POLITICO Nightly: Here’s where Pennsylvania gets decided

By Charlie Mahtesian Vice President Kamala Harris arrives at Philadelphia International Airport today. | Andrew Harnik/Getty Images ALL EYES ON DELCO — Even if you don’t plan to watch tonight’s CNN town hall with Kamala Harris, pay close attention to where it’s being held: Delaware County, Pennsylvania. There’s a good chance this is where the presidential election will be won and lost. Not in Delco alone (no native calls it Delaware County), but there and in the other three collar counties that surround Philadelphia. Without a big performance out of these suburban behemoths, Harris has little chance of winning this year’s essential battleground state. Pennsylvania is marked by a number of distinctive and politically important regions, in addition to the two big cities that bookend the state, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. But Delaware, Bucks, Chester and Montgomery counties constitute a force of their own — together, they form a powerhouse that has remade state politics over the last three decades. Viewed through Pennsylvania’s east-west cultural lens, the four counties are WaWa and Eagles country (never Sheetz or the Steelers). They’re firmly East Coast in temperament and look to the Acela Corridor, not westward. Among Pennsylvania’s 67 counties, they are among the most affluent and most highly educated. With more than 2.6 million in population, these four suburbs are larger than Pittsburgh and Philly combined and more populous than 15 states. They made all the difference in 2020, when they powered Biden’s flip of Pennsylvania. The president fell short of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 performance in the Democratic stronghold of Philadelphia, which could have had fatal consequences for his campaign. But Biden made up for it with his huge margins outside city limits. He ran ahead of Clinton’s pace in all four suburban counties, squeezing roughly 105,000 more votes out of Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery than Clinton did. In a state where Biden’s margin of victory was just 82,000 votes, they delivered more than enough to overcome his heavy deficits elsewhere in the state, in places like western Pennsylvania and the so-called Republican T (the central part of the state and its northern tier of counties). As recently as the early 1990s, the idea of a suburban Democratic fortress outside Philadelphia might have seemed implausible. All four counties are ancestrally Republican, the foundation of Republican strength in Pennsylvania. Delaware County, in particular, had for decades been home to a nationally renowned GOP machine, led by a political boss John McClure, who was once referred to as the Boy King. Delco, which boomed in population in the post-World War II era, was important enough in the 1960 presidential election that Richard Nixon detoured a campaign motorcade so he could visit McClure at his mansion. The 1992 election marked a turning point. Bucks, Delaware and Montgomery voted for Bill Clinton and haven’t looked back since. Chester County joined them in 2008. At the presidential level, the effect was calamitous for the GOP. Between 1952 and 1988, the Republican nominee won Pennsylvania in six of ten presidential elections. Since the Philly suburbs turned, however, Dems have won seven of the last eight. Today, Bucks is the only county where Trump has a shot of winning on Election Day. It remains more politically competitive than the other three. Yet even if Trump manages to flip Bucks, he’ll still have to contend with the gauntlet of Chester, Delaware and Montgomery, all of which rejected Trump by bigger margins in 2020 than in 2016, and also voted against his endorsed candidates for governor and Senate in 2022. Montgomery County, the third-most populous in the state and home to popular Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, looms as a particular problem — it’s a poster child for the suburban resistance of the Trump era. In 2008, Rick Davis, John McCain’s campaign manager, laid out the political calculus of Pennsylvania at the time. “If you can figure out what I’m going to lose [Philadelphia] by,” Davis said, “you’ll know if I can win Pennsylvania.” That’s still true, to some extent — Harris does need a big win the state’s biggest city. But with Philadelphia’s Democratic margins progressively shrinking since 2012, the more useful fact to know might be the margin that Trump loses by in the Philly suburbs. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at cmahtesian@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @PoliticoCharlie.   What'd I Miss? — Influence campaigns from Iran, China, Russia ramping up ahead of elections, Microsoft finds: Iranian hackers are gearing up for a potentially major influence operation ahead of the U.S. elections , running parallel to increased election interference efforts from China and Russia, Microsoft said in a report released today. The findings corroborate other recent reports from cyber firms and officials that point to months of foreign influence efforts aimed at swaying the U.S. elections. It also indicates that Iran is continuing to stay heavily engaged in this space following early hack and leak operations. — Judge’s ultimatum forces deal to shelve subpoena fight in House GOP probe of Hunter Biden: A highly unusual ultimatum from a frustrated judge caused House GOP investigators to postpone their demand for testimony from two Justice Department tax attorneys in a probe of Hunter Biden’s finances. The deal was struck today just after U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes threatened to order Attorney General Merrick Garland and House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to show up next week in her Washington courtroom for legal arguments on the dispute. — Justice Department has a warning for Elon Musk over voter sweepstakes: A political action committee running Elon Musk’s controversial sweepstakes offering million-dollar prizes to registered voters in swing states has received a warning from the Justice Department that the unusual incentive may violate federal law, a person familiar with the message said. The head of DOJ’s Election Crimes Branch, Robert Heberle, sent a letter Monday to an attorney for America PAC cautioning that the giveaway could violate a federal law against paying anyone to vote or register to vote, said the person, who was granted anonymity to discuss a letter that has not been publicly released. Nightly Road to 2024 HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT — In North Carolina’s Mecklenburg County — the second largest county in the state and the highest concentration of Democratic votes — Democrats have put together a robust field operation aimed at juicing turnout. Recently, POLITICO reported on the ground from Mecklenburg County to check out the contours of their effort, what conversations with voters look like and why the county could help to flip the state into Harris’ column. It could. But it’s still a hard and heavy lift — and one that Hurricane Helene has made even more complicated. BRO-AMERICANS — At “Flagstock,” a music festival organized over Labor Day for the frat brothers who formed a protective ring around the American flag amidst protests in North Carolina in the spring, the VIP tent included 25 beer pong tables, catered Hooters wings and a pair of ice luges. It was an event for men, by men, to honor men — or, at least, a certain kind of man. But it also explained a lot about politics in North Carolina and America today. ‘WANTS UNCHECKED POWER’ — Kamala Harris responded today to Donald Trump’s former top aide’s assertion that he is a “fascist” who said Adolf “Hitler did some good things,” accusing the former president of hoping to wield the U.S. military for his own “unchecked power.” “Donald Trump said that because he does not want a military that is loyal to the United States Constitution,” Harris said, delivering remarks in her official capacity from the vice presidential residence. “He wants a military that is loyal to him. He wants a military who will be loyal to him personally, one that will obey his orders, even when he tells them to break the law or abandon their oath to the Constitution of the United States.” CONSPIRACY THEORY RESURGENCE — Voting machines reversing votes. More voters registered than people eligible. Large numbers of noncitizens voting. With less than two weeks before Election Day, a resurgence in conspiracy theories and misinformation about voting is forcing state and local election officials to spend their time debunking rumors and explaining how elections are run at the same time they’re overseeing early voting and preparing for Nov. 5. AROUND THE WORLD British-U.S. journalist Clarissa Ward speaks during an award ceremony in Bayeux, northwestern France, on Oct. 12. | Lou Benoist/AFP via Getty Images CAPTURED — One of CNN’s most prominent foreign correspondents recounted today how she and her camera crew were detained by a Sudanese warlord for 48 hours during her reporting in the war-torn Darfur region earlier this month. In an article posted on CNN’s website, Clarissa Ward, the network’s chief international correspondent, said that her crew was headed to the town of Tawila, a northern Darfur settlement under the control of members of the Sudan Liberation Movement, where they hoped to report on the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the region. But when they arrived at an agreed-upon meeting spot in a neighboring town, Ward and her crew were confronted by members of a rival militia who fired rounds in the air, took their driver to the local jail and interrogated the journalist and the others in her party. They would be held for nearly two days by the militia in an open area before the group let them go, convinced they weren’t spies. They left Sudan shortly thereafter. NOT-SO-SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP — Keir Starmer was barely halfway through a flight to Samoa, en route to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, when a diplomatic row between the U.K. and U.S. that has been festering for a week exploded. The British Prime Minister’s Labour Party was formally accused by Donald Trump’s presidential election campaign of breaking U.S. electoral law through “blatant foreign interference” in the race. The Republican campaign submitted a legal complaint to the Federal Electoral Commission accusing the “far-left Labour Party” of meddling via its plan to send volunteers out to campaign for Democratic rival Kamala Harris. The complaint, which also targets the Harris campaign, centers on a now-deleted LinkedIn post from Labour’s Head of Operations Sofia Patel. Patel said in her LinkedIn post last week that she had nearly 100 “current (and former) party staff” ready to campaign for Harris in several swing states, and that there were 10 spots left for anyone who wanted to join them.     Nightly Number 3,000 The number of troops that North Korea has sent to Russia , to train at several locations and potentially fight in Ukraine, the United States confirmed today. RADAR SWEEP SWIPER, NO SWIPING — A man who left high school at the age of 15, without a degree of any sort in art history, is the foremost private recoverer of rare art in the world. Clifford Schorer III, a self-styled amateur art detective , is largely self-taught. But with a rare ability to find stolen or lost work in strange places, and with the help of a team of “runners” around the world trying to track down lost works, Schorer has successfully built a business tracking down art. How did he get to be, in many ways, better than the actual authorities tasked with addressing these crimes? In Vanity Fair, Adam Leith Gollner profiled Schorer and his fascinating life. Parting Image On this date in 1947: Actor Robert Montgomery tells House investigators of Hollywood communists or "reds" in Washington, in the midst of the red scare. He said that there are communists in the Screen Actors Guild but "Never, under any circumstances" have they succeeded in dominating the actors. | Byron Rollins/AP Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.     Follow us on Twitter Charlie Mahtesian @PoliticoCharlie Calder McHugh @calder_mchugh   Follow us

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