Borough reflects national shifts

Charlie Walker remembers tramps hopping off freights and begging for a chance to sleep in his family's Trappe barn during the Great Depression.

"We didn't want them to burn down the barn, so we'd ask them to put their matches out in a can outside," recalls Walker, 87, drinking coffee with a group of old-timers at a Dairy Queen on Main Street. "The worst they ever did was we'd find hayseeds in the milk can - they helped themselves to milk."

The railroad does not come through Trappe anymore, the Montgomery County borough's past as an agricultural hub long gone. Subdivisions and day spas have replaced family farms as clusters of big-box stores line Route 422, and a "town center" of high-end retail with faux Main Line streetscapes rises southeast of Trappe.

Known as a Republican stronghold since the Civil War, Trappe surprisingly went for Barack Obama in the fall, 53 percent to 46 percent - nearly matching the vote in Pennsylvania as a whole, and the first time in generations that a Democratic presidential candidate won a majority of the borough's votes.

In many ways, Trappe reflects the political shift in suburbs across the nation - where a majority of voters now live - that elected Obama and rolled back the Republican gains of the 1980s and '90s.

But is something more permanent going on? Has the philosophy of lower taxes and smaller government that has dominated American politics since President Ronald Reagan's time begun to fall in the face of the economic collapse and the rapid pace of change?

If a new political dynamic is in the making, a realignment across America, Trappe is an ideal locale to start identifying the forces at play.

A little more than three months into the Obama Age, interviews find people in Trappe enduring the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression with hard-edged pragmatism, looking to Obama for help as they search for signs that he or anyone else can fix what ails America.

The exuberance that many felt in November after electing the first African American president has given way to support for the man in the White House, but worry about the long-term costs of his stimulus spending and bailouts for banks and automakers. In this largely white community, 20 miles northwest of Philadelphia, race and other social issues - immigration, abortion, gay marriage - hardly come up at all.

Last fall's vote in Trappe ratified demographic changes long in the making. The borough has doubled in size since 1970, to more than 3,300 residents, many of them educated and affluent "knowledge workers" drawn by pharmaceutical and financial-services firms in the area and Ursinus College next door in Collegeville, making Trappe more like New Jersey and less like the central Pennsylvania it once resembled.

"I used to know quite a few people in Trappe, but not today. It's exploded," says Don Dillon, 75, a retired operations manager for the Perkiomen Valley schools and a registered Republican who served on the Borough Council in the 1990s.

As on most mornings, he is drinking coffee with Walker and other members of the "old man's club" in Bill Higginson's Dairy Queen on Main Street, a good perch from which to discuss the changes in town. When Dillon moved to Trappe in 1959, he says, you could still hear Pennsylvania Dutch spoken in the area.

Walker, who remembers seeing people during the Great Depression so desperately poor that they begged local justices of the peace to throw them in jail on cold winter nights, says comparisons between the present day and that time are exaggerated.

"They're not crawling on their hands and knees around here that I can see," he says.

In the beginning, there was Ridge Pike, a long and winding road that went all the way to Philadelphia. Then came the highway. The Route 422 bypass was completed in 1985, during the Reagan era, opening up a straight shot to the big city. Trappe evolved from an exurb to a bedroom community as people moved farther west from the city and its inner-ring suburbs.

"Route 422 led to political changes which no one would have dreamt when it was built," says State Sen. Andrew Dinniman, a Democrat whose district includes Trappe.

Wyeth Pharmaceuticals put its main manufacturing complex at the interchange of Routes 422 and 29, and GlaxoSmithKline established a facility there. The borough and its surrounding towns grew more.

Dinniman says the pharmaceutical jobs attracted people with higher levels of education and income, both of which correlated with support for Obama in the 2008 election, according to exit polls. Census Bureau figures show that Trappe is well above the national average on both counts.

Though the demographic stage was set for Obama, events also were working against the GOP in Trappe last fall, as in many places. After eight years of the presidency of George W. Bush, anxiety was rising over the plummeting economy and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"It was the disenchantment with Bush and what have you," says Trappe Mayor Connie Peck, a Democrat who was elected in 2005. "People, the regular people working at CVS or Wawa, were saying, 'What's in it for me?' The call for change seemed to be the answer for them."

Peck herself represents change, as the first female mayor and the first Democrat since the Watergate year of 1974 to hold that office in Trappe. She remembers that when she and her husband started their electronics repair shop years ago, a well-meaning neighbor advised her that she had to become Republican if she wanted the business to thrive.

She and Council President Fred Schuetz, a Republican, agree there is more competition for local offices such as school boards, councils, district justice. "Ten years ago, it was [machine] controlled," Schuetz says. "I don't think it will ever be as lopsided as it was." He thinks that's good for democracy.

When political science professor John Kennedy of West Chester University moved to the area in 1993, he remembers, he saw nothing but Republican lawn signs, all bearing elephants. Montgomery County was still a Republican-machine county.

This was the county that had claimed Drew Lewis, a Reagan confidant who became his secretary of transportation, as a native son.

Now, Kennedy says, the GOP machine is under siege, and there is, if anything, lawn-sign parity.

A similar evolution has taken place elsewhere in the Philadelphia suburbs, a once reliably Republican area that overall has swung to Democratic candidates for president, senator, and governor in the last 20 years. This trend has boosted the party's fortunes in races for the state legislature and local office as well.

"From now on, the suburbs are going to be hand-to-hand combat," Kennedy says. The same shift occurred in reverse 25 years ago in suburban places like Cobb County, Ga., and Polk County, Fla., he says. Republican leaders in the suburbs are finding that "the political sands are inexorably shifting beneath their feet."

With traditionally Democratic southwestern Pennsylvania trending Republican, pollsters and strategists from both parties point out that the more populous suburban Philadelphia region will hold the balance of power in statewide races as long as it remains competitive.

In Trappe, the rise of the Democrats seems to reflect a time of accelerating change and complexity, the same forces that inspire optimism about the new young president as well as anxiety about the future.

In the global economy, decisions affecting the borough's economic future are as likely to be made in London, the headquarters of GSK, as they are in Harrisburg, Philadelphia, or Washington. And the young pharmaceutical workers ferrying their kids to soccer games in minivans are intensely interested in the public schools, town zoning decisions, and traffic. At this level, government is not the enemy - and may be part of the answer.

Mike Peciaro, 52, who was laid off five months ago from his job as a computer programmer, is angry at corporate America.

He resents the bonuses paid to executives of firms receiving government bailouts, such as AIG, and is looking for Obama to hold corporations accountable.

Peciaro strongly supports the new president, for whom he voted, and calls him "very real." Obama is setting the right tone of accountability as he seeks to reform the corporate abuses that led to financial crisis, Peciaro says.

"Who isn't cutting back?" says Peciaro, who helps make ends meet by delivering hoagies and cheesesteaks for a takeout restaurant. "I'd like to see President Obama do something about all the overseas jobs. They get tax credits for moving jobs. When you call up Dell computer, where is your call going? Delhi."

The way he sees it, the economy is bound to start getting better. "Tell me what the Republicans did," Peciaro says. "Gas went to $4 a gallon, we're at war in two areas of the globe, and the oil people are making so much freaking money. . . . It's hard for me to see regular people getting cut while CEOs are making so much."

On a recent afternoon, Peciaro is drinking an iced tea in the parking lot at the Pine Woods Apartments on Main Street and chatting with Sam Colavita, the owner of the complex, who has been checking up on things in his green Ford pickup.

Colavita says the government is spending and "printing money like newsprint" to little effect and great danger. "You cannot keep creating debt," he says. "The interest is going to kill us. Things are getting out of control."

A registered Republican who voted for John McCain, Colavita blames easy money for the housing bubble and the collapse in the financial markets. "Greenspan should be indicted," says Colavita, 73, an Italian immigrant, referring to former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

But Colavita's Republican credentials, surprisingly enough, do not dull his enthusiasm for the president. "I like Obama," Colavita says. "The poor guy is really trying, but what can he do? I don't think the economy's going to change any time soon."

Right now, six apartments in the 50-unit complex sit empty. It's a far cry from Las Vegas, where entire neighborhoods lie in foreclosure. But six empty units take their toll.

"In 32 years, I've never had more than one, usually just enough time to clean it and move in the next tenant," Colavita says. "I run an ad, nobody calls. . . . People don't have any money."

A book club meets at the Trappe Tavern, a cozy neighborhood restaurant in the heart of town. It could have been a focus group - one Republican, one Democrat, one independent.

The book of the month: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by Daniel Wroblewski.

But as waiters clear the dishes, the talk turns to Obama.

"I still believe the government can't solve all problems," says Terri Smith, 41, the Republican, who grew up in a Southern Democratic family. She believes Obama is showing "socialist" tendencies with bailouts of companies and his proposal for publicly funded health insurance. (Her husband works for Merck in Montgomeryville.)

"I feel very sad that we've had generations raised that don't have a work ethic like maybe our grandfathers had," Smith says.

"But we still need government oversight, to make sure bankers are doing what they're supposed to and we don't have drug companies polluting our waters," says Joanne LaSpina, 42, the Democrat. She cast her first presidential vote for Reagan's reelection, but has shifted over time.

Kim Cooney, the independent, voted for McCain but bears Obama no ill will. She does have serious reservations about the level of government spending, however, saying, "I'm not on board yet."

And, the company of her friends excepted, Cooney doesn't think the quality of political dialogue has improved that much, despite Obama's promise to change the tone. She cites last month's conservative "tea party" protests and the liberal response to them.

"It bothers me the hate being spewed back and forth," says Cooney, 51, who works part time as a babysitter.

Obama has been tackling a dizzying array of initiatives all at once: working to wind down the war in Iraq while intensifying it in Afghanistan, proposing regulations of financial markets, pushing an overhaul of the health-care system.

"He's trying to take on a whole lot right now, which makes me a little nervous, but I feel like there's so much - and he has the momentum, and he should just do it," LaSpina says. "Do it all. . . . We're stuck right now."

To Smith, Obama is moving too fast, and knowing that Democrats control Congress and the White House does not reassure her. "I don't like the fact that one like mind has it all," she says. "I would much prefer to have some checks and balances."

So far, the three women say, their families have not faced real hardship from the downturn, though Cooney says her family finances are a little tighter and there is "fear of the unknown," with her husband working in the financial-services industry, which has been racked by layoffs.

For the most part, they talk about the schools - which teachers are good, the best courses at the high school, where their children are applying to college.

"I do feel like we're a bit sheltered here," LaSpina says. "I don't know very many people who've lost their job. I suppose I spend a little bit less, but I don't feel very affected. And I think this whole area would say the same."

Though her family retirement accounts have shrunk along with the stock market, LaSpina says she is not too worried. "I'm hopeful it's going to get better. I believe in that swing. I'm keeping my money where it is," she says. "It'll come back."

At Borough Hall on West Main Street, the economic downturn has strained the budget. So far this year, the borough has not received any revenue from the transfer tax on real estate sales, a $30,000 hole, says Schuetz, the council president. Earned-income-tax receipts also are lagging.

"The trend is down," Schuetz says. "We've got to look ahead."

As a result, Mayor Peck says, cleaning service for the small Borough Hall has been cut back to every other week, saving $200 a month. Instead of having bottled water delivered, Peck picks up jugs herself at Costco. A gardener, she plants and tends the flower bed around the sign in front of Borough Hall.

Schuetz says the borough is also looking to see whether it has projects that can qualify for federal stimulus money.

"We don't have a major bridge or road-construction project," Schuetz says. "We have culverts to replace or roads to repair, but they don't really fit the concept of the stimulus, in projects that put a large number of people to work."

Despite the economy, growth continues in the area, with the Providence Town Center under construction at the Route 29 interchange with Route 422 - the 140-acre shopping center designed around "streetscapes" reminiscent of the Main Line. Plans call for a high-end Wegmans food market as the anchor tenant, along with Barnes & Noble, P.F. Chang's, Ann Taylor, and 30 other stores.

It may seem strange to build a faux town near a real one that was settled in 1717 and has the oldest continuously operating Lutheran church in the country and the homestead of the first U.S. House speaker, Frederick Muhlenberg. But many people are excited to get the array of shopping they're used to without having to drive to King of Prussia.

Along Township Line Road at the other end of Trappe, a regional Catholic high school is under construction, designed to replace three existing schools.

Still, there is an undercurrent of anxiety for some that is not readily apparent on the surface of the community.

Gordon Williams, 39, exudes a new suburban angst. Underemployed and overeducated, he has just lost his contract as a temporary mathematics instructor at Ursinus College. At this moment, he and his wife, Leah Berman Williams, a tenure-track professor at the college, are shopping for children's books for their 9-month-old daughter, Matilda.

Williams respects Obama's intellect and his "reasonable" approach to the economy, but he's far from optimistic. The reason seems less to do with any drawbacks of the president than with Williams' understanding of the vagaries of economic growth. Politicians have less and less control over which sectors grow - and where the growth takes place.

"One of the natural places for a mathematician is doing statistical work for the pharmaceutical industry, but Merck laid off 2,000 people not long ago," he says. In addition, nobody knows whether the recently announced merger of Wyeth and New York-based Pfizer will cost jobs here.

"I'm worried," he says. "I'm hoping things turn around before the bottom drops out."

Meanwhile, the new mall continues to rise, and there was a hot rumor recently that an ultra-hip Trader Joe's market would replace a grocery store in the shopping plaza in the heart of Trappe. The California company told residents it has no such plans, but hope springs eternal.