Boser Hits the Campaign Trail in Centre County

Related: Thompson Set for a Different Re-election Campaign

Susan Boser is busy making the rounds campaigning for a seat in the 15th Congressional District. 

From town halls and parades to multiple meetings, the professor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania has been out there talking to the people. She recently was in Centre County to check out Ag Progress Days. She said she loved the atmosphere, as it really left here feeling connected to her rural roots, having grown up in a small town in New York, near the Pennsylvania border.

Boser said small town values are important to her and it is something she hopes to fight to preserve if she is elected to Congress. The first-time political candidate said she has seen how small towns in the region are struggling with young people leaving because they can’t find jobs that pay enough money unless they move to a big city. She said small towns are something worth fighting for.

“The small-town way of life is something that is incredibly precious and valuable to me,’ said Boser. ‘I have lived in a small town pretty much my entire life and I have found that the connections, the lifelong connections, the sense of history, the sense of rootedness, the supports that you develop matter enormously to me as a way of life.

“To me, small-town life is a strong and beautiful part of who we are as Americans. There are lots of different ways to live, but I think that’s a valuable one and worth preserving and fighting for.”

With a career spent working in social work administration and policy and then teaching social policy at IUP after attending Cornell University for graduate school as an adult with children, Boser threw her name in the political ring when the Republican incumbent in the old 12th District was set to retire and she saw no Democrats stepping up to challenge for the position.

Boser had become more politically active after attending the Women’s March in Washington, D.C., and she joined a group committed to elect women to political office. When they were looking at the U.S. Congress position, they were unable to find a candidate to run, so Boser started digging into it more, and she realized that she had the necessary tools to be a successful candidate.

“I started looking at the things I do bring, in term of my background in policy in particular, my understanding of how policy can work, as an intermediary, balancing the needs of business with the needs of the citizens so that both can benefit,” said Boser. “I looked at that, I thought ‘OK, if nobody else is, I can do this’ and at least raise the level of conversation, provide an alternative possibility for debates, so I did start campaigning in Somerset County and in Blair County, and then the districts got switched.”

Months out from the primary, the districts changed and she had a tough choice as she would now be up against incumbent Republican Congressman Glenn “GT” Thompson  if she won the primary. Going against an established incumbent in a “20-point Republican District,” Boser said she was counseled that her campaign was a “fool’s errand.” But, she decided to continue to run  in order to provide another voice.

“It wasn’t just about could I get the position, but rather could I put pressure into the race, could I educate voters?’ said Boser. ‘Could I engage Democrats and Independents in being proactive and seeking to choose consciously someone who actually met what their interests were, who could respond to the interests of the 15th?  Because, I have questions about that, given the things I have been seeing change over the years. I wanted to give them another option, so I decided to run.

“And, then the darndest thing happened. There is energy out there, a lot of energy, and I hadn’t anticipated it. I have come to believe that this is a winnable race and I am not alone in thinking that.

“People are finding me to be competent, because of my career and the fact that I come from a very modest beginning. I know what it is like to struggle, I know what it like to have difficulty making ends meet, I know what it is like to live paycheck to paycheck, because I’ve been there. Human services does not pay well, and I’ve worked in factories, I’ve worked in fields, so I get it, and I respect the people, and I have a plan for how we could improve their lives.”

To help the small towns that she feels so passionately about, Boser feels that investing in developing a better infrastructure to support smaller communities would go a long way toward making small towns a viable place for new businesses. 

“I think it is the responsibility of government, Congress in particular, state government as well, to be looking at the economic structural conditions and be working to improve opportunities for job development in the rural area, and that hasn’t happened. While there has been progress in parts of the nations, ironically, typically Democratic districts such as the suburbs around Pittsburgh, it has not extended to the rural areas.’

And, Boser said the first step would be providing rural communities with access to high-speed broadband Internet, something she said is necessary for small businesses to make it in today’s world.  She said that many people don’t realize how big the issue is.

“If you drive into Punxsutawney on a weeknight during the school year, you are going to see cars parked in the McDonald’s parking lot. They drive in with the kids so they can access the free Internet so the kids can download their homework,” said Boser. “That is not just that area. That is the whole district. That’s 14 counties.”

She said high-speed Internet is needed for businesses to provide education, training, banking, marketing, shopping and sales. Not having access prevents new business from coming in and people starting their own small businesses. She said that the big telecoms are not putting the infrastructure into small towns because there is not enough profit to be made, and she feels that rural energy electrification co-ops could do the work of laying the cables and providing the access.

She also feels traditional infrastructure projects could improve access to small towns and make them more enticing to business. She said small roads and non-direct routes sometimes leave smaller towns blocked off from industry, and that the government can help make them more accessible with better infrastructure projects.

She also would like to encourage business with low-cost loans for small local business development.

“We have entrepreneurs, we have ideas and there are possibilities, but the interest rates on loans are high,” said Boser.

She also said that health care is tied into the problem, leaving potential entrepreneurs stuck in jobs because they do not want to lose their employer-provided health care. Boser would like to work toward a universal health care system. The first step is to fix some of the broken pieces of the Affordable Care Act, she said.

“I’ll tell you there are 10 other countries — highly developed, westernized countries — in the world, such as Japan, France, Sweden, Canada, that have health care costs that are less than half of what we pay. And of the 11, we are 11th in heath care outcomes. And, the difference is that they have universal systems — single-payer systems — where as ours is employer-based, insurance-based care. It is not good quality for everybody. And I believe in progress for all, but nor are we getting the best outcomes. We are paying too much it on top of that.

“First of all, we need to shore up some of the damage that was done to the Affordable Care Act. While it certainly has its problems, the fact is that it also brought millions of people under insurance and people where able to get care they never had,” said Boser. “It is going to take some time to get to a universal system, but I think it is absolutely doable. I think we use as models what is being done in different counties.”

Having grown up in dairy country, Boser said she feels strongly about helping a dairy industry that is suffering. She said that too much of our large agriculture bounty, such as milk, is shipped out of the state to be processed.

“We have lots of dairy farmers from right here in Centre County over through the north central part of this district that had contracts with Deans Foods and are in significant trouble when the contract was ended. Pennsylvania is grossly underdeveloped in terms of food product processing, agricultural product processing, particularly in the dairy industry,” said Boser.

She said Gov. Tom Wolf has some plans to encourage large dairy product producers to come into the state, but she wants to work to make it more accessible for small producers to set up shop right here in Pennsylvania. She cites Vale Wood Farms, a small dairy in Loretto that makes its own milk into cheese and other products, as an example of what is possible when a small farm has the tools it needs to process its own products.

With Pennsylvania’s long history as an energy producer, another area she would like to see an improvement in is renewable energy production.

“There are absolutely opportunities in renewable energy available right now that we are not tapping into. That is another area where I would want to offer seed money, low-cost loans, technical support to tap into the opportunities in renewable energies,” said Boser.
Boser has stayed busy at town halls and meetings working to convince small-town residents that she is like them and has their best interests at heart. She said she believes she is getting her message across and she is feeling better and better about her chances as she goes along.

When she first started campaigning in McKean County, she had heard that people in small rural towns didn’t feel safe in identifying themselves as Democrats.

“They would register as Republican because they felt their jobs could be in jeopardy or they could be at risk of not being hired if they were identified publicly as Democrats. I was stunned by that, that in this day and age that people don’t feel free to have a voice for their ideas and their own political views. The first time I went up there to speak there were seven or eight people there and that was all,” said Boser.

“What has happened in the months since then is there has been energy building.” Right before the primary, she attended a town hall in the same county, and it drew a much a larger crowd of 50 to 60 people.

“If you had told me in February that I would see that in Smethport in Pennsylvania, I would have told you that you were dreaming. And it is growing,” said Boser. She is hoping that dream continues to grow, leading to a win in November.