Butler officials hope to maintain momentum despite Trump rally shooting, while regional voices largely mum

In the week after former President Donald Trump was shot roughly an hour drive north of Pittsburgh, leaders of the region and its largest county had almost nothing to say about the effects the world news event could have on the region’s reputation and momentum.

Declining comment or failing to respond to PublicSource’s questions on that subject over the past week were Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato’s office, her predecessor and current Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission Executive Director Rich Fitzgerald, city/county booster Visit Pittsburgh and the office of U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, D-Swissvale, among others.

State Rep. Lindsay Powell, D-Lawrenceville, serves on the city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority board, and was one of the only Allegheny County-based officials contacted who was willing to talk about the repercussions of the assassination attempt. She thought that the attempted assassination wouldn’t have an impact on the region because it comes in the context of the country’s culture of violence.

“Unfortunately, violence is everywhere. There have been mass shootings in Las Vegas, in San Bernardino and other cities and people still visit these places,” Powell said.

Asked for comment on any risk that the region’s stature might be stained by the violence, the Allegheny Conference on Community Development did not directly respond to the question, but indicated in a statement from its CEO Stefani Pashman that it has “moved our region forward through mutually respectful partnerships and without polarization. That is a standard we embrace, and we believe that honoring it is essential not only for the well-being of our region but for the state, the country and the world.”

Some Butler County officials, though, were inclined to deal with the potential ramifications of the shooting head-on.

“If you think about other presidents that were shot at, and God bless they didn’t all get killed, there’s a bunch of them,” said Jack Cohen, CEO and president of Butler County Tourism & Convention Bureau. “A whole lot, and they don’t talk about that anymore. When they get tired of talking about it, it will probably not get talked about. That’s a shame. We should remember our history and learn from it.”

The attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump is just the freshest of numerous acts of political violence in American history.

• In 1881, President James A. Garfield was shot in Washington D.C. and died two and a half months later.
• In 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas .
• In 1968, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis .
• That same year, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, then a presidential candidate, was assassinated in Los Angeles .
• In 1975, President Gerald Ford was the subject of an assassination attempt , which did not end up resulting in any shots fired in Sacramento.
• In 1981, President Ronald Reagan was shot , but not slain, in Washington, D.C.

There was a period after the Kennedy assassination during which Dallas was tarred with notoriety and labeled the “ City of Hate .” However, in the long term, none of the cities in which these incidents occurred withered.

‘Unfortunately, violence is everywhere’

“It’s unfortunate we live in a society where there is constant violence or the threat of violence,” said Powell.

The 20-year-old to whom the shooting is attributed, Thomas Matthew Crooks, hailed from the Allegheny County municipality of Bethel Park. The county was also the scene of the 2018 Tree of Life mass shooting in which 11 worshipers were slain in one of the worst acts of antisemitism on American soil.

Cohen, who will soon be retiring from his tourism position, is no stranger to the importance of remembering history. Nearing 70, Cohen recalls family members who endured the Holocaust, some of whom were killed while others survived. He once visited the German city of Saxonburg — sister city to the same-named Butler County town — and felt welcomed as a Jew.

He said that in the short term, Butler County will be seen as a bad place for being the site of an assassination attempt against presidential candidate Donald Trump. But he predicted that impression won’t last long.

“In four months, people won’t associate this with our community,” Cohen said. “The world moves too fast.” He said he hoped that his bureau’s tourism efforts will help “show the light of how great the community is.”

‘Everybody is still coming’

Cohen noted that just two days after the assassination attempt, Butler County hosted the Can-Am Games , a week-long event where nearly 700 first responders and their families from around the region and Canada compete in more than 30 events.

“We did it for camaraderie,” he said. “Everybody is still coming. … We want to show off the capability of these people and thank them for what they do.”

Others worry that the shooting might have lasting impact.

“I think it could complicate Butler’s efforts to market itself to business development and tourism,” said Colby King, an associate professor of sociology at the University of South Carolina Upstate who grew up in Butler County. “It would be up to the Butler County Tourism & Convention Bureau and how they and other agencies and municipalities approach their place-branding efforts. I could imagine that if some elevate the event in a partisan way, that would be polarizing in the community and to the area’s place character.”

Cohen’s office represents 440 businesses and can be found in a  repurposed bed and breakfast near Zelienople’s main street. The Butler County town hosted an event called the Horse Trading Days from July 18 to 20. It drew dozens of merchants setting up stalls and booths in patches of greenway, along roads and among a gas station. A cohort of Amish people sold specialty donuts and the local Democrats maintained a booth.

“People here are good. It’s a reasonable, small town,” said Kate Lennen, a local Democrat running for state Senate in Pennsylvania’s 47th District.

Addressing concerns that conservatives might blame Democrats for the attempted assassination, Lennen said she hadn’t faced a “backlash” and she felt comfortable distributing her campaign’s pamphlets and fliers.

“People are going to keep coming to Butler County because we have all these fun little things like Amish donuts,” Lennen said.

Zelienople isn’t the only town in the county hosting events. Cohen noted that the annual Bantam Jeep Festival , held in June, brings 20,000 people along with all manner of Jeep models made since the vehicle’s inception in Butler. With that comes a $2 million impact in two days.

Cohen said that “our community support is very strong” and he noticed that various broadcast networks covering the assassination attempt didn’t want to talk to Cohen and Butler County Tourism.

“It would have been nice of them” to interview him, he said, so that he could say that the shooting “doesn’t reflect Butler County. Somebody from another area came and did this. It could happen anywhere. If it was a homegrown thing, it would be different.”

A county in growth mode

Instead of focusing on the shooting, Cohen said, “We have to figure out how to tell people how great we are.”

Cohen noted that Butler County is the only county in Southwestern Pennsylvania that has experienced a sustained population growth in recent years.

“When I started here we had 156,000 people, now we’re well over 200,000 people.”

When he first started working with Butler County’s tourism 25 years ago, “we started with nothing” and the county was bringing in $200,000 in related revenue. Now, he said, tourism revenue is at $3 million annually.

“As horrible as this is, I hope we would not use it to define us because Butler County as a community is filled with kind, supportive people,” said Mark Gordon, chief of Butler County Economic Development and Planning. “It’s largely faith-filled communities. It is municipalities that cooperate and collaborate with each other.”

He said that the county’s immediate economic impact may stem from the lockdown of the American Glass Research building pending an investigation of the assassination attempt. The would-be assassin fired from the roof of that building. But otherwise businesses continue to operate.

Cohen listed Westinghouse Electric and Emerson — a water solutions tech company — as examples of companies that have set up shop in Butler County.

“These are big corporations here and a lot of families are coming,” Cohen said

The southern part of the county in and around Cranberry has experienced growth that is unprecedented, Cohen said.

Amid all of this economic activity is a low unemployment rate at around 3%.

“Manufacturing is doing well here,” Cohen said.

For Cohen, the weekend’s shooting is nonetheless a warning.

“Eventually our world will have to fix itself or we’ll kill ourselves,” Cohen said. “We have to get back to the basics of understanding.”

Instead of sowing division, Cohen said, “You need to sit with your opponents without making fun of each other and saying stupid things.”

Eric Jankiewicz is PublicSource’s economic development reporter, and can be reached at ericj@publicsource.org or on Twitter @ericjankiewicz .

Jess Daninhirsch is a PublicSource summer 2024 photojournalism intern. She can be reached at jess@publicsource.org .

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