Pennsylvania, United States.- US Vice President Kamala Harris is taking her presidential campaign to the state of Pennsylvania on Sunday before heading to Chicago, where the Democratic Party is due to nominate her this week to face Donald Trump in the November 5 election.
Opinion polls have shown Harris bringing fresh energy to the campaign and closing the gap with former President Trump both nationally and in many of the eight highly competitive states, including Pennsylvania, that will play a decisive role in choosing a successor to Democratic President Joe Biden.
“I’ve been to every convention since I was able to vote, and I can say that I have not felt this kind of energy and electricity at any convention other than Barack Obama’s,” Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker said on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday.
Obama was elected in 2008 as the first black president of the United States. Harris, who is black and of Asian descent, would be the first female president if she wins in November.
Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are scheduled to embark on a bus tour that will begin in Pittsburgh and make several stops throughout the day in Allegheny and Beaver counties, areas her campaign sees as critical to winning Pennsylvania.
The trip comes a day after a speech by Trump in northeastern Pennsylvania in which he derided Harris as a “radical” and a “lunatic,” saying he believed she would be easier to defeat than Biden, 81, who dropped out of the re-election race last month under pressure from his own party following a disastrous debate with Trump.
Pennsylvania was one of three Rust Belt states, along with Wisconsin and Michigan, that helped power Republican Trump’s surprise victory in the 2016 election.
Biden, who grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, swung all three states back to vote Democratic in 2020, and Harris aims to keep them.
Following her appearances in Pennsylvania, Harris will travel to Chicago to attend the start of the Democratic National Convention on Monday.
Sources said Saturday she is likely to join Biden on the convention stage Monday when he passes the torch as the party’s nominee for president.
Trump’s campaign will try to counter-program the convention with a series of events in battleground states this week. On Monday, he will visit a factory in York, Pennsylvania, where his campaign says it will focus on the economy, and on Tuesday, he will visit a sheriff’s office in Howell County, Michigan, to talk about security and crime.
Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, will travel to Asheboro, North Carolina, on Wednesday to discuss national security, and on Friday Trump will join Turning Point Action, a group founded by conservative activist Charlie Kirk, for a rally in Glendale, Arizona, aimed in part at highlighting efforts to increase voter turnout.
Trump supporters said they hope he will refocus his campaign on policy and not the repeated personal attacks against Harris that he has relied heavily on in the weeks since she emerged as the Democratic nominee.
“President Trump can win this election. His policies are good for America and if you have a policy debate, he wins. Donald Trump the provocateur, the showman, may not win this election,” Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
“Politics is the key to getting to the White House.”
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