ERIE, Pa. – Kamala Harris will rally voters in Erie County on Monday, a bellwether with a knack for predicting who will carry Pennsylvania, reflecting the outcome of this crucial battleground in the last four elections.
The Democratic vice president’s visit kicks off a campaign blitz this week in a trio of Northern battlegrounds that could make or break his hopes of defeating Republican former President Donald Trump next month.
Former President Barack Obama won Erie County comfortably when Pennsylvania was blue-collar in 2008 and 2012; then Trump won it by less than 2 points in his successful 2016 campaign, before President Joe Biden turned it around by just 1 point in 2020 when he unseated Trump.
“Pennsylvania is like a smaller version of America,” said Sen. John Fetterman, who carried the state 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, sandwiched between eastern Ohio and upstate New York. Its median income is below the national average, as is the share of people with secondary education. Census Bureau.
“I truly believe that Erie is the best county in Pennsylvania. It’s definitely top five in the country,” Fetterman said, referring to the mix of urban and rural locations. “If you can’t sell it in Erie, it’s going to be really hard to sell it in Pennsylvania.”
Fetterman carried the state by maximizing votes in big cities and narrowing his margins of defeat in red-trending rural areas. Now he’s trying to help Harris do the same. As Obama and Gov. Josh Shapiro held a rally in Pittsburgh on Thursday, Fetterman toured red counties to make the case for him.
He emphasized that it will not be easy to defeat Trump here.
“Trump has a very unique and special relationship there [in rural Pennsylvania]and so it’s going to be incredibly difficult,” Fetterman said, noting that rural counties are littered with pro-Trump signs. “It’s kind of like a Taylor Swift concert where you get so drunk that it goes beyond the typical kind of politics. .”
It will be a busy week for Harris in the three battleground states often called the “blue wall” — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — as polls show Biden narrowly carries the competitive Sun Belt in 2020. Arizona and Nevada are heavier burdens for him.
“With only three weeks until Election Day, Vice President Harris and Governor Waltz are putting it all on the line — covering the battlegrounds this week, primarily along the Blue Wall,” a Harris official said via email.
In addition to returning to Pennsylvania midweek, Harris will also make stops in Michigan’s Detroit, Grand Rapids, Lansing and Oakland County, as well as Milwaukee, La Crosse and Green Bay in Wisconsin, the official said.
Harris can’t afford to push back among black voters. Radio host Charlamagne Tha God will make a stop in Detroit on Tuesday as he looks to mobilize blacks — the Obama demographic sounded the alarm about while campaigning for Harris in Pennsylvania last week.
“We still haven’t seen the same kind of energy and activism in all of our neighborhoods and communities that we saw when I ran,” he said Thursday in a parking lot before a rally in the Pittsburgh area. “Now I’d say it’s even more pronounced with brothers.”
Minnesota governor and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz will campaign in Wisconsin and western Pennsylvania this week, a Harris official said. He’s riding in Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes Omaha, and comes with an electoral vote that could be key for Harris if the Sun Belt breaks for Trump.
The Trump campaign is trying to capitalize on a new wave of polls that show Harris’ lead is narrowing. This left a memo Sunday, “Is the Kamala Campaign Cracking?”
“What happened to Harris’ supposed ‘momentum’? Frankly, it never existed outside of July,” wrote Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio and campaign managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles.
Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg said Harris should try to narrow his margins of defeat in rural areas. But he warned that changing the party’s fortunes would be extremely difficult, especially with the decline of local newspapers and the rise of “information silos” after Obama’s two campaigns.
“It was Hillary Clinton that bottomed out. And I think [Harris] It’s smart to campaign everywhere and be Walz everywhere,” he said. “But rural America is very tough. Very, very, very hard. “It’s not an easy place for a black woman from California.”
To make up for any rural losses, Harris’ campaign sought to court Nikki Haley voters from the GOP primaries, which are largely concentrated in well-educated suburban areas and could help Harris build his coalition and improve on Biden’s 2020 margin.
“I think these suburbanites — the Nikki Haley folks — are very concerned about Trump, concerned about all of his craziness — and we have a great opening,” said Paulette Aniskoff, a senior adviser to Harris in Pennsylvania. “I think they hear from their friends. They hear a knock on our door. They hear from Liz Cheney. … These things – they all really come together and we feel like they’re coming our way.
What about red areas and small towns?
“The most important thing we do is listen to these people instead of talking them down. We train people for this,” Aniskoff said, referring to the field program of the campaign. “It stops the person, but also allows us to understand what’s on their mind.”
Fetterman said Harris doesn’t need to win rural Pennsylvania to carry 19 electoral votes — he just loses fewer.
“Sometimes these countries cannot be turned blue. You won’t change the culture of rural Pennsylvania. It’s about connecting with accessible people,” he said. “I would be surprised if he wins by 3 points. “He’s going to win Pennsylvania, but I would hope it’s closer than that.”