Janelle Stelson made an early campaign stop in Harrisburg on Wednesday, pointing to one of the Democrats’ likely focus points for 2026 — that a Trump-induced economic slowdown could help motivate Black voters that the party has historically struggled to reach, at least in central Pennsylvania.
Stelson — who has already been endorsed by Democratic leadership in her bid to mount a second challenge against Republican Congressman Scott Perry — invited the media to a series of visits with Black businesses on Wednesday afternoon. She was accompanied by Lt. Gov. Austin Davis, one of the state’s most prominent Black elected officials.
In their conversations with business owners, Stelson and Davis had a clear central theme: that President Donald Trump and his allies, including Perry, are failing to halt inflation and the overall souring of the economy, and that Black businesses are bearing the brunt of the initial impact.
“Scott Perry is making a terrible mistake and working against us,” Stelson charged, by supporting Trump’s tariffs and by pushing for the federal budget to not renew certain health insurance subsidies, the root cause of the current federal shutdown.
Said Davis: “It’s not the direction everyday Pennsylvanians want to go. They want leaders who are going to stand up to lower their costs, [but] unfortunately, they were sold a bill of goods by Congressman Perry” that turned out to be false.
Stelson and Davis’ first stop was at Fox’s Wash and Go, the Allison Hill laundromat owned by Angel Fox, who said her overhead costs — particularly shipping — have continued to rise.
Fox said she now drives to distributors in Lebanon and Lancaster, picking up detergent herself to save money. She’s also noticed what she thinks is a leading indicator of economic problems: customers packing washers and dryers with more clothes to get more out of each cycle, putting more stress on the machines.
“They’re stuffing the washers. We’re dealing with a lot of wear and tear,” Fox said.
“And then you have to call people who are dealing with the tariffs, etc., to come fix everything,” Stelson added.
Tariffs are taxes on imported goods, which raise their prices and make domestically-produced equivalents more price-competitive. While tariffs can help shield certain industries from foreign competition, they can also be counterproductive if applied too broadly, especially if applied to components that manufacturers can’t source domestically.
Even Perry — a staunch Trump supporter and member of the hardline-conservative Freedom Caucus — acknowledged that Trump’s blanket country-by-country tariff increases have some problems. Perry told PennLive at an event in Hershey earlier this year that he was working to lift the President’s tariffs on cocoa beans, which can’t be grown in the U.S., and stand to raise the price of chocolate considerably.
To Fox’s point, one of the most noticeable effects from the tariffs Trump enacted during his first term was on washing machines, where prices increased even more than the value of the tariffs as the import duties choked supply. A handful of jobs were created by the tariffs, a Federal Reserve-University of Chicago study found, but manufacturing pay overall failed to keep up with inflation during Trump’s first stint in office.
There are already indications of this happening a second time around, given that domestic equipment-makers rely on imported parts that are now widely subject to new tariffs. Manufacturers’ price indexes for machinery have accelerated since Trump took office, according to federal commerce data. Consumer inflation for durable goods like appliances has also begun to tick back up after leveling off post-pandemic.
The message continued at Stelson and Davis’ next stop, a visit with moving company owner Marc Domingos as he checked out a warehouse space on Cameron Street he’s considering leasing.
“Everything’s more expensive. It’s increasingly hard. The cost of labor has been high, but also tape, cardboard, repair costs, everything.”
Domingos voiced concerns that could be described as what economists refer to as “stagflation,” in which prices continue to rise even though economic demand is stagnating. Even though his costs are increasing, Domingos said, families are still saying they’re strapped for cash and aren’t willing to pay for anything superfluous when moving.
“You can’t pass all this stuff onto the customers because you’ll price yourself out,” Domingos said.
“Some of the costs I have to eat. Maybe I eat a fuel cost, maybe I eat a materials cost,” he continued, but this leaves “zero margin of error” in trying to stay solvent.
Davis also made the point several times that Trump’s war on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives has caused major holdups in the state’s ability to issue contracts to Black-owned businesses. Efforts to make sure Black businesses get a fair shot at contracts that are jointly state- and federal-funded, mainly through PennDOT, are now subject to added red tape from Trump’s anti-DEI orders.
“Congressman Perry and President Trump are making it extremely hard for us to do diverse contracting,” Davis said.
Asked why she campaigned where she did on Wednesday, Stelson said, “I think it’s a very important constituency, as is the entire city. But this is a group that might not always feel like it’s being treated equally and fairly.”
The city of Harrisburg is overwhelmingly Democratic and provides a crucial mass of votes for the party’s repeated attempts to unseat Perry, whose district also includes parts of Cumberland and York counties. Stelson came close in 2024, losing to Perry by a spread of just over one percentage point, or about 5,000 votes.
The Congressional district overall has been getting more friendly to Democrats. But the bulk of this movement has been the result of increasingly liberal political tendencies in white, upper-middle-class areas of the West Shore suburbs.
While still heavily Democratic, Harrisburg’s precincts with the largest concentrations of non-white voters have seen consistently lower turnout, particularly in mid-term elections. In 2024, those precincts also shifted toward Trump, even as the suburban parts of Perry’s district continued to move leftward.
Fox says she’s seen political disillusionment in her community and that it will be a real challenge to motivate those voters.
“The ones that already don’t vote are more discouraged, because they think things are getting worse,” Fox said, and that neither party has the answer.
Davis, when asked how Democrats could increase enthusiasm among working-class Black voters, pointed to his and Gov. Josh Shapiro’s intensive schedule of public events across a diverse swath of the state.
“We need a member of Congress who’s going to do that,” Davis said. “And I think if folks in our party listen a little bit more than we talk, we’ll be in a much better place.”
Pennsylvania’s mid-term primary election is May 19, 2026. Stelson will face at least one opponent who is also seeking the Democratic nomination to run against Perry, with Dauphin County Commissioner Justin Douglas having recently announced his candidacy.