The registration drive gets to the heart of the election in Western Pennsylvania. Democrats in these small communities want to hold on to their way of life; they feel their communities have as much value as those of their more-cosmopolitan Democratic cousins, and they cannot reconcile themselves to a national Democratic Party that they feel is working against them. They are the voters whose simple motivation to vote outside of the party they were born into has fallen under the radar of the national press and the polls.

But the energy industry has noticed. “This kind of endeavor is terrifically impactful with voters,” said Ron Sicchitano, the Democratic Party’s chairman here in Washington County. “I’ve got to hand it to them.” Sicchitano, a coal miner, says anti-coal statements by President Barack Obama and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton have had a “tremendously devastating” impact on voters in a county that has been reliably Democratic in the past.

“My main objective is to get as many of my voters out so that I can keep the margins down in the county,” he said. “Trump is going to win [the county], he just can’t win that big or a big turnout in this county will chip away at Hillary Clinton’s wins in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.” He feels that the national party is running away from energy voters and southwestern Pennsylvania Democrats; he confesses to being unsure who his reliable voters are anymore, because so many of Washington County’s registered Democrats could vote Republican in November.

In the 2000 presidential election, Washington County went strongly Democrat; it gave 53.2 percent of its vote to then-Vice President Al Gore, and only 44 percent to the Republican, then-Governor George W. Bush of Texas.

By 2004, when climate change and cap-and-trade became the national Democratic Party’s driving narratives, John Kerry barely won the county, with just 552 votes more than Bush.

In the run-up to the 2008 presidential election, Barack Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board that “if somebody wants to build a coal-fired power plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them.” Washington County voters abandoned their Democratic voting tradition that fall and chose John McCain over Obama. They did so again in 2012, choosing Republican Mitt Romney. What’s different this time, Sicchitano, said, is the intensity of people’s feelings: “This time it really is personal for these voters.”

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Lee Supply is a third-generation family-owned business, operating since 1954. “My dad started it servicing the coal industry,” Lee said. Nestled in a glen between the rolling hills of the Alleghenies and the Monongahela River, the company bustles with workers moving about the plant. Today, it sells pipe and pumping systems used in everything from traditional applications, such as water distribution and sewage treatment, to highly specialized applications such as horizontal directional drilling, slip lining, leachate and methane collection, gas extraction, and water transport.