Trump campaign zeroes in on Lehigh County — including Allentown, home to 34,000 Puerto Ricans

ALLENTOWN — Former President Donald Trump’s campaign this week is zeroing in on the Lehigh Valley, home to one of the largest Latino populations in the state, shortly after a comedian’s comments about Puerto Rico at a Sunday rally drew national outrage.

Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., appeared in Lehigh County on Monday, hosting a get-out-the-vote event in Allentown and speaking at a sporting club about eight miles outside the city, where he urged supporters to call their friends and bring them to the polls. On Tuesday, Trump himself will hold a rally at a sports arena in the heart of Allentown.

The appearance will be the former president’s first major Pennsylvania event since several speakers at a Sunday rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden drew condemnation from Republicans and Democrats alike. Most notably during the Sunday rally, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made multiple racist remarks targeted toward Latinos and Black people, including referring to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”

Allentown is the third-largest city in Pennsylvania behind Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. It’s a majority Latino city and home to 34,000 Puerto Ricans — the eighth-largest Puerto Rican community in America. It’s one of several Pennsylvania cities where Republicans have hoped that growing support for Trump can help deliver him battleground Pennsylvania, as polling shows Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris in a dead heat in the lead-up to an election likely to be decided by margins.

» READ MORE: Growing support for Donald Trump in majority-Latino cities like Reading could help him win Pa.

A Trump campaign spokesperson on Sunday attempted to distance the former president from Hinchcliffe’s crude jokes about Latinos, saying they don’t “reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.” However, clips of the remarks rocketed around social media as prominent Puerto Ricans shared them in disgust, and Latin music superstar Bad Bunny signaled his support for Harris moments after the rally.

Trump supporters in Allentown on Monday afternoon largely said they either hadn’t heard about the comments or thought the Trump campaign handled the situation well by distancing itself from it.

Marcia Smith, who is Afro-Latina and appeared outside the PPL Center arena Monday to greet Trump Jr., said remarks about demographic groups are “so inappropriate,” but she said the stakes of the election are bigger than a single speaker at a campaign rally.

Smith said she is a Christian and feels Democrats have threatened freedom of religion — and she looks forward to voting for Trump a third time.

“If we continue on this trajectory,” she said of President Joe Biden’s administration, “we will no longer have an America.”

In a speech to supporters Monday evening at a sporting clays range outside Allentown, the younger Trump also spoke about the election in existential terms, casting his father as a figure who “embodies the American spirit.”

He attacked institutions and officials, including the news media, Big Tech, military generals who have “gone so woke,” and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for his support of Ukraine. He said that Harris is responsible for a “cost-of-living crisis” and that the government has censored Americans with conservative views.

“The people who’ve been calling you the Nazis and the fascists and stuff like that?” Trump Jr. said. “They’re the ones that are actually taking the fascist playbook and running with it.”

He didn’t address the controversial remarks made at Madison Square Garden.

However, several top Republicans strongly denounced the jokes, and Harris’ campaign seized on them. In comments to reporters, Harris pointed to her own commitment to help improve economic opportunity for residents of Puerto Rico, which she announced while campaigning in Philadelphia on Sunday.

Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerk, a Democrat who supports Harris for president and is the city’s first Latino mayor, said Hinchcliffe’s comments at the rally were just the “latest indignity,” citing the Trump administration’s response to Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico in 2017. A federal investigation found that the administration withheld or delayed congressionally approved relief to the island.

Tuerk said the comments made Sunday would motivate Allentown residents to vote against Trump.

“I’m upset the Trump campaign would allow comments like that prior to making a visit to one of the largest Puerto Rican communities in the United States outside of the island,” Tuerk said. “But Allentown residents are good people, and we know how to turn anger into action.”

» READ MORE: Puerto Rican leaders in Philadelphia slam Trump campaign for racist remarks: ‘It woke us up’

Republicans see a potential opening for growth in Lehigh County. In 2020, Biden captured about 53% of the vote in the county, gathering 14,000 more votes than Trump. In 2016, former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton won the county over Trump by a smaller margin of 7,600 votes.

But Trump increased his vote share in the city of Allentown itself, garnering 2,400 votes more in 2020 than he did in 2016. And while Biden still won the city handily, Trump grew his vote total by just 500 more votes there than Clinton did four years prior. That trend is in line with two other majority Latino Pennsylvania cities — Reading and Hazleton — where Trump saw some growth in 2020.

Joe Vichot, chair of the Lehigh County Republican Party, said one of the GOP’s mistakes in the past was assuming that Allentown was a solidly blue area and writing it off as a loss. He said that since 2020, and especially over the last year, there’s been a noticeable openness to Trump among diverse communities.

“I have no illusions. I don’t think we’re going to win Allentown all of sudden,” he said. “But this is incremental, and that’s what we really need.”

Support among Latino voters is key to those efforts. At the younger Trump’s appearance in Allentown on Monday, several attendees held “Latinas for Trump” signs.

One was Marcia Heras, 49, of Allentown, who is originally from Ecuador. She hadn’t heard much about the controversial comments at the former president’s rally Sunday night and said she plans to vote for him because she feels the Republican Party is more aligned with her position on abortion and is stronger on the economy.

“The most important thing,” she said, “is family values.”