WASHINGTON (AP) — The Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and running companion Tim Walls He will be campaigning by bus in southwestern Pennsylvania on Sunday, hoping to ride the wave of excitement his candidacy has brought to the presidential race. Nominating convention of their party This week in Chicago.
Vice President Harris and Minnesota Governor Walls will join their spouses, Doug Emhoff and Gwen Walls, to shake hands with voters as they hop on and off buses in the Pittsburgh area.
Harris and Emhoff were scheduled to deliver remarks at an event in Rochester, Beaver County. Donald TrumpThe Republican presidential nominee won in 2020, although he lost the general election to a Democrat. Joe Biden.
Southwestern Pennsylvania is an important part of a key battleground state that has long attracted the attention of presidential candidates. The state voted for the Republican presidential candidate in 2016 and the Democratic candidate in 2020. Both Harris and Trump are competing on who can put Pennsylvania in their column on Nov. 5.
Most polls incl New York Times/Siena College Poll And Fox NewsFind out Harris and Trump are in a tight race across the state.
Trump held a rally in Wilkes-Barre on Saturday In the northeastern part of the state, following his earlier rallies in Harrisburg and Butler in July, he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt.
The bus trip was Harris’ eighth trip to Pennsylvania and his second this month. August 6 announcement by the Vice President The ticket came just hours before their first joint appearance in Philadelphia, where Walls would be his partner.
“It’s traditionally a very important state, but southwestern Pennsylvania has really been a battleground part of the battleground state,” said Christine Kantak, 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 who are undecided about how they will vote, he said.
“It makes sense to come here and ask for votes because the votes are available here,” Kantak said of Harris. “It’s not just about changing your platform. It’s about having the opportunity to speak to a truly undecided voter.
In the 2020 race, Biden won Allegheny County with 60% of the vote, while Trump won neighboring Beaver County, which includes Rochester, with 58% of the vote.
After Trump’s surprise victory in the state in 2016, Biden flipped Pennsylvania in 2020 — and, in doing so, won the White House — in part by boosting his vote in Democratic Pittsburgh, the state’s second-largest city. County seat of Allegheny County.
Biden has enthusiastically reached out to the region’s blue-collar unions, announcing his 2020 presidential campaign at the Teamsters Hall in Pittsburgh saying, “I’m a union man.” As president, he opposed the takeover of Pittsburgh’s storied American Steel by a Japanese company, saying it “must remain an American company,” and enacted steep tariffs on Chinese steel.
Biden dropped his re-election bid It bid last month and endorsed Harris as his replacement on the ticket.
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Trump, who counts on a strong base of white, working-class voters, has not conceded that area. Districts around Pittsburgh have swung from Democratic to Republican, with Trump winning both of his previous runs in the recent presidential election.
Trump has also embraced protectionist trade policies and insists he is pro-labor. His vow to boost U.S. energy production and “drill, baby, drill” resonated in southwestern Pennsylvania blue-collar counties like Washington, where a natural gas drilling boom has helped make Pennsylvania the nation’s No. 2 producer behind Texas. Harris once wanted to ban fracking, the process of extracting oil and gas, and recently retracted his previous stance.
Dana Brown, director of the Pennsylvania Center for Women and Politics at Chatham University, said in an interview that Harris will use the bus tour to reach voters in the southwest region of the state. Rotate local media coverage.
“He’s going to get that free media attention,” Brown said. “I believe their belief is correct, to pick up that momentum and focus on her and less on her opponent.”
Bus tours have become a staple of political campaigns because of the free media coverage they generate. Such trips get candidates out of their power suits and out of Washington so they can travel the country and score face-to-face with voters in small venues like diners and mom-and-pop shops.
Biden rolled across Iowa Eight days bus journey He called it “no malarkey” in December 2019.
During his 2012 re-election campaign, President Barack Obama toured small-town Ohio on his “Betting on America” bus tour.
“It’s always fun to be out in Washington, and it’s wonderful to meet people,” Obama said during a stop.
Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton traveled by bus while campaigning for a second term.
The Democratic National Convention begins Monday.
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Associated Press writers Michael Rubingham in northeastern Pennsylvania and Lynley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.
