not familiar, in Pennsylvania we have what are called provisional ballots, and there's between 80 to a 100,000 of those that have not been counted. They'll start to be counted tomorrow on Friday. And the outcome of those provisional ballots is likely to determine the outcome of Senator Casey's race. And I think at this point it could really go either way. It's probably going to be decided by somewhere around 10,000 votes.
Aaron Chapin:
Chance for a recount then?
Sari Stevens:
It's going to be within the recount margin of 0.5% for statewide races. But a recount is very unlikely to see major changes. It's those very meticulous hand counting of provisional ballots that will decide the outcome of that race.
Aaron Chapin:
And so, of course we've got the one Senate seat that was up, but we had congressional seats that were up as well. And looks like there's a change of momentum in Pennsylvania, Dan, when it comes to some of these congressional seats.
Dan Wiedemer:
Yeah. So, we had Republicans pick up two congressional seats in Pennsylvania. One of the Democrats' greatest hopes was right here in the Harrisburg area, Janelle Stelson running against Scott Perry. She was probably the best equipped candidate in that race that Democrats could have hoped for. A newscaster with almost universal name ID, a woman, a terrific candidate. She is trailing by around 6000 votes right now. I'm not certain if it's been called. It seems like it would be extremely difficult for her to overcome that challenge. And I think that's one of these... So we see Trump performing where he performed in Pennsylvania. We have three Democrats running for row office that finished at 46 or 47%. So just circling back to Bob Casey, really remarkable. And there is a pathway, I don't think we want to make predictions for a podcast that will be saved forever, right?
Aaron Chapin:
Yes. Everybody for years to come we'll hear your bad product.
Dan Wiedemer:
Right. So we don't want to do that. But there is 100% a pathway that Bob Casey could win this election. Really remarkable if he could outperform Kamala Harris and the other Democrats throughout Pennsylvania by that margin.
Aaron Chapin:
Well, real quick we can touch on it. There were some other statewide elections, some row offices were going on. How did they break down, Dan, as well?
Dan Wiedemer:
If you were Republicans, it couldn't have been better. If you were Democrats an absolute disaster. I think this is the first time that we have seen such uniformity in those row offices in quite some time. Sari, you may know the exact figures. But I think every Democrat is right around 46.5, 46.7% or so. Nobody broke through. They were all washed in this red wave.
Aaron Chapin:
So it was just a down ballot, even though we don't have down ballot mode, people just went down the ballot, click, click, click, click, click. And that was them.
Sari Stevens:
Yeah. And if you're listening, and you live in Pennsylvania, you were bombarded by TV ads and mail, and digital advertising. And for statewide row offices, it's very, very hard to break through. So it's hard to distinguish themselves in such a crowded environment. And so, they got swept along with the presidency.
Aaron Chapin:
So, if you look at our state, and of course in Pennsylvania and PSEA world, we've got 11 geographic regions. Dan, Sari, can you tell us, was there any particular area of Pennsylvania where maybe the Republicans had stronger gains than others? Or maybe the Democrats did a little bit better? How would you break our state down?
Dan Wiedemer:
That's a tough one. We do something here at PSEA, where we do post-election polling. Where we talk to our voters and figure out where they were. I think one of the things that is going to be perhaps the biggest story when all is said and done, is just how strong Republican turnout was in areas outside of major cities. So, Democrats did pretty well in Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh, and Erie, and Lancaster, places where they wanted to hit their turnout numbers. But they were just swamped by Republican turnout in smaller towns, rural counties. I would guess that holds true in our PSEA regions as well. We're going to get to this momentarily I'm sure, President Chapin. The work though of this organization, and particularly PSEA regions and how they impacted state legislative races is staggering. And I think that's where we really see the difference.
Aaron Chapin:
Yeah. Sari, you talked a little bit about this, about the fear. But let's dive a little deeper into this. So, it looks like high inflation, the challenging economy really was cited as kind of being the biggest obstacle for Democrats to overcome. They just had a hard time breaking through that. So what impact, and either one of you can answer this, well, what impact do you think this economic anxiety had in the way Pennsylvania has casted their votes this November?
Sari Stevens:
Yeah. And, Dan, I've heard you say this really well. But, if you feel that you can't feed your family, you're unsure whether or not your job will be here next year, the cost of groceries is beyond what you're bringing in each week, it doesn't matter how distasteful the Republican candidate for a president is. You're going to vote with your pocketbook. And I also think that it's a brilliant but disgusting tactic to create fear in others. And Donald Trump is a master at that. So combined with economic anxiety, and the fear of people who don't necessarily look like you, that was a winning combination.
Dan Wiedemer:
And one of the things that we talked about at the start of this was, a big surprise election night, how young men 18 to 29 voted. And I think we look at these economic challenges. And it may not be jobs. Look, the job market is fine, the stock market is fine. But if you're 22, or 23, or 24 years old, that's probably not where your head is. You want to move out of your parents' house, you want to be able to afford rent. You want to think that you are at a point in life where your father, or your grandfather may have been at an equal age, and you're not seeing that. So I think these economic struggles are probably a little deeper than what many people anticipated. And they kind of get at the core of how people think of what their lives should be. So, that is something that's going to take a lot to sort of unwind and understand a bit more. But there is absolutely something there.
Aaron Chapin:
So, there's been a lot of dissecting of these results. But I think there's some silver linings for PSEA that we can take out of... It's hard, there's a lot. There were some recommended candidates that did not pull through like we had hoped, but I think there's some silver linings. And one of them is the Pennsylvania House. It seems as though at 2:00 on Thursday, it seems it might have a really good chance of remaining in Democratic hands. So, how significant is this, considering we've talked all about the victory by Trump, all of the row offices, how big of a deal is this?
Sari Stevens:
I mean, if you needed a better example of looking at Pennsylvania as a swing state, our State House has divided 101 Republicans to 102 Democrats. And currently as of Tuesday, Tuesday's results, we have 101 Republicans and 102 Democrats with one seat in the final stages of a hand count of the ballot. So, I think we can say confidently that regardless of the outcome of that race, we will see a pro-education, pro-labor speaker in the house. We have pro-education, pro-labor majority regardless of what happens. But we could not be more on the knife's edge as far as the breakdown of our partisan makeup.
Dan Wiedemer:
And Sari deserves enormous credit for this accomplishment. But so do the PSEA members in these regions, our officers, our folks, our Pace Board of Directors members. I can't express how hard it is to operate in an environment where 90% of our precincts were voting for Donald Trump at a higher clip in 2024 than they were in 2020. And you still hang on to every single recommended candidate. And by the way, that's Democrats and Republicans that we recommended, and we hung on to every single one of them. And the difference in our lives, and the lives of our members with a pro-public education majority house is so major.
And we saw such a great example of this over the past two years. A handful of votes meant the difference for us between dealing with school vouchers right now. That was one possible reality. The other possible reality which came to fruition, was an additional $1.2 billion in funding. So, what we were able to achieve at the State House level, and the work of PSEA members who knocked on tens of thousands of doors, made tens of thousands of phone calls for these candidates, is really a wonderful victory.
Aaron Chapin:
Yeah. I wanted to make sure that we emphasize just how hard... Some of our listeners may not be aware of just how much work goes into these elections for PSEA. We have PSEA in Pace. We don't just decree who should be recommended. This is a process, and it goes to all of our 11 geographic regions plus our ESP region. They have interviews, they go through this. And yes, Democrats and Republicans do get that recommendation. But the, that's just the beginning. Then we go out in our regions and we work to try and get these recommended candidates elected. You mentioned the phone calls. Just over the last two weeks, how many phone calls did we end up placing? Was it 50,000 or 70,000? It was a lot of phone calls. We had phone banks.
Dan Wiedemer:
We made 75,000 phone calls to PSEA members, PSEA members who volunteered for these recommended candidates. Again, both Democrats and Republicans, made probably an additional 30 or 40,000 phone calls. We had PSEA members who were fully embedded in a number of these campaigns.
Aaron Chapin:
That's right.
Dan Wiedemer:
Who volunteered 20 hours a week knocking on doors, because their voices as educators are so trusted, and that contact is so valuable. And I will tell you, right there is not a doubt in my mind that this majority comes down to the work of PSEA members, and public school employees going out and fighting for it.
Aaron Chapin:
Yeah. And we sent just as many postcards. We were knocking on doors since the start of the summer. We've had members doing so much for these candidates. And I think it really paid off in the end. Because as you said, Dan and Sari, the public, the Pennsylvania public trusts our educators and support staff and their opinions. And obviously as we see in all of these House and Senate races, it absolutely mattered. So, what does this mean then? Is there going to be gridlock with this divided government? Because this is what we've had basically for the last two years. Is it going to be a gridlock, or are we just going to continue doing what we're doing?
Sari Stevens:
I don't think it's too much of a change in the status quo. Let's imagine the scenario is, we end up with a Republican Senate, Democratic House, and Josh Shapiro as governor. That's the status quo for us. I think one point I wanted to make related to the State House districts, and also just going back to provisional ballots, is that, elections do not occur every four years. The county commissioners, many of which we've been involved in their races, were involved in throwing out and dismissing challenges to absentee and mail-in ballots just as early as two weeks ago. So, they played an important role in this election. But the ability to have a Democratic house, a pro-education majority house, goes back to the State Supreme Court voting and being involved in fair district lines. And so, we have races every single year, PSEA is secure every single year. And layer upon layer-
Dan Wiedemer:
School board coming up.
Sari Stevens:
School board coming up, yes, absolutely. So, every election matters. And some of these elections layer upon each other year after year, and have an impact in these big ballot, and these big races before.
Aaron Chapin:
And we're going to have to take a deep breath. Because as soon as January comes, it's school board elections. And we start prepping and working with a lot of locals across the state. I think we were working with what, over 100 last year? How many school local associations were we dealing with?
Dan Wiedemer:
Yeah. I think over 100, and one more than 70% of them. And I think that, if one of the lessons politicians, elected officials, are great at paying attention. They sniff the air, they know the impact that drove things this time. And there will be some degree of gridlock, I'm sure. But, I think people are going to recognize the power that PSEA flexed in this election, the role that we had in shaping a majority in the state legislature. And I think that is going to translate in positive ways for the next two years.
Aaron Chapin:
We're coming towards the end of our time shortly. I'm going to throw in a pop quiz question. It's usually a little more exciting than this, but, Jeff's not here, Rachel's not here. So it's going to be pop quiz time. And this is normally something we try to do in a quick manner. So, I know it's been less than 48 hours. What's your biggest takeaway, Sari from election night 2024? Biggest takeaway?
Sari Stevens:
Misogyny.
Aaron Chapin:
All right.
Sari Stevens:
Yeah.
Aaron Chapin:
Oh.
Sari Stevens:
I mean, the gender gap was about 26 points in Pennsylvania. That's a big number.
Aaron Chapin:
Dan?
Dan Wiedemer:
Can I give you a hot take?
Aaron Chapin:
Sure.
Dan Wiedemer:
And this is the hottest of the hot takes, because I'm looking forward. I'm looking all the way ahead. And my biggest takeaway is that, there was no bigger winner on Tuesday night than governor Josh Shapiro.
Aaron Chapin:
Oh, yeah? What-
Dan Wiedemer:
And I'm sure, look, he put a lot of work into making sure that Kamala Harris would be successful in Pennsylvania. So, I'm not going to speak on how he feels. I'm sure that was very difficult for him to be governor, and for us to lose this state. But 2028 will offer a potential pathway for a successful governor from a state that had turned red in 2024 that is a must win for Democrats in 2028. And let's just be honest, if you're doing your short list of potential Democratic nominees in 2028, Josh Shapiro has got to be at the top of it.
Aaron Chapin:
Wow. Already looking ahead. And we haven't even sworn in the next president.
Dan Wiedemer:
We got to do it.
Sari Stevens:
I texted my whole family, Shapiro/Vance, 2028.
Aaron Chapin:
Well, it's been quite a week. You never know how these elections are going to play out. That's why every vote really does matter. It's a long haul. And I know both of you and the rest of the team don't have long to sit around and think about this. Because as I said, we talked about, it's time to start thinking about 2025. And we've got elections coming up that are just as important to all of our members, and especially our students and communities. So we need to get ourselves ready for that. So, Dan, thanks again for coming in.
Dan Wiedemer:
Hey, thank you for having us. And by the way, it should be said, the role that you and the PSEA officers played in this election was a pretty significant cultural shift, in getting more engagement from folks in our organization. And I think without the leadership of the board of directors, of our officers, there was absolutely no chance we were going to be able to achieve what we did down ballot, and won those really incredibly difficult races to hang on to the House.
Aaron Chapin:
Well, that's generous. But I will echo the board of directors, PSEA's board of directors, as well as our Pace Board. Very instrumental in getting the kind of results that we needed to get on Tuesday. And again, there were some wins. There's some things, a lot of good things that have happened for PSEA. Sari, thank you for being here on the first time. We can't wait for you to come back again.
Sari Stevens:
Thanks for having me.
Aaron Chapin:
I bet you'll be happy to come back and maybe talk a little about school board elections.
Sari Stevens:
Absolutely.
Aaron Chapin:
Because as we said, they're just as important as all these other statewide glamorous ones, very important. So, can't wait to have you back. Again, that's all we have for time. Our guests have been Dan Wiedemer, Sari Stevens from our government relations team. And that's it for me. I'm your PSEA president, Aaron Chapin, and you've been listening to Duty Free Lunch. Thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in into this special episode. And if you have a little feedback, got some questions, and since I'm the only one here, if you want advice from me, I'm happy to give it. You just got to email us at podcast@psea.org. Thanks again for listening, and we'll talk to you soon. Bye for now.
Voiceover:
You've been listening to Duty Free Lunch with the Pennsylvania State Education Association. Visit psea.org/podcast to learn more. And don't forget to subscribe and share. Paid for by the Pennsylvania State Education Association.