ArcaMax

HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania -- Some people are different in person than they are online. Not Scott Presler. He is as kind, soft-spoken and charismatic in person as he is when he posts about his mission to register voters as Republicans in Pennsylvania. This is true whether he is here at the Farm Show Complex or any of the scores of other events I have run into him attending in the past several years.

Earlier this month, Presler talked to the hunting community at the National Rifle Association's annual Great American Outdoor Show, the largest outdoor show in the country. The event attracted thousands of people from across the country to peruse over 1,000 exhibits, including the newest guns and gear from firearm manufacturers, RVs and fishing boats; it also afforded them time to visit with each other at the food court located inside 650,000 square feet of exhibit hall space.

"We wanted to make sure everybody gets registered to vote, especially noting that 30% of our hunters in Pennsylvania are not registered to vote. And since there are 930,000 hunters, that means 300,000, give or take, could not be registered, so we wanted to make sure we reached them," said Presler.

Given that Pennsylvania has been decided by only tens of thousands of votes the past few elections, Presler said reaching voters who likely share the same sentiments as President Donald Trump on the Second Amendment just makes sense.

"If the hunting community is ever fully activated and all are registered to vote and mobilized, I think Pennsylvania could become a reliably conservative state, not only in federal elections but also in state and local elections," he said.

Presler, who was a force of nature in the 2024 election cycle, almost singlehandedly erased the dominance Democrats had in registration in this state for decades. He has never taken his foot off the gas as he continues his determination to register Republican voters.

"Especially as we enter the 2025 judicial races, as well as the district attorney and sheriff races in the state," said Presler, whose booth for his Early Vote Action PAC was located in the hallway by the food court, attracting many people wanting to both thank him and get engaged.

In 2024, his efforts to register Republican voters helped flip Beaver, Bucks, Centre and Luzerne counties from Democratic to Republican in voter registration.

Democratic voter registration peaked in Pennsylvania during the Obama administration when Democrats outregistered Republicans by over a million voters. At the time, there had been a sign of erosion beginning. Then-Sen. Barack Obama won the state by over 10 percentage points in 2008, and by 2012 that support slipped to just 5.3% over Republican Mitt Romney.

Republicans have erased that voter registration advantage to approximately 187,000, Presler said.

"When the inactive voters are removed from that number, the difference drops to 105,000. ... Our goal is to have Pennsylvania closing in on red by 2026," he said of the midterm election cycle that will include the governor's race.

It is not hard to miss Presler. He is 6 feet, 5 inches tall and often wears cowboy boots, and his hair reaches down his back. People flocked to his Early Vote Action booth to chat with him.

"What we did differently this year is, in addition to getting people to change parties, we got people to sign up to commit to vote. Now, a lot of people were like, Scott, I already voted. And I said, well, thank you so much for your vote last year, but we have judicial elections this year in 2025," he explained.

Presler said those off-year races are especially important for the hunting community.

"I would probably very kindly say they are low-propensity voters, and I stressed to them that those three Supreme Court justices are all held by Democrats, justices who allowed former Gov. Tom Wolf to extend his emergency declaration, which impacted their lives," he said.

"The other thing people aren't really talking about is (the) district attorney races throughout the Commonwealth and 32 sheriff races, and I just want people to know that they need to vote every single year. 2025 is judicial, 2026 is governor, and 2027 is going to be every county commissioner. And then, of course, preparing for presumptive nominee JD Vance in 2028," he said.

"In other words, we've got a lot to do," he said.

========

Salena Zito is a CNN political analyst, and a staff reporter and columnist for the Washington Examiner. She reaches the Everyman and Everywoman through shoe-leather journalism, traveling from Main Street to the beltway and all places in between. To find out more about Salena and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

----

Copyright 2025 Creators Syndicate, Inc.