Terri Rodnicki of Kiski Township worries about World War III breaking out. (Shane Dunlap | TribLive)
Story by
ALEXIS PAPALIA
JACK TROY
JUSTIN VELLUCCI
TribLive
Nov. 4, 2024
World War III. A crippled economy. Unbridled immigration.
Civil war, with American democracy in the crosshairs.
These are the apocalyptic scenarios preoccupying supporters of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
As election season enters its final hours of the 2024 race for the American presidency, Pennsylvanians find themselves balanced on a knife edge, worried to exhale.
They’re not alone.
Three-quarters of U.S. voters feel stressed about the nation’s future, a recent poll shows. About half fear that tallying votes could end in violence. Roughly the same number believe the election will end American democracy.
A wide range of Pennsylvanians — red, blue and purple; Black and white; young and old — say the months of attack ads, foreboding mailers and nonstop news coverage have taken a toll on their mental health and hope for the future.
In the week leading to Election Day, TribLive interviewed more than three dozen voters in Southwestern Pennsylvania amid the backdrops of their daily lives — from rural diners to suburban barber shops to a bustling Pittsburgh college campus.
When this race is over, voters will be left with psychological scars of an Election Year anxiety they haven’t felt in their lifetimes.
“There’s just so many emotions behind it,” said BethAnn Salinas, 41, of Freeport, a special education teacher who has turned to prayer to help her decide which presidential candidate should get her vote. “I’m just scared of the reaction it’s going to bring for either side.”
Americans’ nerves are clearly frayed.
“I’m seeing a lot of fear and anxiety over the election,” said Christy Nyakana, a therapist and clinical social worker based in Erie, who treats people from all over the state.
Election anxiety symptoms manifest in all sorts of ways: compulsive scrolling on social media, heartburn — even insomnia for voters over the thought of their preferred candidate losing.
“I haven’t had a night’s sleep in over a month — I’m losing sleep over it,” said Louise Bradley, 70, of McCandless, a retired telephone operator and registered Republican who plans to vote for Harris. “It wakes me up, and my head starts spinning.”
Some have simply unplugged.
“I’ve avoided listening to the news for a full year now, which I’ve never done,” said Jennifer Stewart, 45, as she wrote her Ph.D. dissertation at a coffee shop near her Greensburg home. “I’m noticing the weight of this election more than I ever have before.”
Stewart sat quietly in the White Rabbit Cafe and Pâtisserie in downtown Greensburg and worried aloud about Americans losing their faith in science.
The nurse practitioner saw what she dubbed “denialism” up close at Latrobe Hospital during the pandemic. Some patients, even those struggling to breathe, refused to accept that the covid-19 virus ravaging them was real.
“I believe public discourse creates our framing of reality, whether that’s discussion that climate change isn’t real or that covid isn’t real,” she said. “I think Trump furthered that. And I think that’s scary.”
Stewart, a registered Democrat backing Harris, admits she has grown more nervous this year talking about politics in public. The thought of door-knocking for Harris in her neighborhood scares her.
From May 2023 until this August, Stewart insulated herself from political noise by refusing to follow the news. Since returning to her feed, she anxiously — sometimes obsessively — checks websites that use polls to predict Electoral College scenarios.
The election, plainly put, is freaking her out.
Stewart first voted for president in 2000. She has never felt this level of election-year dread. When she talks about how 2024 is different, she cites YouTubeKids.
Stewart’s 5-year-old son came to her upset after he saw a clip on the children’s video app that showed a man shouting about immigrants eating their neighbors’ pets.
“I just don’t want him to be swept up in hatred,” she said.
Jamie Henderson says many men frequenting the Greensburg business he manages are nervous about what will happen Tuesday.
For some at Comrades barbershop, where conversation can feel as bold as the fire truck-red paint coating its walls, that presidential-race anxiety has bubbled over into anger.
Some plan — defiantly — to make protest votes or not vote at all, Henderson said.
The barbershop chatter doesn’t always revolve around inflation rates or policy, said Henderson, 55, of Greensburg.
At least once every few weeks, a customer lights the figurative powder keg and yells or shouts loudly in the shop about Trump or Harris.
“It’s crazy,” he said. “And I hear it on both sides.”
This being Westmoreland County, Henderson said Comrades’ clientele leans Republican. But men seeking haircuts are no electoral monolith.
“It’s different than the last election — right now, people are scared,” said Henderson, who started working at Comrades a decade ago. “Everybody’s preparing for the worst. Everybody’s buying ammunition.”
Henderson said he’s voting with his wallet. The lifelong Democrat, who backed President Joe Biden in 2020, now blames him for recent economic strain. He plans to support Trump this year.
When prices climbed in Westmoreland County after the covid-19 pandemic, Henderson’s family took cost-cutting measures. They started shopping at Aldi, a discount supermarket, after the pandemic. He said his wife began buying clothes from thrift shops. Together, they sold spare items on Facebook Marketplace for more spending money.
“Twenty dollars can’t get you anything anymore — $100 is the new $20,” Henderson said. “That’s the new normal.”
Nic Reinstein, a bartender living in McKeesport, fears a Trump electoral victory could carry dangerous implications for transgender people like them.
Will they have access to the testosterone treatment they use? Will their queer or nonbinary peers have the same civil rights as their non-LGBTQ+ ones?
“I’m terrified, absolutely,” said Reinstein, 35, who uses they/them pronouns. “I’m thinking, ‘What am I going to have to do if Trump wins this election? Are we going to be safe in this country? Honestly, are we going to be safe anywhere?’
“I just remember 2016 and being so confident that there’s no way this man could ever win. And then he did,” they added. “Now I’m just, like, ‘Is it going to happen again?’”
Reinstein, who is raising a 2-year-old toddler with their wife, frequently spends time scrolling the news. When they try to shut off the stream, the stress still feels inescapable.
“It just pops up constantly everywhere,” Reinstein said. “Notifications from news apps, Facebook, Instagram — it’s everywhere.”
Reinstein also worries a second Trump administration could lead to the possibility of the government separating trans people from their children.
“That is a big concern,” Reinstein said. “I don’t want to hide the fact that I’m trans. I don’t want to go back to any of that. I want to be who I am and not be persecuted for it.”
George Maier’s friends call him “Mr. Energy” — for his career in fossil fuels as much as for his bright-eyed vivacity.
A lifelong Republican — he says proudly that he has never voted to put a Democrat in the nation’s highest office. Maier touts GOP politicians in terms of how they address energy issues. To that end, he said, Trump has his vote.
But the Hampton native, whose work as a teen in Wyoming’s oil fields was succeeded by a climb up the corporate ladder at Standard Oil, said the race feels different this time.
“This is our last hope,” said Maier, 87, who has lost count of how many Trump rallies he has attended since 2016.
“I don’t think there will be another meaningful election ever again,” he said. “If Harris wins, she’ll have those 20 million immigrants, and they’ll all vote for her.”
It can be difficult to take the frenzied pulse of a college campus near an election. Brandon Friez, a freshman at the University of Pittsburgh’s Oakland campus, feels the tension.
Friez, a Democrat who intends to cast his first vote in a presidential race for Harris, has conservative roots. He became interested in American politics when Trump ran against Hillary Clinton in 2016.
“That was the time at which I was looking at Trump — I thought he was very attractive as a candidate,” said Friez, 18.
Friez initially was enamored of Trump’s populism. Then, on Jan. 6, 2021, legions of Trump supporters mounted an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol following the former president’s defeat at the polls.
To Friez, in that moment, Trump metamorphosed into a real threat to democracy.
He draws parallels between what he called Trump’s “flippant” attitude toward democracy and the downfall of Rome.
“As soon as Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did all these things to disrupt the system of government, it was over, the republic failed,” Friez said. “You cannot allow that force to be present. You have to extract it. Otherwise, massive consequences will occur for the democratic system.”
Though “hesitantly confident” about Harris’ odds, Friez said the anticipation of vote-tallying makes him uneasy.
“Really what I’m noticing from myself and other people is a lot of uncertainty,” he said. “Some people can say that the Democrats on campus can be timid about it and nervous. But, really, I think it’s an antsyness, a waiting, that’s kicking people the most.”
He also fears post-election violence from either side of the political divide. And he hopes that same fear in others might motivate them to vote for Harris.
“Democrats are nervous, and rightfully so — but really, that’s a good thing,” Friez said. “As a Democrat, I’m like, ‘Well, you should be nervous. You should be afraid he’s going to win. Go and vote!’”
Diane Fry is fixated on kitchen table issues, like how she might put food on it if the country descends into civil war post-election.
At Creekside Diner in Washington Township, the registered Republican and dead-set Trump voter told TribLive she has stocked up in recent weeks on canned food and bottled water. If unrest spreads to rural Bell Township, where she lives, she estimated her ammunition stash is enough to defend herself, her son, her granddaughters and her neighbors.
“You’re not going to be able to trust anybody,” said Fry, 68.
But there’s another thing on her mind: Making ends meet in these relatively ordinary times.
After her husband, James, died in February, she emptied her retirement account to pay off their truck, car and other outstanding bills, preparing to live off her monthly Social Security check.
To Fry, a Trump victory would usher in lower prices, easing pressure on her finances and assuring she can reach a royalty agreement with a firm that wants to frack on her land.
Both major-party candidates have voiced support for fracking, but Fry simply feels more comfortable with Trump. She felt she was in a better financial position when he was president.
“I don’t know what the future brings,” Fry said. “I’m lucky that I had that extra money, and we had all that money because Trump was in.”
Terri Rodnicki spoke about the election in tangents, often interrupting her own thoughts by saying, “Example:” and following that up with something a friend or family member told her.
But her point was clear: A Harris win could lead to worldwide warfare.
Russia, China and North Korea — three nuclear powers — are all on Rodnicki’s mind, and she said Trump is the only one who can keep them in check.
“Is there anybody out there putting out fires and keeping peace talks going on?” she said of Biden’s Democratic administration. “I don’t see that party doing anything for us or Americans or saving our country from a war.”
The 69-year-old Kiski Township retiree’s media diet is somewhat eclectic, a combination of down-the-middle television, like NBC’s “Nightly News” and ABC’s “World News Tonight,” and fringe radio programming. Secondhand accounts of news stories and tales through the grapevine make up the rest.
Many of the people in Rodnicki’s life frame the election as good versus evil, light versus darkness. She admits it has rubbed off on her a bit.
Rodnicki has visions of Americans fighting one another, too.
She said she’s less worried about what Harris supporters might do if she loses and more concerned with her own side of the aisle.
“If Trump doesn’t make it, there’s too many dang Trumpers out there,” she said. “If he doesn’t get it, you watch what happens to our cities and you look at the uprising that’s going to happen. This country is going to be in turmoil, and we’re afraid.”
Beaver County raised John Clifford to be a Republican. Clifford’s five-year tenure serving alongside immigrants in the U.S. Marine Corps pushed him to the left.
A father and blue-collar worker who today toils in a Neville Island factory, Clifford voted for Trump in 2016.
Turned off by what Clifford called Trump’s racism and xenophobia, he switched his affiliation to Democratic and voted for Biden four years later.
Since 2020, working alongside “mostly white guys who are all Trump supporters,” Clifford still has felt knots in his stomach.
This year, he plans to support Claudia De la Cruz, a third-party socialist candidate.
“I’m not supporting either candidate, so I don’t have a stake in this,” said Clifford, 29, of Beaver Borough. “But that’s what gives me the anxiety. It’s the same thing every four years, no matter who’s elected.”
Unlike Clifford, Jeff Eifler, an electrician living in Pittsburgh’s North Hills, thinks the 2024 election is different.
“I’m always anxious,” said Eifler, 54, after he recently dropped off his mail-in vote for Harris on Thursday at the County Office Building in Downtown Pittsburgh. “With what’s going on, there’s a lot at stake.”
Sandy Kelson agrees with both men. There is a lot at stake. And, he said, neither the Democratic and Republican candidate will do much about it.
“We have one party — the business party — wearing two two wigs, and they’re not representing the average people,” said Kelson, 80, a Pittsburgh native and attorney today living in rural Crawford County, about 100 miles north of his hometown. “The rich are getting richer, and the middle class — we’ll call them the working class — is deteriorating.”
Kelson, a Vietnam vet and avid reader, said he traffics in facts and historical context.
He is deeply concerned about the plight of Palestinians and feels the Green Party’s Jill Stein, whom he supports, is the only presidential candidate ready to aggressively tackle that topic.
For all his certainty on the issues, Kelson does admit the anxiety of the 2024 election is getting to him in a way other elections haven’t. One daily ritual, in particular, tends to engulf him in existential dread.
“The worst time of my 24 hours is when I lie down in bed at night,” he said. “I get very dark. I have some very dark thoughts.
“I don’t think I have nightmares, but, yes, I’m somewhat depressed.”
Election-related anxiety is at its peak, and experts say that it’s stoked by the brain’s inability to deal with uncertainty. The good news is that there are ways to keep it at bay. Here are a few tips:
* Set timers and boundaries when it comes to consuming political news or content.
* Exercise can help to release endorphins and counteract stress.
* Concentrate on the things around you that you can control, and ground yourself in the present moment.
* “Think positive” may sound trite, but practicing positive thoughts and gratitude can balance out the bad stuff.
* If you are experiencing an acute mental health situation, reach out to available resources like Crisis Text Line by texting 741741 or visiting crisistextline.org
Alexis Papalia, Jack Troy and Justin Vellucci are TribLive staff writers.