WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and running mate Tim Walz made a bus tour of southwestern Pennsylvania on Sunday, hoping to ride a wave of enthusiasm for her candidacy ahead of the party’s nominating convention in Chicago this week.
Vice President Harris and Minnesota Governor Waltz, accompanied by their spouses, Doug Emhoff and Gwen Waltz, first visited local volunteers making calls at the elections office in Rochester Borough, Beaver County, a city won by Republican candidate Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
The suspension comes exactly four weeks after President Joe Biden gave up on reelection and endorsed Harris as his successor.
Harris and Waltz sat at a table and made a few phone calls, as did the couple.
“Seventy-nine days to go, Hannah,” Ms. Harris said during the call.
Another time, during a phone call, she said, “We’re all in the same situation.”
Waltz hung up the phone, gave the caller a thumbs up and said, “He’s totally committed.” He called again and asked the caller, “How are you feeling? What are you hearing from everybody?”
Southwestern Pennsylvania is a key part of a key battleground state that has long captured the attention of presidential candidates.
The state voted for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020. Both Harris and Trump are vying to see who can carry Pennsylvania to victory in the Nov. 5 presidential election.
In most opinion polls, New York Times/Siena College Poll and Fox NewsStatewide, Harris and Trump are in a close race.
Trump held a rally in Wilkes-Barre in the northeast part of the state on Saturday, following rallies in July in Harrisburg and Butler, where he survived an assassination attempt.
The bus tour marks Harris’ eighth trip to Pennsylvania this year and his second this month.
The vice president announced Walz as his running mate on August 6, just hours before the two men made their first joint public appearance in Philadelphia later that day.
They arrived with their spouses at Pittsburgh International Airport early Sunday morning to greet supporters.
The four joined hands and raised their arms together in front of supporters holding election posters.
They then boarded a bright blue bus bearing the words “Harris Waltz” in big white letters and headed out to make stops in the Pittsburgh area to shake hands with voters.
“This is a very important state traditionally, but southwestern Pennsylvania really is a battleground state within a battleground state,” said Christine Kantak, an associate professor of political science at the University of Pittsburgh.
Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, is a diverse county with urban, suburban and rural areas, and many people there are undecided about how to vote, she said.
“It makes sense for me to come here and ask for your vote because the vote is at stake here,” Kantak said of Harris. “It’s not about rallying supporters. It’s about having an opportunity to speak to voters who are really undecided.”
In the 2020 election, Biden won Allegheny County with 60% of the vote, while Trump won about 58% of the vote in neighboring Beaver County, which includes Rochester.
After Trump’s surprise victory in the state in 2016, Biden flipped Pennsylvania in 2020 and won the White House, in part by boosting his vote share in Pittsburgh, the state’s second-largest city, the county seat of Allegheny County and a heavily Democratic stronghold.
Biden has been an active contributor to local blue-collar unions, kicking off his 2020 presidential campaign by declaring “I’m a union man” at a Pittsburgh Teamsters Hall.
As president, he opposed a Japanese takeover of Pittsburgh’s prestigious U.S. Steel, saying it “should remain a fully American company,” and he raised tariffs on Chinese-made steel.
Trump is counting on high turnout among his base of support, white working-class voters, and has no intention of conceding the area.
The counties surrounding Pittsburgh have flipped from Democrat to Republican in recent presidential elections and carried Trump in his two previous elections.
Trump also supports protectionist trade policies and claims to be pro-worker. His pledge to boost U.S. energy production and to “dig, drill, drill” has resonated with Washington state and other blue-collar counties in southwestern Pennsylvania, where a natural gas drilling boom has made the state the nation’s second-largest producer after Texas.
Harris previously wanted to ban fracking, an oil and gas extraction law, but recently backed away from her previous position.
Dana Brown, director of the Pennsylvania Center for Women and Politics at Chatham University, said in an interview that Harris will use the bus trip to reach out to voters in the southwestern part of the state “while there’s still a lot of momentum” and boost local media coverage.
“She’s going to get a lot of free media attention,” Brown said. “I believe their hope is to keep that momentum going and focus more on her than on her rivals.”
Bus tours have become a staple of political campaigns, thanks in part to the free media coverage they provide.
These trips allow candidates to ditch their power suits and leave Washington behind, traveling around the country to meet with voters face-to-face in smaller venues like restaurants and mom-and-pop shops.
In December 2019, Biden toured Iowa on an eight-day bus tour he called “No Malachy.”
During his 2012 reelection campaign, President Barack Obama toured small towns in Ohio on his “Bet on America” bus tour.
“It’s been great for me to just be away from Washington and interact with the people,” Obama said during one visit.
Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton also traveled by bus while campaigning for their second terms.
The Democratic National Convention begins on Monday.
