But the local and state-wide races up and down the ballot potentially impact day-to-day life to a greater degree.

County Democrats heard from those candidates are Saturday’s Grassroots Gathering and Grill event at Larimer Park in Russell.

Malcolm Kenyatta (auditor general), Eugene DePasquale (attorney general) and Erin McClelland (treasurer) spoke along with Erin William (state representative), Zach Womer (Representative in Congress) and County Commissioner Dan Glotz.

“I feel a great sense of what it truly means to be an American,” Kenyatta said. “We are absolutely not going back.”

Pictured is Aaron Stearns, chair of the Warren County Democratic Party. He spoke to county Democrats Saturday during a Grassroots Gathering and Grill event at Larimer Park in Russell.

He said that the party has candidates “who don’t just pay lip service to working folks and working families.”

Kenyatta said the role of auditor general is to be a “watchdog for the underdogs,” ensuring “nobody is stealing your money” and monitoring the outcomes of investments made with those dollars (roads, bridges, schools, etc.).

“If we’re not getting that from the government, we have to fix it,” he said. “We have to have someone with the guts to stand up to big systems to demand that the government actually work.”

DePasquale, who has served as auditor general, is now seeking the role of attorney general.

He outlined family experience with addiction.

Pictured is Eugene DePasquale, Democratic candidate for attorney general. He spoke to county Democrats Saturday during a Grassroots Gathering and Grill event at Larimer Park in Russell.

“I’ve seen both sides of the criminal justice system,” he said. “As your attorney general, I know what happens in rural Pennsylvania.”

He also said that he would protect reproductive freedom both for women in Pennsylvania and those in other states with more restrictive laws.

“We cannot win without you,” he said, outlining an electoral strategy — racking up numbers where Democrats will win in Pennsylvania and lowering the margins where they will not.

“I believe each one of us has a message that sells beyond party,” he said.

Erin McClelland attacked Treasurer Stacy Garrity’s investments as well as raising a perceived lack of concern about cyber security.

“She politicizes your treasury,” she said, calling Garrity an “insurrectionist and election denier.”

“Right now in Harrisburg you have lap dogs that serve nothing more than the Republican Party,” McClelland added. “You need watchdogs that serve the working people of Pennsylvania.”

Willman said she has been “going to different people and listen to their thoughts and concerns about what they think their community needs.

“To me they all seem very common sense,” she said, raising nursing staffing issues, education funds and small business support.

“Your voice is a powerful thing and I have been listening to it,” she said. “For the first time in 20 years you have a choice on who you want to represent you.”

Womer criticized the amount of money that Congressman Glenn Thompson has returned to the 15th Congressional District.

“He has the power to transform the life of this community,” he said of Thompson. “He has the power to improve it. … He has the power to do more for you and he doesn’t do it.”

Womer promised that, if elected, he would “spend every single day interacting with the district, trying to advance legislation that will make life better” and not engage with lobbyists.

It’s a divisive political moment and Glotz highlighted that this board of county commissioners – himelf and two Republicans — has “made it a point to work together.”

He said the commissioner will be holding events throughout the county in October aimed at making residents more aware of services that are available to them.

That information sharing is “something that we feel is really, really needed.”