Hellertown, Pennsylvania. – A country club crowd of about 150 Republican supporters and donors gathered here at the Steele Club, munching on barbecue ribs and drinking glasses of Chardonnay and lemonade.
Just one floor up, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., sat in a quiet conference room and detailed how Republicans would increase their majority in the House and return to the White House and Senate: capturing a larger percentage of Hispanic, black and Jewish voters than in the last elections also compared to unionized workers.
“When we do the math on the other side of this election, it shows that we are going to have a demographic shift,” Johnson said in an exclusive interview with NBC News before a campaign event in Hellertown.
“I think we will have a record number of Hispanic and Latino voters. I think there are record numbers of black and African-American voters, Jewish voters, union voters. I’m talking to all these people,” he continued. “And they’re not just reluctantly getting on board; They are excited.”
The 52-year-old speaker campaigned in more than 220 cities across 40 states, including a stop in the Keystone State last week. In the final three weeks before Election Day, he will visit another 65 cities in 24 states as Republicans seek to attract new voters to protect or increase their three-seat House majority.
Even GOP nominee Donald Trump frequently deploys anti-immigrant rhetoric and racial attacks about Vice President Kamala Harris, recent polls show her party's support is declining among some of these reliably Democratic voting blocs – and Republicans say they are ready to capitalize.
UM NBC News/Telemundo/CNBC Poll Last month, Harris led Trump nationally by 54% to 40%, or 14 percentage points, among Latino voters, below the 36-point lead for Democrats in the 2020 presidential race and from a 50-point lead in 2016.
UM New York Times/Siena College Polls released over the weekend showed that Harris still enjoys a large lead over Trump among black voters, but that number has also declined slightly. About 80% of likely Black voters supported the vice president, down from 90% who backed Joe Biden in 2020. About 15% said they would vote for Trump in November, up from 9% four years ago, the poll showed.
Asked for comment, Harris' campaign referred to a memo to reporters on Sunday that rejected Republican Party suggestions that support for the vice president was declining among major groups. They're a standout CBS poll that showed Harris' support among Latinos was 63%, roughly in line with Biden's standing in 2020. The same poll also found Harris leading Trump 87% to 12% among voters blacks, matching Biden's lead among the main voting blocs in exit polls.
Trump and Republicans hope to see a large turnout from their base of white, non-college-educated, working-class voters. But they also see the opportunity to win over pockets of Jewish voters in battleground states like Nevada and Pennsylvania, who have felt alienated by liberal anti-Israel protests following the deadly Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, 2023 and Israel's subsequent war in Gaza.
Johnson said he spoke to a standing-room-only crowd at an event commemorating the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks in Las Vegas. “They had Trump’s name on their red yarmulkes,” he said.
Republicans are also working to align themselves with unionized workers. Johnson pointed to the firefighters union's decision this month Not supporting Harris or Trump Union support for Democrats is waning as proof; The International Association of Firefighters is the first union to support Biden in 2020 The Teamsters also refused to support This is the first presidential election cycle in decades.
“I’m not 100% sure that all of this fully registered in the national vote, and we’ve all learned not to make a big deal out of it,” Johnson said in the interview. “But I can tell from what I'm seeing on the ground — and it's not just the red states, it's the blue states — that something is happening. And I am confident that we will win the House, the White House and the Senate.”
220 cities, 40 states
At the rally, Trump and Johnson blamed Harris for high commodity prices and the failure to secure the border — two key issues for voters — even as inflation fell significantly during the Biden-Harris administration and Trump helped nullify a bipartisan border agreement. in the Senate.
“It’s a real drain on their base,” Johnson said of Democrats. “And the reason for that is because I think people are really looking beyond the party, beyond the personality. I think they're looking at policies because they're evaluating what their lives are like now compared to what they were four years ago.”
Moments later, under the command of the Steele Club, Johnson spoke to voters again about the “true, real and, I hope, lasting demographic change” that would give the Republicans victory.
It's a message the speaker is sharing to a room full of Republican donors and party faithful as he attacks battleground Pennsylvania and the nation in the final race of the 2024 campaign.
Much of his campaign time has been spent in battleground districts in California and New York, blue states where his party is defending a dozen seats and trying to win a handful of others. The majority could win or lose either of these two states, depending on how divided the House is. But Pennsylvania could also be critical, boasting a handful of close races in swing districts.
A test for new speakers
Driven from obscurity Johnson will complete a year as speaker of the House on October 25, his second in command following the surprise ouster of Kevin McCarthy. There were questions about whether he could raise campaign money like McCarthy, one of the party's biggest fundraisers. Johnson will be very conservative as Fitzpatrick campaigns in 18 GOP-controlled districts won by Biden in 2020.
But within a year, he resolved many of these issues.
“We had to get out of the disaster zone that was the House Republican Conference after Kevin was removed, rebuild it, rebuild relationships, and then immediately I had to hit the road to perform and build relationships with major donors. classes across the country under very challenging conditions,” Johnson told NBC News.
Johnson and his affiliated super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, have raised a combined total of $266 million for House Republicans this cycle. He raised more than $27 million for his campaign committees and independent candidates in the third quarter ending in September. 30 – The most raised by a Republican Party spokesperson in the third quarter of a presidential election year, the spokesperson's team said on Monday.
Between the loss of Hurricane Helen in North Carolina and the tendency to do business from home — watching and doing coin flips with his family at the LSU-Ole Miss football game — Johnson made several campaign stops throughout Pennsylvania on Thursday and Friday.
At the Steele Club, Johnson fired into the crowd at a rally for state Rep. Ryan McKenzie, R-Pa. Awaiting removal Weak Democratic Rep. Susan Wild. He also campaigned with businessman Rob Bresnahan, who is running against Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright, and state Rep. Rob Mercuri, who is challenging Democratic Rep. Chris Deluzio.
And Johnson was stumped by risky Republican nominees on opposite ends of the GOP convention: Troubleshooter co-chair Brian Fitzpatrick, a moderate, and former Freedom Caucus chairman Scott Perry, a conservative. He ended the long day by joining Rep. Lloyd Smucker at a fundraising dinner for Lancaster County Republicans.
Democrats are also heavily concentrated in Pennsylvania, with three key House leaders and Harris' campaign making stops here in recent weeks. Campaigning a short distance away in Allentown the same week, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar of California said it's important to recognize that Latinos in America don't all have the same experiences and don't all vote the same way. manner.
“The Latino community is not a monolith. Not everyone thinks the same way or goes in the same direction,” Aguilar told NBC News at the Dominican restaurant El Tablazo, talking about how Harris and Democrats have helped the Latino community through things like homeownership programs. and reducing prescription drug prices.
“South Florida is very different from South Texas and Southern Arizona and Southern California or Allentown, Pennsylvania,” Aguilar added. “What unites us is our determination, hard work and perseverance and the desire to build a better life for our children. That, I think, is the central tenet of the Latino community.”
