JOHNSTOWN, Pa. – A Johnstown-area Republican political figure had an influence on changing President-elect Donald Trump’s long-held hostility toward early voting methods, a recent TIME Magazine story says.
Rob Gleason, of Westmont, was mentioned in the magazine’s long Dec. 12 “Person of the Year” cover story about Trump, but the single paragraph highlighted Gleason’s clout with the GOP.
“Trump listened (to his top advisers), but it took a visit from Rob Gleason, a former chair of the Pennsylvania Republican Party, to frame the matter in terms that made him agree,” TIME staff writer Eric Cortellessa wrote.
The TIME story says: “ ‘Sir, your people are so excited to vote for you that they want to as soon as they can,’ Gleason told (Trump) during an April meeting at Mar-a-Lago, according to two Trump officials familiar with the conversation. ‘They don’t want to wait. But you gotta tell them it’s OK. You gotta give them permission.’ From then on, Trump promoted absentee and early voting, and directed the RNC to launch a mobilization drive targeting mail voters.”
It was a break from the stance Trump took on early voting as president from 2017 to 2021, especially after he lost the 2020 election. Trump left the White House claiming the election was rigged in favor of now-President Joe Biden, a Democrat.
Trump’s former messaging against mail balloting started months before voting began in the 2020 race, according to The Associated Press. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Democrats were much more likely than Republicans to cast ballots by mail. And when Biden won, Trump asserted that fraudulent mail ballots and early voting cost him the election.
When Trump stopped vilifying mail ballots and early in-person voting, news agencies drew attention to the way he began encouraging his supporters to use those methods.
For a year before that visit from Gleason, Trump’s top advisers had argued that discouraging voters from using mail-in ballots could cost him the 2024 election, as it had for other Republican candidates who had disparaged early voting methods since 2020.
Political legacy
Not only is Gleason the former chair of the Pennsylvania Republican Party, he is currently the Westmont Hilltop School Board president and chairman of the Westmont Hilltop Recreation Commission.
For Gleason, “local politics are the backbone of our democracy,” he has often said.
Hours after casting an electoral vote for Trump in the 60th Electoral College in Harrisburg on Tuesday, he was shopping with his wife in Richland Township.
On the phone with The Tribune-Democrat, he stepped away from talking about the big project he’s working on as chairman of the Westmont Hilltop Recreation Commission – a proposed center in the West Hills area – to talk instead about his visits to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s permanent residence in Florida.
“It was a surprise to see the TIME story,” he said. “I never talk to anyone about discussions with the president. I don’t know how … there was no one else in the room when we talked about that.”
‘Stepping up’ for Trump
Gleason said he befriended Trump while helping him clinch his first term as president in 2016. At that time, Gleason was serving what would be his final year of a decade as the Pennsylvania Republican Party chairman.
The Gleason political legacy stretches back decades in Pennsylvania and Cambria County. Gleason’s father, Robert A. “Rob” Gleason Sr., chaired the county GOP from November 1949 until August 1996, making him the longest-serving GOP county chairman in the nation.
Gleason Jr. then held the same Cambria County post from August 1996 until March 2011. The retired insurance executive then helmed the state party for a decade before stepping away after Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016.
“It was the Republican Party in Pennsylvania that pushed him over the top,” Gleason said. “I got all the credit for winning Pennsylvania for Trump in 2016, and I think he felt good about that. He respected my political abilities for winning Pennsylvania. I led the charge that elected him.”
Trump rallied in cities across Pennsylvania – including Johnstown – in 2016.
“I was probably the first state chairman who stepped up for him,” Gleason said. “A lot of people didn’t want him then. In 2016, he didn’t have a team. He was new.”
Four years later, many on his team had jumped ship. Trump had been twice impeached, the second impeachment coming in the final days of his term, charged with “incitement of insurrection” over the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Multiple criminal indictments followed that impeachment, as well as a separate hush-money case related to the 2016 election.
‘Proud to do it’
“Trump was shunned by most party officials when he announced his candidacy in late 2022 amid multiple criminal investigations,” the TIME story said. “Little more than a year later, Trump cleared the Republican field, clinching one of the fastest contested presidential primaries in history.”
Even as Trump sat in a courtroom for six weeks during the general election, and was convicted of crimes connected to the 2016 election and an alleged hush-money payment to a woman who said the two had sex, he went on to beat the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump is fighting to overturn his hush money conviction, and attempts to federally prosecute him in other cases have been abandoned as longstanding Justice Department policy says sitting presidents cannot face criminal prosecution.
Electors gathered in statehouses across the nation Tuesday to cast ballots in the Electoral College for Trump. The action precedes the scheduled Jan. 6 joint session of Congress during which electoral votes cast for president and vice president are officially counted and winners declared.
Trump and his running mate, Vice President-elect JD Vance, will take the oath of office at noon Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, at the Capitol in Washington, D.C.
In Pennsylvania, Gleason was among the Republican Party’s 19 certified electors casting their ballots in the Electoral College for Trump. Electors for both candidates in an election are chosen by their respective state political parties. The winning candidate’s electors cast votes during a ceremony.
“It was a nice ceremony,” Gleason said. “I consider it part of history to do it.”
Pennsylvania’s electors of the 60th Electoral College, including Gleason, joined the 1,635 electors before them who fulfilled their duties to the Electoral College.
“As a friend of Trump, to cast a vote for him to make him officially the president of the United States was very satisfying,” Gleason said. “I was proud to do it. I’ve been a longtime supporter of his through the beating he took over the last few years from people who didn’t like him and the trumped-up court cases he went through. He was persecuted for the last eight years, and he’s been completely vindicated.”
Visiting Mar-a-Lago
Trump became the first Republican to win the popular vote in 20 years, leaving Democrats “reckoning with what went awry,” the TIME story said.
The TIME story noted two decisions Trump made within a month that were critical to his election. One of them was to broaden his base by saying he would leave abortion rights to the states rather than enact a federal ban.
“Trump made another fateful decision: to end his crusade against vote by mail and early voting,” the TIME story said.
Up until 2020, Republicans were at least as likely as Democrats to vote by mail, which provides an advantage to campaigns because it lets them “bank” unreliable votes before Election Day and lowers the risk of turnout plummeting because of bad weather or other unpredictable factors at the polls, according to The Associated Press.
As the 2024 election took shape, it was projected as likely to be decided by razor-thin margins in a handful of swing states, and Trump’s advisers argued it would be self-defeating for Trump to continue opposing mail ballots, the TIME story said.
Incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles wrote Trump a memo showing data on how spurning mail ballots cost Republicans in a series of razor-thin races in 2022. Trump’s political director, James Blair, and Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, whom he had handpicked as co-chair of the Republican National Committee, also urged Trump to encourage early voting, the TIME piece said before introducing Gleason.
Gleason told The Tribune-Democrat that when he takes winter vacations in Florida, he often calls to ask if he can visit Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach.
“I would call to ask if I can visit with him, and we’d talk about politics,” Gleason said. “Last April, I went to Boca Raton and he’s up in West Palm, so I went into Mar-a-Lago, just him and I, and we chatted about politics and the election coming up.
“It was public knowledge that he thought mail ballots did him in in 2020,” Gleason said. “But I knew they were here to stay, so I said, ‘You should consider’ – because you don’t ‘tell’ him what to do – and I gave him reasons why and that rang a bell, and he won.”
With Trump’s encouragement, Republicans flocked to the polls for in-person voting ahead of Election Day. Early turnout broke records in swing states such as Georgia and North Carolina, The Associated Press reported in October, after early voting opened. Reports as of Nov. 6 said Republican, Democratic and independent voters nationwide returned more than 85 million advance ballots – mailed and in-person.
Gleason said it’s hard to say how much of an impact mail ballots had on Trump’s win.
“His embracing mail-in ballots, technically, was a good thing, but he won the election because he’s Donald Trump,” Gleason said. “He has a strong personality and the things he wanted, people wanted.”
Hopeful for Johnstown
After talking with The Tribune-Democrat about helping Trump, Gleason switched to updates on some things he and the Westmont Hilltop Recreation Commission are working on.
“All politics is local,” Gleason said. “You’re only as strong nationally as you are locally. The local strength gives you any clout you have nationally. I’ve never forgotten where I came from.”
Although Johnstown has long been experiencing population loss and economic struggles typical of a Rust Belt town, Gleason has been encouraged by recent movement to connect Johnstown to major metropolitan areas through increased passenger trains and new development at John Murtha Johnstown-Cambria County Airport.
“My hopes have turned more positive in the past few years,” Gleason said. “I’m feeling hopeful that I can use my connections with Trump to help us do good things in Johnstown, for example, with the railroad and airport.
“Politics can make a quick change in your community. It’s easier said than done, but at least I have an avenue where I can go see the president. I’m really invested in seeing this stuff happen.”
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