Small business owner Michael Hooks works in the kitchen of his catering business in Erie, Pa. Friday, Nov. 1, 2024. ERIE, Pa. — It wasn’t much when he bought it, but Michael Hooks has made the old garage his own haven. And the city of Erie knows it. Half a dozen cars honk as they pass by one October afternoon, the people hanging out of car windows to wave hello at him.
How Erie business owners and voters such as Hooks view each candidate's economic vision could determine control of the White House. Erie County has gone for the candidate who won Pennsylvania in every presidential election since 1992. Both Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris have visited the city of 94,000 in recent weeks.
But Whiting added that “broad brush” policies such as Trump’s proposed 20% tariffs on all foreign goods threatened to be “an inflation bomb that would crush small businesses” like those he works with. Whiting viewed Harris’ proposed investments for small businesses to be a potential boon. A no tax on tips policy, which both Harris and Trump favor, would be a welcome innovation for workers, he said.
“There’s just so many factors, things to consider from right here and global factors,” said Gus Paliouras, owner of New York Lunch, a local diner. Paliouras’ family immigrated to the United States from Greece and bought the diner in 1970, when it was one of dozens of bustling businesses on top of a post office, school and church. Now Paliouras’ diner is the only storefront left on the block.
While he has transformed his circumstances and overcome “trials and tribulations that made me a better man,” he finds the distinctions that some draw between poor, working and middle-class people to be meaningless.
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