The 2025 PA Farm show runs from Jan. 3 to Jan. 11, 2025 (Commonwealth Media Services photo)
As the dust settles on the 2024 election and both political parties look ahead, the PA Farm Show offered some insights into what Democrats and Republicans in Pennsylvania are thinking about.
U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, a member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, gave the keynote address at the Penn Ag Democrats meeting on Saturday, while Pennsylvania Treasurer Stacy Garrity, who just won a second term in office, headlined the annual Republican meeting on Monday.
Mike Firestine, chair of the PA Ag Republicans said the GOP “could not have had a better election.” In Pennsylvania, that meant a GOP sweep of the row offices, adding two U.S. House members, and flipping one of the state’s U.S. Senate seats.
“I’m not going to stand up here and give people lectures… we all know what happened,” Fetterman told Democrats.
Garrity, a Bradford County resident, spent the bulk of her speech highlighting the work the Treasurer’s office has done during her first term, but also discussed the most recent election results.
“I’ve done it now five times, visited all 67 counties, and that’s why I really wasn’t surprised when Donald Trump won, because everywhere I went, you could feel that it was like 2016,” Garrity said. “It wasn’t so much like 2020.”
Firestine called Garrity, who received more votes than any candidate in Pennsylvania history, “our poster child.” During her campaign, Garrity attempted to walk back previous statements she made saying that “we know” Trump won in 2020.
Fetterman, wearing his usual hoodie and shorts, referred to the Democrats from rural areas as the experts and unsung heroes in the party “who lived this,” noting that many of them understood how Donald Trump would perform in rural areas.
“You live in parts of Pennsylvania that understand that Trump was going to come in strong and understand why we didn’t get the outcome that we wanted,” Fetterman said. “You guys probably have a better idea of all of that.”
Garrity pointed to U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick’s victory over three-term Democrat Bob Casey, calling it “fantastic.”
“When I was in DC, optimism was everywhere, which was such a refreshing change from the past four years,” Garrity said. She added that she was in Washington D.C. on Friday to celebrate McCormick’s swearing in.
“So we have a new president who knows how to get the job done, even though they’re throwing everything against the wall to make it difficult for him when he takes office. But I’m not, I’m not worried at all he’s going to get it done,” Garrity said.
Firestine, highlighting Trump’s victory, said the places he visited during the campaign made a difference, but also touted the ads they ran having a positive impact getting the vote out among Amish and Mennonites in Pennsylvania.
“I can report we spent a lot of money on this year’s election,” Firestine said. “We put several ads in the Lancaster Farming news, and they were excellent ads that we had put together. I never got more calls from the ads than I ever did. I mean, they caught everybody’s attention, and I really think that helped with the election.”
Todd Zimmerman, Chairman of the Schuylkill County Democratic Committee, said the national Democratic Party should have a permanent field organizer in each congressional district in all of the battleground states and also called for the party to launch a blue collar bus tour in the heartland.
Others in attendance said Democrats needed to focus more on rural areas in Pennsylvania, and suggested the party use billboards promoting a phone number so they can call and “get the facts” about the party.
One day after formally becoming the Democratic ranking member of the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture, U.S. Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN) also spoke at the Democratic gathering at the Pennsylvania Farm Show.
Craig offered a roadmap for how she believes Democrats can once again “win back the hearts and minds of rural communities across this country.”
“Folks, it’s hard, but it ain’t that hard. We have to show up. We have to shut up and listen to people, again, as Democrats and what they care about and what matters to their lives,” Craig said.
Craig said she represents one of the most evenly divided congressional districts in the nation. She said she secured another term in the U.S. House, in part, by outperforming in the rural communities throughout her district.
“We don’t have to win in rural communities,” Craig said. “We gotta lose by less.”
Craig made a pledge to those in attendance that Democrats would get “back out on the national Ag circuit,” including appearances on Farm Radio, Fox News, and podcasts where those communities are, which resulted in applause from attendees.
“We gotta go where they are,” Craig said. “And for God’s sake, this administration is going to give us plenty of opportunity to point out the error of the policy.”
While both parties discussed the importance of passing the Farm Bill, they differed on how they think it will look.
“With GT at the helm, working with our new president, I am very optimistic that we’re going to see a good farm bill enacted,” Garrity said, a reference to U.S. Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson (R-15th District).
Fetterman said he was hoping the Farm Bill would be finished in the previous session of Congress, but wasn’t surprised it was not.
“So now they have the majority and it’s going to change a lot, am I wrong?,” Fetterman said. “A lot of that might happen that I don’t support, or I’ll be sad to see some of those things, but my values aren’t going to change.”
“But I’m going to try to make sure that there’s a lot we can work on together,” he added.
Craig and Thompson, who spent time together on Saturday at the Pennsylvania Farm Show for a listening session, will play a prominent role in the negotiation of the next Farm Bill. She told attendees that if Republicans want a Farm Bill with their four seat majority, “it is going to have to be a bipartisan Farm Bill.”
Craig said it was “devastating” for the House’s Democratic congressional caucus to lose U.S. Reps. Matt Cartwright and Susan Wild, who both lost in November.
One of the lone bright spots for Democrats in Pennsylvania during the 2024 election happened in rural Cambria County with state Rep. Frank Burns (D-72nd District) winning reelection to maintain the party’s one seat majority in the state House, which was mentioned by Pennsylvania Democratic Party Chairman Sharif Street at the meeting.