HELLERTOWN, Pa. – A country club audience of about 150 Republican supporters and donors gathered here at the Steel Club, pounding on barbecued ribs and sipping glasses of chardonnay and lemonade.
Upstairs, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., sat in a quiet conference room and explained how Republicans would increase their House majority and win back the White House and the Senate: By capturing larger percentages of Hispanic, black and Jewish voters, union workers also won back elections in the past. relatively speaking.
“When you do the math on the other side of this election, it’s going to show that we’re going to have a demographic shift,” Johnson told NBC News in an exclusive interview ahead of a campaign event in Hellertown.
“I think we’re going to have record numbers of Hispanic and Latino voters. I think record numbers of black and African-American voters, Jewish voters, union voters. I talk to all these groups of people,” he continued. “And they don’t just reluctantly get on board; they are excited.”
The 52-year-old speaker has campaigned this term in more than 220 cities in 40 states, including last week through the Keystone State. In the final three weeks before Election Day, he will face 65 other cities in 24 states as Republicans seek to attract new voters to defend or increase their slim three-seat majority in the House of Representatives.
Even GOP candidate Donald Trump posts frequently anti-immigrant rhetoric and racial attacks According to Vice President Kamala Harris, recent polls show support for her party among some of these reliably Democratic voting blocs, and Republicans say they are ready to capitalize.
Moment NBC News/Telemundo/CNBC survey Last month, it showed Harris leading Trump among Latino voters by 54% to 40%, or 14 percentage points, from a 36-point advantage for Democrats in the 2020 presidential election and a 50-point advantage in 2016.
A New York Times/Sienna College A poll released over the weekend showed Harris still holding a large lead over Trump among black voters, but that number has also narrowed. About 80% of black voters support the vice president, down from 90% who supported Joe Biden in 2020. About 15% say they will vote for Trump in November, up from 9% four years ago, the poll showed.
Asked for comment, the Harris campaign referred to a memo to reporters Sunday pushing back on the GOP’s suggestion that the vice president’s support is eroding among key groups. They emphasized that a CBS survey That put Harris at 63% among Latinos, roughly in line with where Biden was in 2020. The same poll also shows Harris leading Trump 87% to 12% among black voters, matching Biden’s lead among the key voting bloc at the time of the exit poll. .
Trump and the Republicans are hoping to see a big turnout from their base — white, non-college-educated, working-class voters. But they also see opportunities to win Jewish pockets Voters in critical swing states such as Nevada and Pennsylvania felt alienated by liberal anti-Israel protests after the October 7, 2023, deadly Hamas terror attack and Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza.
Johnson said he spoke to a standing-room-only crowd at an event marking the anniversary of the October 7 attack in Las Vegas. “They were wearing red yarmulkes with Trump’s name on them,” he said.
Republicans are also working to reach out to union workers. Johnson pointed to the firefighters union that made the decision this month not endorsing either Harris or Trump union support as evidence declines for Democrats; The International Association of Firefighters was the first union to endorse Biden in 2020 The teams also refused to support This is the first time in decades in a presidential race.
“I’m not 100% sure that all of this has fully registered in the national vote, and we’ve all learned not to put too much stock in it,” Johnson said in an interview. “But I can tell you that from what I see on the ground — and it’s not just the red states, it’s the blue states — something is happening. And I am confident that we will win the House of Representatives, the White House and the Senate.”
220 cities, 40 states
At the rallies, Trump and Johnson blamed Harris for the high cost of goods and failure to secure the border. two main issues for voters – even as inflation has dropped significantly During the Biden-Harris administration and Trump helped kill a border deal in a bipartisan Senate.
“It’s a real erosion in their base,” Johnson said of Democrats. “And that’s because people think they really go beyond party, beyond identity. I think they’re looking at policies because they’re evaluating how their lives are now versus how they were four years ago.”
Minutes later, downstairs at the Steel Club, Johnson spoke of a “genuine, real and hopefully permanent demographic shift in the electorate” that would once again hand victory to the Republicans.
That’s the message the speaker is sharing with rooms full of GOP donors and party loyalists as he attacks Pennsylvania and the nation on the battlefield in the final sprint of the 2024 campaign.
Much of his time on the campaign trail was spent in the battleground states of California and New York, blue states where his party defended dozens of seats and tried to flip a handful of others. Given how closely the House is divided, majorities can be won or lost in either of those two states. But Pennsylvania could also be critical, boasting several tight races in swing districts.
Test for a new speaker
He pushed through the darkness Johnson, who was second in line for the presidency after the shock ouster of Kevin McCarthy, will mark one year as speaker of the House on October 25. There were doubts that he would not be able to raise money on the campaign trail like McCarthy, one of the party’s most prolific fundraisers. Johnson would very conservative Like Fitzpatrick, campaigning in 18 GOP districts that Biden won in 2020.
But since then, he has put most of these questions behind him.
“After Kevin’s impeachment, we had to come out of the disaster zone that was the House Republican Conference, rebuild it, rebuild relationships, and then I had to go out immediately to introduce myself and build relationships with a major donor. class across the country under extremely difficult circumstances,” Johnson told NBC News.
Johnson and his affiliated super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, have raised a combined $266 million for House Republicans this cycle. He has raised more than $27 million for campaign committees and individual candidates The third quarter ended in September. 30 – the most raised by a GOP speaker in the third quarter of a presidential election year, the speaker’s team said Monday.
Between the damage from Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and getting back home and running a business—seeing family and toss a coin LSU-Ole Miss football game – Johnson squeezed in multiple campaign stops across Pennsylvania on Thursday and Friday.
At the Steel Club, Johnson fired up the crowd at a rally for state Rep. Ryan Mackenzie. competes to remove it from the ground sensitive Democratic Rep. Susan Wild. He also campaigned with businessman Rob Bresnahan, who is running against Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright, and state Rep. Rob Mercury, who is challenging Democratic Rep. Chris Deluzio.
And Johnson trampled two at-risk Republican incumbents on opposite sides of the GOP Conference: Problem Solvers co-chairman Brian Fitzpatrick, a moderate, and former Freedom Caucus chairman Scott Perry, a conservative. He joined Rep. Lloyd Smucker at a fundraising dinner for the Lancaster County Republicans on his long day.
Democrats are also paying close attention to Pennsylvania, where all three House leaders and the Harris campaign have been making stops in recent weeks. House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar of California, who campaigned a short distance away in Allentown the same week, said it’s important to recognize that Latinos don’t all have the same experiences in America and don’t all vote the same way.
“The Latino community is not monolithic. They’re not all thinking the same way or moving in the same direction,” Aguilar told NBC News at El Tablazo, a Dominican restaurant, where he said Harris and the Democrats talked about how they’re helping the Latino community through things like home ownership programs and lowering prescription drug prices.
“South Florida is very different from South Texas and Southern Arizona and Southern California or Allentown, Pennsylvania,” Aguilar said. “What binds us together is our determination, hard work, perseverance and desire to build a better life for our children. That, I think, is the central ethos of the Latino community.”