Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and running mate Tim Walz gave pep talks to campaign volunteers and a high school football team Sunday, with their bus tour in a corner of Pennsylvania serving as a modest, small-town version of the grand rally she's expected to have at the Democratic nominating convention in Chicago this week.
Vice President Harris and Walz, the governor of Minnesota, were joined by their spouses, Doug Emhoff and Gwen Walz, as they toured in a blue bus. They stopped off to visit volunteers at a campaign office not far from Pittsburgh before continuing on to a firehouse and a high school in another town, along with a pilgrimage to a Sheetz convenience store, part of a storied Pennsylvania chain.
Throughout their stops, Harris and her running mate shied away from policy or much politics, instead sticking to broad-strokes messages focused on character, perseverance and the future of the country.
Harris, while speaking to a group of supporters and volunteers outside the campaign office in the borough of Rochester, spoke about strength and leadership. She appeared to make a veiled reference to former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, who is known for his pugilistic style and projection of a strongman image, when she said the “real and true measure of a strength of a leader is based on who you lift up,” rather than who they beat down.
“Anybody who is about beating down other people is a coward,” she yelled, drawing cheers and applause. “This is what strength looks like.”
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Walz in his remarks seemed to assume the role of his former job coaching high school football and told the volunteers: “Let’s leave it all on the field. Let’s get this thing done.”
Rochester is in in Beaver County, which Trump won in 2020. But the Democrats are riding on renewed enthusiasm after President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid exactly four weeks ago and endorsed Harris to replace him on the ticket.
As Harris' motorcade left the town, it rolled by a group of about 50 Trump supporters waiting near the road with signs of support for the former president. A handful of Harris supporters were standing nearby with their own signs.
The vice president next stopped at a firehouse in Aliquippa, where she met firefighters, petted the station's dog and gave the crew almond pastries, before heading to a nearby high school, where they met with the local football coach and addressed the team, who kneeled on the field to listen.
Walz again slipped into coach mode, reminiscing a bit about his days leading a team and the sport's character before introducing Harris. She praised the young athletes for their leadership: “Our nation is counting on you and your excellence. We applaud your ambition.
She also told them, “Welcome to the role model club.”
Southwestern Pennsylvania is a critical part of a key battleground state that has long commanded the attention of presidential candidates. The state voted for Trump in 2016 and for Biden in 2020. Both Harris and Trump are vying to see who can put Pennsylvania in their column on Nov. 5.
Most polls, including from the New York Times/Siena College and Fox News, find Harris and Trump locked in a tight race statewide.
Trump held a rally Saturday in Wilkes-Barre in the northeastern part of the state, following his earlier 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 her second this month. The vice president chose to make her first joint appearance with Walz on the ticket in Philadelphia on Aug. 6.
On Sunday, they arrived with their spouses earlier at Pittsburgh International Airport and greeted supporters. The foursome held hands and raised their arms together in front of cheering supporters and then boarded a bright blue bus that says “Harris Walz” in big white letters as they set off to make stops in the Pittsburgh area to glad-hand with voters.
At a stop in the township of Moon, Harris popped into a Sheetz to seek out Doritos, her go-to snack.
In Rochester, Harris, Walz and their spouses spent a few minutes sitting at tables with volunteers and making phone calls to line up support.
Harris took a cellphone from a volunteer and spoke to the person on the other end.
“I love Erie. At some point we’ll get to Erie,” Harris said.
She continued the conversation at at one point said, “79 days to go."
Walz, sitting across the table from Harris, hung up from a call and said of the caller, “He’s all in,” and gave a thumbs up.
Kristin Kanthak, associate professor of political science at the University of Pittsburgh, said Pennsylvania “is a state that traditionally has been super important, but southwestern Pennsylvania has been really kind of the battleground part of the battleground state.”
After Trump’s surprise win in the state in 2016, Biden flipped Pennsylvania in 2020 — and, in so doing, won the White House — in part by running up his vote totals in heavily Democratic Pittsburgh, the state’s second-largest city and the county seat of Allegheny County.
Biden assiduously courted the area’s blue-collar labor unions, kicking off his 2020 presidential campaign at a Teamsters hall in Pittsburgh by declaring, “I am a union man.”
Trump, who is counting on strong turnout from his base of white, working-class voters, is not conceding the area. The counties around Pittsburgh have shifted from Democrat to Republican in recent presidential contests, delivering for Trump in both of his earlier runs.
Trump has also embraced protectionist trade policies and insists he is pro-worker. His vow to increase U.S. energy production and “drill, baby, drill” has 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 after Texas. Harris once wanted to ban fracking, an oil and gas extraction process, before recently disavowing her earlier position — a reversal Trump has hammered her for.
Dana Brown, director of Chatham University's Pennsylvania Center for Women & Politics, said in an interview that Harris will use the bus trip to spin up local media coverage as well as reach out to voters in the state's southwestern region “while she still has a great deal of momentum at her back."
Bus tours have become a staple of political campaigns partly because of the free media coverage they generate. Such trips get the candidates out of their power suits and out of Washington so they can travel the country and score face time with voters in small venues like diners and mom-and-pop shops.
The low-key venues of Harris' campaign on Sunday will be replaced with their polar opposite Monday when the Democratic National Convention opens, offering a prime-time showcase of the Democratic ticket that director Steven Spielberg is helping to choreograph.
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Price reported from New York. Associated Press writers Michael Rubinkam in northeastern Pennsylvania and Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.
