The GOP Turned Its Back on Science. So Science Turned Its Backs on the GOP. — POLITICO
A political realignment around health care is reshaping state politics.
Is Penn State Health part of Penn State college? Penn State turning Pennsylvania blue? Interesting article.
Penn State Health’s intensifying presence reflects how the local health care sector, not just chocolate, is driving new construction and a population boom in this region, where the Susquehanna River divides Harrisburg’s West Shore from its East Shore, which includes Hershey (formally known as Derry Township). Past the West End’s excavated land stands Penn State Health’s Hershey Medical Center and College of Medicine, a crescent-shaped mid-century structure buttressed by decades of glass-ensconced additions. A community anchor since 1970, the “med center,” as locals call it, is Dauphin County’s top private employer — and continues to expand. Today, Penn State Health serves 29 Pennsylvania counties and employs close to 17,000 (12,000 at the med center and its children’s hospital alone); its College of Medicine enrolls more than 1,700 students in its graduate programs.
From the beginning, Derry Township was a GOP stronghold (company founder Milton Hershey was a staunch Republican), home to descendants of the chocolate factory’s Italian immigrant laborers and Pennsylvania Dutch farmers who settled in the rural, blue-collar and conservative hamlet. It was a “one-party town,”
Way back in the early days, there was an unwritten expectation that the chocolate company workers be registered Republican.” This GOP mood prevailed through the turn of this century. Republican presidential candidates, including Donald Trump in 2016, regularly won the township — the beneficiary of a massive Republican voter registration advantage.
By the early 2010s, though, the med center was making Derry Township suburban and transient — and more Democratic. After the 2012 election, The Sun, the Hershey area weekly newspaper, reported local Republicans’ “disappointment” with voter returns that was “bound to set off a round of soul searching — and bloodletting.” During Trump’s presidency, Democratic voter registration dramatically increased; in 2020, Joe Biden prevailed here.
Today, the municipality (population 25,000) has never been bluer. “The biggest factor contributing to the change in voter registration, shifting from that ‘one-party town,’ in my opinion is the med center and the College of Medicine,” said Paioletti. “The medical community is extremely diverse, and we know how much the med center and college have grown.”
Between 2010 and 2022, as Penn State Health expanded, Derry Township’s Democratic voter registration increased more than 19 percent and is now nearly even with Republicans. David Feidt, Dauphin County’s Republican Party chair and a Derry Township resident, is witnessing the shift. He pointed to his own residential neighborhood, where med center workers proliferate, tucked in the wooded hills behind the hospital. “At one time, I could get petition signatures at one out of every three households. That’s not the case anymore,” said Feidt. “I think it’s part of the equation occurring throughout the Midstate. It’s a real phenomenon. The growth of the health care employees in the area is affecting the outcome of Election Day. You can see the shifts in the numbers.”
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