Photo Credit: Getty Images
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 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. The tour, in a bright blue bus decorated with the candidates’ names and the phrase “A new way forward,” also included pilgrimages to a convenience store and a restaurant known for its towering sandwiches.
Despite running as the sitting vice president, Harris told reporters she feels she has ground to make up in the race against former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee.
“I very much consider us the underdogs,” Harris said at a stop in the township of Moon. “We have a lot of work to do to earn the vote of the American people. That’s why we’re on this bus tour today, and we’re going to be traveling this country as we’ve been and talking with folks, listening to folks, and hopefully earning their votes over the next 79 days.”
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.
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 Democratic to Republican in recent presidential contests, delivering for Trump in both of his earlier runs.
In a demonstration of the area’s competing politics, Harris’ bus and motorcade twice on Sunday rolled past groups of Trump supporters with signs and banners bearing his name.
At her last stop, the vice president answered a few questions from reporters, something she’s been doing with increasing frequency as Trump has claimed she’s afraid to talk to the media and made a point of holding his own news conferences in recent weeks.
Throughout their tour Sunday, Harris and Walz shied away from policy or much politics in their remarks, 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 a campaign office in the borough of Rochester, spoke about strength and leadership. She appeared to make a veiled reference to Trump, 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.”
