| | | Pennsylvania Democrats know the truth about demonizing Trump
Gov. Josh Shapiro and the Democratic state party leader are focused on winning back lost voters.
October 30, 2025
CANONSBURG, Pa. — Eugene DePasquale didn’t mince words. The new state chair for Democrats in Pennsylvania knows the only way his party can win voters it lost over the past 10 years is to focus on how it would do things better. And it’s equally important for state Democrats to stop obsessing about President Donald Trump.
Including demonizing him.
“Trump has given us Democrats an opening on all the things he has not delivered on, but we have got to do our part of actually not only relying on his failure but putting together a positive agenda to get the working-class voters back,” DePasquale said last month to the members of the Washington County Democratic Committee gathered for their annual fall banquet at the Hilton Garden Inn Southpointe.
DePasquale, 54, is known for his gregarious personality, a trait that has earned him Republican voters over more than 10 years of holding state office. He pressed hands, asking each committee person what is going on in their communities and what the local issues are, before giving the keynote speech.
DePasquale is all preacher, counselor and optimist — encouraging to members of a party weary of losing elections, weary of party leaders’ failure to broaden their coalition, and weary of being the “resistance” and talking about nothing but Trump.
To DePasquale, it’s simple: “They want us to be for something, to offer solutions with a message that broadens our coalition, not shrinks it,” he said in our interview after the event. He said that observation comes from experience in talking to Democrats who are exhausted with everything being about Trump.
“We’ve been doing this for 10 years, and they are done with it,” DePasquale said. “Now that does not mean they are now for Trump. They just want someone in our party to give them something as an alternative to what we have been doing.”
In arguably the most important battleground state in the country, not just for who holds the presidency but also for who controls the U.S. House and Senate, Gov. Josh Shapiro said he picked DePasquale as Pennsylvania Democrats’ chair because he wanted someone who understands the whole state.
Shapiro said DePasquale knows the immediate stakes — for the governor’s reelection next year, and for congressional and state legislative contests — and knows the importance of laying the groundwork for a healthy party ahead of the 2028 presidential election.
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