Doylestown Republicans rally for Trump in the wake of assassination attempt

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A week after the attempt to assassinate former President Donald Trump, more than 50 supporters of the Republican presidential nominee gathered in Doylestown, Bucks County, to wave flags and signs along PA-611.

Ed Sheppard, chair of communications for the Doylestown Republican Committee, started organizing the event hours after the shooting at the rally in Butler, Pa. which left one person dead and two critically wounded.

“As soon as we saw him get up and raise his fist, we saw that as a call to action,” he said. “That moment I think crystallized for a lot of Republicans exactly how hard he’s fighting for us. And we now have to fight just as hard for him.”

Passing cars honked at the rally goers. Susan Deacon, 74, of Bensalem, waved a pink flag which read “Women for Trump.”

Deacon said she supports the former president because she “wants the dollar to be strong again” and wants him to drill for oil, stop illegal immigration and increase manufacturing in the U.S.

Shannon Duffy, 30, also of Bensalem, said she became a Trump supporter while living in Portland, Oregon. Cost of living is one of her top concerns.

“A lot of people can’t even have kids because both parents have to work and so people choose not to have kids,” she said. “So I think [about] having a better cost of living, more family values in the country, supporting families.”

Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday, along with his choice of Ohio Sen J.D. Vance as his running mate, has reinforced his campaign platform and strengthened his supporters’ belief in his plans for the country ahead of November’s elections.

Sheppard and other organizers planned to register voters at the Doylestown Car Show on Saturday evening. He said they are just 112 voter registrations away from flipping the county red. Many of those changes have come from Democrats in Bucks County changing their party affiliation to register instead as Republicans.

“It’s folks who are just like, ‘They promised me a better economic situation.’ They say that they’re for the working people. The Democrats aren’t,” he said. “We’re the only ones who care about the folks trying to pay their grocery bills.”

Both parties have focused their campaigns on Bucks County, one of the most sharply divided counties in the key swing state of Pennsylvania. In 2020, Biden won the county with 51.7% of the vote to Trump’s 47.3%. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton also eked out a victory over Trump in Bucks in the 2016 elections, taking 48.4% of the vote compared to 47.8% of the vote for Trump.

Audrey Strein, a Jamison resident and Warwick Republican Committee member, said Republican organizers expect to win in November by encouraging people to utilize mail-in voting, a voting option which Trump has falsely claimed is unreliable.

“As much as we don’t like it, if we want to get rid of it, you’ve got to use that process,” she said, noting that organizers are working to encourage people to “have confidence” in mail-in voting.

Local Democrats have remained steadfast in their support of Biden, even as questions continue concerning whether he should step aside as the party’s nominee.

“We have a responsibility as leaders to continue to demonstrate why President Biden is the right guy for the job,” Montgomery County Commissioner Jamila Winder said Thursday. “I spend my time really helping to educate voters, helping to be empathetic to those concerns, but then also giving the cold hard facts about what a four years would look like with Donald Trump versus President Biden.”