What do voters in suburban Pittsburgh make of the new presidential campaign?

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

A MORNING EDITION team has been around Pittsburgh this week, where we are listening to voters make up their minds. We've been knocking on doors...

(SOUNDBITE OF KNOCKING)

INSKEEP: ...To hear how people in a swing state have responded to so much news in the presidential campaign, including President Biden's withdrawal.

Hey, good afternoon.

ALAN DERUSSO: How you doing?

INSKEEP: Hi. My name's Steve. I'm a reporter for NPR.

One of the people we met was Alan DeRusso, a retired police chief. He has a giant, faded Let's Go Brandon banner on his porch, mocking Joe Biden.

INSKEEP: What do your neighbors think about it?

DERUSSO: I really don't care.

INSKEEP: (Laughter).

DERUSSO: I mean, as a cop, I had to - you know, I couldn't do too much as a cop. But as I'm retired, I can do whatever I want now, you know?

INSKEEP: I mentioned that the sign is now out of date.

DERUSSO: Doesn't matter who's in office. It's the same policies.

INSKEEP: You think so?

DERUSSO: Oh, my God. Come on.

INSKEEP: He's a registered Democrat who says he can no longer stand the Democrats. And he ticked off his issues - inflation, trans kids in sports and border security, which he links to Vice President Harris.

DERUSSO: She's been there once for a drive-through. That was it. What's come through our border? Nobody knows.

INSKEEP: When it comes to former President Trump's felony convictions, the former police chief has concluded that Trump did nothing wrong.

If Trump wins, should he cancel his prosecution?

DERUSSO: I don't know how he can.

INSKEEP: Tell the Justice Department to withdraw the charges.

DERUSSO: Well, I think that there should be a full investigation as to why those charges were even pursued.

INSKEEP: If Alan DeRusso feels the same as he ever did, Sylvia Marco feels just as strongly the other way. We met her in a town called Sewickley, where she was helping to lay out the booths for a...

SYLVIA MARCO: Harvest festival. Between that going through my brain and the current events, my brain's a little scrambled.

INSKEEP: And when Harris became the likely Democratic nominee, Marco was thrilled.

S MARCO: I liked her. I liked her all along. Of course, I would love to see a woman president 'cause I was all in for Hillary Clinton.

INSKEEP: Do you think America is ready for a woman president now?

S MARCO: I didn't think they'd be ready for a Black person in my lifetime, so I think so. But, of course, she's also Black, so that's quite a switch. But now she can turn the tables on Trump and say he's too old. And I really think he has dementia symptoms, too.

INSKEEP: Really?

S MARCO: Oh, yeah.

INSKEEP: When you watch him on TV, you worry about him?

S MARCO: Yeah. Well, you know, I watch the late-night comics. And, of course, they're showing the worst of his things. But he says some things that are pretty bizarre.

INSKEEP: She gets news from a local paper and from CNN. Her husband has an additional source.

S MARCO: Sometimes he watches Fox.

INSKEEP: He was over talking in another part of the lot, and I suddenly wanted to meet him, too.

S MARCO: Bob, you got a couple of minutes?

INSKEEP: I just have one question for Bob.

S MARCO: Bob.

INSKEEP: Hi there.

We shook hands.

She thinks you're a little more conservative, maybe.

BOB MARCO: Yeah.

INSKEEP: Are you going to cancel out her vote?

B MARCO: Yeah.

INSKEEP: Yeah?

S MARCO: Oh, no.

B MARCO: No, I'm not. No, I'm not.

S MARCO: If he votes for Trump, he's being kicked out of the house.

B MARCO: No, I'm voting for Harris.

INSKEEP: He says he doesn't want a president who is a felon. Then another man in the parking lot spoke up and asked if I was Republican.

Am I Republican? I'm a journalist, so I keep my politics out of it. I'm actually registered independent in Washington, D.C. Yeah.

DENNY SHAY: I just wonder if you wanted to get another side of it.

INSKEEP: Denny Shay then gave another side of it.

SHAY: I think Kamala Harris is a loser. She never got one vote at all in the primary.

INSKEEP: He is friends with the Marcos. And as they talked, they tried to assure each other they would remain friends. By now, you're familiar with discussions like this. Most Americans know how they're going to vote, and they're tired of talking about it. But as the race has shifted in recent days, an NPR poll indicated larger numbers of people saying they are undecided. And we met one at a park near the airport. She had just taken her granddaughter to the playground, and they watched as a plane came in low for a landing.

CINDY RUNCO: Oh, no. Look at that one. Wow.

INSKEEP: The undecided voter's name is Cindy Runco.

RUNCO: I am a registered Republican, but I don't like the extreme right of the party. I'm a little frightened by Project 2025 and how that will influence or is influencing the party.

INSKEEP: That book of policy proposals by conservative think tanks includes language on abortion. It says, quote, "abortion is not health care." Runco spent 20 years in a Christian ministry and generally opposes abortion but feels it is sometimes medically necessary.

RUNCO: And God will judge me for that when the day comes.

INSKEEP: She wants a moderate position and also thinks Democrats veer too far to the left. As we talked, Runco suddenly swatted at something.

RUNCO: There's a...

INSKEEP: Whoops.

RUNCO: There's a lantern fly.

INSKEEP: Oh. Are they bad?

RUNCO: When you see them, you really want to kill them.

INSKEEP: Really, why is that?

RUNCO: They tell you.

INSKEEP: Oh, OK.

RUNCO: They're invasive. So even on the news, they told you to kill them.

INSKEEP: Other than the lantern flies, this is a nice place to live. It's called Moon Township, and the local park has a space theme with a rocket on the sign and a statue of an astronaut by the playground. Like many people we met here, Runco named few concerns about the community at all, though the country at large is a different matter.

RUNCO: I'm very concerned. I'm very concerned because we need to come together, not cause division, not be divided. That's part of Christianity, is loving one another.

INSKEEP: Is it hard for you to decide how to vote?

RUNCO: I'm right in the middle right now.

INSKEEP: Partly, it's the issues. Partly, it's her news consumption. She relies on more than one source.

RUNCO: I work out at Planet Fitness, and I can look at all networks to see who's bashing who, who's telling possibly the truth, who's playing up things. This was a lie. This was a lie - you know, all of that.

INSKEEP: The bank of TVs in the gym.

RUNCO: Yeah.

INSKEEP: That's great.

RUNCO: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I've got Fox, CNN. I've got NBC, I guess, whichever. The three networks...

INSKEEP: MSNBC. Yeah.

RUNCO: Yeah. So you can kind of listen to the rhetoric.

INSKEEP: She doesn't like the rhetoric of her party's presidential candidate.

RUNCO: Bullying and calling people names - that's not OK.

INSKEEP: But then she felt he seemed humble after his assassination attempt. And now there's one more factor in her indecision.

RUNCO: I'm concerned with Kamala, a woman, when you go up against somebody in the world like Putin and what's happening in China and some of those countries. I am concerned about that. I don't know that it's the right time. Running the country is one thing, but international affairs is a whole nother issue.

INSKEEP: She's not persuaded by the examples of women who have run other nations.

RUNCO: Because we are such a large, powerful country, it's not like if you had a woman in a smaller country. Now, I do consider, depending on who the VP is, if it's a strong man, that there might be enough.

INSKEEP: What if it's your governor? He's one of the people they're talking about.

RUNCO: I love Shapiro. I love Shapiro. I think he's fantastic.

INSKEEP: Runco's affection for Democratic governor Josh Shapiro makes her sound like a Democrat until she goes on to talk about border security like a Republican. She's stuck.

RUNCO: Yeah. I'm not happy with either candidate because the government is supposed to represent all people. And I think some of the values and things that you hear in the extreme right are not representing all people.

INSKEEP: She feels Trump could still lean toward the middle she prefers because he seems like a chameleon to her, and she doesn't know what will finally prompt her decision.

RUNCO: Now I'm just waiting.

INSKEEP: And watching the news as she works out at the gym. Election Day is just over 100 days away, and a few votes like hers may decide the result in this swing state of Pennsylvania. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.