Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz delivered motivational speeches to campaign volunteers and a high school football team on Sunday. Their bus tour of a corner of Pennsylvania served as a modest, small-town version of the major rally planned for this week at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

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• Kamala Harris and Tim Walz embarked on a bus tour of Pennsylvania ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, stopping in small towns and speaking with campaign workers and locals.
• The bus tour focused on southwestern Pennsylvania, a critical battleground area where both Harris and former President Donald Trump are vying for support in the upcoming election.
• Harris and Walz, along with their spouses, visited a campaign office near Pittsburgh, a fire station, a high school, and stopped at a supermarket and a restaurant known for its legendary sandwiches.
• Harris stressed the need to work hard to win votes and described her campaign as an outsider’s campaign despite her position as incumbent vice president.
• Throughout the tour, Harris and Walz avoided detailed political discussions and instead focused on messages about leadership, character and the future of the country.
• Harris made a veiled reference to Trump, saying that true leadership means encouraging people, not putting them down, which earned her applause from supporters.
• At various stops, Harris and Walz spoke with locals, including a group of high school football players, and praised them for their leadership and role models.
• The tour highlighted the importance of Pennsylvania, a key swing state that played a significant role in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.
• Harris and Walz also took the time to speak to their supporters by phone as part of their campaign, emphasizing the importance of the next 79 days until the election.
• Harris’ campaign strategy also includes engaging with voters in person at small, local venues to contrast with the larger events expected at the upcoming Democratic National Convention.

The Associated Press reported:

Harris & Walz stop in small towns before the DNC and make campaign calls on a bus tour through Pennsylvania

Newslooks – ROCHESTER, Pa. (AP) —

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz delivered motivational speeches to campaign volunteers and a high school football team on Sunday. Their bus tour of a corner of Pennsylvania served as a modest, small-town version of the major rally planned for this week at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Vice President Harris and Walz, the Minnesota governor, were joined by their spouses, Doug Emhoff and Gwen Walz, as they stopped to visit volunteers at a campaign office not far from Pittsburgh before continuing on to a fire station and a high school in another city. The tour, in a bright blue bus emblazoned with the candidates’ names and the slogan “A New Way Forward,” also included pilgrimages to a supermarket and a restaurant known for its giant sandwiches.

Although she is running as the incumbent vice president, Harris told reporters she felt she needed to make up ground in the race against former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee.

“I consider us the underdogs,” Harris said during a stop in the community of Moon. “We still have a lot of work to do to win the vote of the American people. That’s why we’re taking this bus tour today, and we’re going to continue to travel the country, talk to people, listen to people, and hopefully earn their votes over the next 79 days.”

Southwest Pennsylvania is a key part of a crucial swing state that has long drawn the attention of presidential candidates. The state voted for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020. Both Harris and Trump are vying to see who can put Pennsylvania in their column on November 5.

Trump, who is counting on a high turnout among his white, working-class electorate, is not giving up on the region. The districts around Pittsburgh switched from Democrats to Republicans in the most recent presidential election and gave Trump a good chance in his two previous attempts.

In a demonstration of competing political views in the region, Harris’ bus and motorcade twice drove past groups of Trump supporters on Sunday, carrying signs and banners bearing his name.

At her last stop, the vice president answered some questions from reporters, something she has been doing more and more frequently lately since Trump claimed she was afraid to speak to the media and has deliberately held her own press conferences in recent weeks.

Throughout their tour on Sunday, Harris and Walz avoided political themes in their remarks, instead limiting themselves to general messages about character, perseverance and the future of the country.

Harris spoke about strength and leadership to a crowd of supporters and volunteers outside a campaign office in Rochester County. She appeared to make a veiled reference to Trump, known for his combative style and strongman image, when she said that “the true measure of a leader’s strength is in who you support,” not who you tear down.

“Anyone who puts others down is a coward,” she shouted, earning cheers and applause. “This is what strength looks like.”

Walz seemed to be reprising his role from his previous job as a high school football coach, telling the volunteers, “Let’s leave it all on the field. Let’s get this thing done.”

Next, the vice president stopped at a fire station in Aliquippa, where she met firefighters, petted the station’s dog and gave the team almond cookies before heading to a nearby high school. There, she and Walz met with the local football coach and gave a speech to the team, who knelt on the field to listen.

Walz slipped back into coaching mode and reminisced a bit about his time as team leader 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.”

Most polls, including recent ones from the New York Times/Siena College and Fox News, find that Harris and Trump will be neck and neck nationally.

Trump held a rally in Wilkes-Barre in the northeast of the state on Saturday, after attending rallies in Harrisburg and Butler in July, where he survived an assassination attempt.

The bus trip is 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 ballot on August 6 in Philadelphia.

On Sunday, Harris and Walz arrived at Pittsburgh International Airport with their spouses, where they held hands and raised their arms in front of cheering supporters. The four then headed off in their bus to greet voters in the Pittsburgh area.

During a stop in the community of Moon, Harris stopped by a Sheetz supermarket to buy Doritos, her favorite snack. She later stopped by a Primanti Bros. restaurant, a famous chain known for coleslaw and fries sandwiches, where she met customers and posed for a few photos. Both franchises were founded in Western Pennsylvania.

Earlier in the day, Harris, Walz and their spouses in Rochester spent a few minutes sitting at tables with volunteers and making phone calls to organize support.

Harris picked up a volunteer’s cell phone and spoke to the person on the other end.

“I love Erie. We’ll come to Erie someday,” Harris said.

She continued the conversation and at some point said, “79 days left.”

Walz, who was sitting across the table from Harris, hung up, said of the caller: “He’s totally into it” and gave a thumbs up.

Kristin Kanthak, an associate professor of political science at the University of Pittsburgh, said Pennsylvania is “a state that has traditionally played a hugely important role, but southwestern Pennsylvania is kind of the swing state within the swing state.”

After Trump’s surprise victory in Pennsylvania in 2016, Biden was able to turn Pennsylvania on its head in 2020 – and thus win the White House. This was achieved, among other things, by increasing his vote totals in heavily Democratic Pittsburgh, the state’s second-largest city.

Trump has committed to protectionist trade policies and has said he is pro-worker. His pledge to increase U.S. energy production and to “drill, baby, drill” has resonated in working-class districts in southwestern Pennsylvania like Washington, where a boom in natural gas production has helped make Pennsylvania the country’s second-largest producer after Texas. Harris once wanted to ban fracking, a process used to extract oil and gas, before recently backing away from her previous position – a reversal for which Trump has sharply criticized her.

Bus trips like the one Harris took in Pennsylvania have become a staple of political campaigns, in part because they generate free media exposure. During such trips, candidates break out their suit jackets and leave Washington to travel around the country, meeting voters face-to-face in small venues like restaurants and corner shops.

The rather unremarkable locations of Harris’ campaign on Sunday will be replaced by their exact opposite on Monday, when the Democratic Party convention opens in Chicago and features a prime-time showcase choreographed by director Steven Spielberg.

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