BELLEFONTE, Pa. – It was love at first sight when Ellen Matis pulled up to this small Pennsylvania borough on a dreary winter day almost eight years ago. The road into town curved along the creek and then climbed uphill to a historic square where she chatted with regulars over beers at the local pub.
“This is where we need to live,” she decided. Matis’ sister-in-law, who grew up in the area, was shocked. She remembered Bellefonte as a sleepy place with vacant storefronts and a drug problem so notorious that people sometimes overdosed in front of the courthouse.
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But Matis, 33, saw potential in the town’s quaint brick buildings and scenic foothold in the Allegheny Mountains just a short drive from Pennsylvania State University. She settled in, started a social media marketing company and had two daughters with her husband.
“People are excited for change and what the future holds,” Matis said.
Matis’ journey to Bellefonte is one small measure of a larger evolution that's reshaping the politics of Centre County, which is home to about 160,000 people in the middle of Pennsylvania, and could tilt this year’s closely fought presidential election.
The area has long been divided between the liberal university town of State College, which anchors the region, and the conservative hamlets that surround it. But now the blue dot is expanding as college-educated people spread throughout Centre County, drawn by the lower cost of living, more relaxed lifestyle and economic development that has breathed new life into depleted blue-collar communities.
A college degree means more Democratic voters
Last year, 47.6% of county residents had a four-year college degree or more, up from 39.4% a decade ago. Because education levels tend to track partisan affiliation, Democrats have an increasing edge in a part of the state that has historically swung back and forth between the two parties. While in no way assured, the shift means Democratic nominee Kamala Harris could run up margins in small towns far from the big cities of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, which traditionally get far more attention from presidential campaigns.
Harris’ potential strength here reflects an ongoing tectonic realignment in American politics, with Republicans expanding their outreach to the working class and Democrats relying more on upwardly mobile, college-educated people.
In Centre County, that means Republican nominee Donald Trump remains appealing to voters who feel like their communities haven't benefited from the area's changes. But places like Bellefonte are trending blue, backing Joe Biden four years ago after supporting Trump four years before that, and voters with more optimistic views, like Matis, are lining up behind Harris.
“She makes you feel hopeful,” Matis said. “I want a clean slate.”
The changing demographics in Centre County have already had an impact on local politics. Although control of the board of commissioners used to switch every election, it’s been reliably Democratic for almost a decade.
The county’s leaders are also pursuing a new development plan that’s intended to diversify its economy beyond the university and attract even more people to the region.
“We have that solid rock in Penn State,” said Mark Higgins, chair of the county board of commissioners. “This is more than just Penn State now.”
Several hotels are slated to open in the coming years. There’s a new hospital and another one is expanding. The population is expected to increase while Pennsylvania is losing residents overall. There are fresh attractions like arts festivals and an Ironman triathlon.
Higgins said Centre County’s growth is partially fueled by “boomerangs,” meaning people who grew up in the area or went to school at Penn State and then move back to raise their family there.
“It’s Wobegon,” he said, “except it’s real.”
Much like other areas of the country, inflation and the rising cost of living have been challenges, but the impact is felt differently. People who are weary of expensive big cities are moving to State College, and people who can’t afford State College are moving to the surrounding area. It’s an economic chain reaction that means there are more liberal-minded people in more towns around the county.
People are ‘boomeranging’ back to Centre County
Derek and Lauren Ishler are the quintessential boomerang couple. They met while attending Penn State, and lived for several years in Alexandria, Virginia. But before having their two daughters, they relocated to State College to be close to their families.
“It’s grown but we still have that small-town feel,” Derek said. “We’re happy here.”
Derek, 42, does financial work for a logistics company and Lauren, 41, is an elementary school teacher. Both are voting for Harris.
“What world do I want my kids to grow up in?” he asked. “One is fear, fear, fear. The other is, ‘hey, let’s work together.’”
On a recent Friday night, they were in Bellefonte for an annual festival, where local vendors served gourmet food in a park under string lights while a band played nearby.
Stacy and Marc Counterman brought their five-month-old son in his stroller. They moved to town three years ago because Marc, 31, got a job as an academic adviser at Penn State.
They were so excited that they bought their house without seeing it in person, worried it would be snatched up before they arrived. Both of them are voting for Harris.
“She’s fighting for families,” said Stacy, 33, who works for an education nonprofit. “I’m hopeful she’ll fight for us.”
The ideological reshuffling is tied to State College, where the university is located. Some residents relocate there from what they call “Trump country” to be closer to the institution and its culture.
Alex Sterbenz, 31, came from Burnham, which is in the next county over.
“I figured it made sense to move here, instead of just coming up every weekend,” said Sterbenz, who works in a local music store and plays honkytonk songs on his 2021 Gretsch White Falcon. He tries not to talk politics with his friends and family back home.
But State College isn't just attracting people; it's also exerting a gravitational pull on surrounding towns.
Zeb Smoyer, 23, grew up in Bellefonte, where he joined the Boy Scouts and hunted whitetail deer. Like a lot of teenagers, he couldn’t wait to get out of town. But after he went to college elsewhere in Pennsylvania and spent some time traveling, he decided “Bellefonte is not a bad place.”
Now he lives there and works for an engineering company, which he helps comply with environmental regulations as it lays pipes for turning farmlands into housing developments. Smoyer hasn’t made up his mind about the election, but he previously voted for Biden.
The area is anchored by Penn State and its students
Ezra Nanes, the Democratic mayor of State College, said there's been more overlap between his town and the surrounding area.
“You see an expansion of the university community and economy," he said. "It touches all parts of the county.”
Nanes’ own journey to Centre County parallels the shifts in the region. A New York native, he was ready to make a change in his life and applied to Penn State’s MBA program. He moved to State College 14 years ago with his wife and baby daughter.
They fell in love with the community and the natural environment — “you can be in the mountains in 15 minutes,” he said — and never left. They now have two children. Nanes works at AccuWeather, a forecasting company, and his wife is a physical therapist who started her own business focused on women's health.
Nanes was a delegate at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and he hopes “we can help run up the score here.”
“There’s a lot of focus on the big cities,” he said. “But this is an important place if you want to win.”
One challenge is engaging Penn State's expansive student population.
“We’re not exactly known for having a very deep political involvement, which is a shame,” said Baybars Charkas, president of the Penn State College Democrats. Charkas calls Penn State "probably the most powerful university in the United States at the current moment" given its size and location in a key battleground state. Roughly 48,000 students are enrolled at the school's State College campus.
Graduate student Sydney Robinson started her own organization dedicated to supporting Harris. Members make friendship bracelets to promote their candidate and send text messages to rally potential voters.
Robinson, who is applying to law school, is hopeful about the future.
“We just have so many opportunities,” she said. “We’re at a crucial turning point in history, but it’s exciting.”
She’s earned the nickname “voter girl” because she tries to always carry registration forms; she gets three or four people to sign up each week.
The Harris campaign has four staff members in Centre County, including a dedicated campus organizer, and said they've knocked on more than 9,000 doors and made more than 80,000 phone calls. They're also advertising on radio stations to catch voters while commuting in and out of State College.
Trump's campaign did not provide figures on voter outreach. But Kush Desai, the Trump campaign’s Pennsylvania spokesman, said his team is attending college football tailgates and focusing on appealing to male voters to cut into Harris’ support within the educated electorate.
Some of the effort focuses on the economy, with the traditional question of, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” Desai also suggested that Democrats have shifted too far left on cultural issues.
“I think there’s just a natural backlash here,” he said, and men “are starting to chip away and come to our side instead.”
Ryan Klein, president of the Penn State College Republicans, said the campus leans left but conservatives aren't as outnumbered as many think. He pointed to strong turnout at last month's event with Trump supporter Charlie Kirk, who runs Turning Point, an organization focused on rallying young right-leaning voters.
On most days, “there aren’t a lot of people who want to go out of their way to proudly don the red hat," Klein said, but hundreds wore “Make America Great Again” paraphernalia that day.
The county's economic progress remains uneven
Republicans are much stronger in some of the rural areas surrounding State College that haven't seen the same kind of development as Bellefonte.
One of those places is Philipsburg, with a postage-stamp-sized downtown where vacant storefronts remain common.
“It has potential," said Brittney Tekely, 31. “It’s a cute little town. It just needs help.”
She saved up money to start her own barbershop there while working as a stylist during the day and in a Wal-Mart distribution warehouse at night. Tekely painted and decorated the place herself with model cars and other trinkets that she picked up at antique stores. She even went all the way to Niagara Falls to buy an old-fashioned cash register that dings loudly when opened. Her three dogs — Digger, Roxie and Mister Skunk — come to work with her and hang out in the back, where they bark when someone opens the front door.
But Tekely doesn't see the same care being put into the rest of the town, saying, “There are buildings that no one is fixing up or tearing down.” She isn't sure if she'll vote this year, and many of her customers are vocal Republicans.
“They just go on and on and on,” Tekely said. “You’ve got to keep your two cents to yourself.”
Some of them, she said, “truly think if Trump becomes president again it will help the country and help prices.”
The town backed Trump over Biden four years ago, and there's less of the optimism that characterizes Bellefonte's renaissance.
Thomas Gette, 77, lives a few blocks from downtown with a Trump sign on the curb outside the front door. He's retired after spending four decades as the manager of a local hardware store, and he just finished repainting his house.
Gette said voting for the Republican candidate is “a no-brainer,” especially with all the concerns about uncontrolled migration.
“Something has got to give,” he said, adding that if Trump doesn’t win, "I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like.”
In Gette's mind, changes in the area have sapped the town of jobs and money.
“There were mines everywhere and the railroads were everywhere,” Gette said, and he’s worried that the transition away from fossil fuels is happening too fast.
And now, how would he describe Philipsburg?
“Pretty stagnant,” he said.