ERIE, Pa. — Kamala Harris will rally voters in Erie County on Monday, a bellwether with a knack for predicting who will win Pennsylvania, reflecting the results of this key battleground state in the last four elections.
The Democratic vice president's campaign trip this week in a trio of northern battlegrounds that could make or break his hopes of defeating former Republican President Donald Trump next month.
Former President Barack Obama comfortably won Erie County in 2008 and 2012, when Pennsylvania was blue; Trump then won by less than 2 points in his successful 2016 campaign, before President Joe Biden returned to just 1 point in 2020 when he ousted Trump.
“Pennsylvania is like a smaller version of America,” said Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, who carried the county by 9 percentage points in his 2022 Senate victory. “And Erie is like a smaller version of Pennsylvania.”
The county is located along Lake Erie in northwestern Pennsylvania, above eastern Ohio and New York. Its average income is lower than the national average, as is the share of people with higher education, according to Census Bureau data.
“I truly believe Erie is the premier county in Pennsylvania. Definitely top five in the country,” Fetterman said, citing the mix of urban and rural areas. “If you can’t sell it in Erie, it’s going to be very difficult to sell it throughout Pennsylvania.”
Fetterman won the state by garnering the most votes in metropolitan areas and narrowing his margin of defeat in red-leaning rural areas. Now, he's trying to help Harris do the same. While Obama and Gov. Josh Shapiro met Thursday in Pittsburgh, Fetterman visited Red County to plead the case on his behalf.
He emphasized that defeating Trump here will not be easy.
“Trump has a unique and special connection (to rural Pennsylvania), which is why it will be incredibly difficult,” Fetterman said, adding that rural counties are filled with pro-Trump signs. “It’s like a Taylor Swift concert where you have so much swing that it goes beyond a normal kind of politics.”
It will be a busy week for Harris in three swing states often called the “blue wall” – Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – that he is expected to win, as polls indicate competitive Sun Belt states that Biden narrowly wins in 2020. like Arizona and Nevada, hard work for him.
“With just three weeks until Election Day, Vice President Harris and Governor Walz are leaving it all on the field – covering the battlegrounds with an aggressive campaign schedule this week, particularly across the Blue Wall,” said one Harris employee via email.
In addition to returning to Pennsylvania midweek, the official said, Harris will also make stops in Detroit, Grand Rapids, Lansing and Oakland counties in Michigan, as well as Milwaukee, La Crosse and Green Bay in Wisconsin.
Harris cannot afford to fall behind among black voters. Tuesday's stop in Detroit will feature radio host Charlemagne Tha God as he seeks to unite black men — a demographic Obama has been sounding the alarm about when he campaigned for Harris in Pennsylvania last week.
“We still haven’t seen the same kind of energy and participation in all parts of our neighborhoods and communities as we did when we were running,” he said Thursday, at a stop before a rally in the Pittsburgh area. “Now, I would also like to say that it seems more obvious with brothers.”
Governor of Minnesota. Tim Walz, the vice presidential candidate, will campaign in Wisconsin and western Pennsylvania this week, Harris officials said. And he will stop in Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District, which includes Omaha, and hold an electoral vote that could be crucial for Harris if the Sun Belt breaks for Trump.
The Trump campaign is looking to capitalize on a new wave that suggests Harris' lead is shrinking. That's a memo released Sunday's headline, “Is the Orange Campaign Failing?”
“What happened to all of Harris’ alleged motions? Frankly, this didn't really exist outside of July,” Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio and campaign managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles wrote.
Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg said Harris should work to limit the margin of defeat in rural areas. But he warned that it would be extremely difficult to change the party's fortunes there, especially with the decline of local newspapers and the rise of “information silos” since Obama's two campaigns.
“It was Hillary Clinton who fell. And I think it's smart for (Harris) to campaign everywhere and have Walz everywhere,” she said. in California. It's not the place.
To offset any losses in rural areas, Harris' campaign is seeking to court Nikki Haley's Republican primary voters, who are largely concentrated in well-educated suburbs and could help Harris grow her coalition and improve Biden's margin in 2020. .
“I think people in these suburbs — Nikki Haley’s people — are very uncomfortable with Trump, uncomfortable with all of his craziness — and we have such a big inauguration,” said Paulette Aniscoff, Harris’ top Pennsylvania adviser. “And I think they’re hearing that from their own friends. They hear us knocking on the door. They're listening to Liz Cheney. … These things — they really add up and we feel like they’re coming our way.”
What about red areas and small towns?
“The most important thing is to listen to these people and not calm them down. We train our people to do that,” Aniskopf said, referring to the campaign’s field program. “It keeps everything human, but also allows us to really understand what they think.”
Fetterman said Harris doesn't need to win rural Pennsylvania — to get her 19 electoral votes — just by a smaller margin.
“Sometimes it’s not about turning these counties blue. You're not going to change the culture of rural Pennsylvania county. It’s about reaching accessible people,” he said. “I would be surprised if he won by 3 points. He will win Pennsylvania, but I hope it's closer than that.
