CHICAGO — Pennsylvania was the most popular kid in the class at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, and the battleground state and its 19 electoral votes were well represented in Chicago and on the convention’s evening broadcasts. Each night featured a speaker from the Keystone State, Lt. Gov. Austin Davis on Monday; state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta on Tuesday; Gov. Josh Shapiro on Wednesday and U.S. Sen. Bob Casey on Thursday.
Shapiro was undoubtedly Pennsylvania’s biggest presence at the DNC, in part because of his status as the running mate of vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris. He was busy throughout the week, speaking at numerous state delegation breakfasts, drawing the ire of GOP candidate former President Donald Trump and regularly appearing on news channels.
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Project 2025 played a key role at the convention as Democrats continued to try to link a conservative policy agenda to reshape the federal government and escalate the president’s authority to Trump.
Kenyatta, a candidate for state auditor general, paraded a giant Project 2025 ledger on stage Tuesday night and told the audience it was a “radical plan to take us back, bankrupt the middle class and raise prices for working families like yours and mine.”
Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, but several members of his administration helped develop it.
“It’s a big, heavy book full of bad ideas. It was one of those moments where we were able to really show people, visually, how serious Trump and his administration are about doubling down on his flawed theory,” Kenyatta told the Capital-Star on the final day of the convention.
Our vote is the ultimate demonstration of collective power that we have… The goal of this moment is to operate our collective power to elect someone who cares about us and then work with them to implement the things they say.
– Pennsylvania Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta
He added that Project 2025 should serve as a warning to Democrats about what they think Trump’s second term will look like.
“When Trump came onto the political scene, he came with the idea that ‘America sucks,’ and it sucks in large part because our neighbors, people in our community, people we don’t know — they are somehow contributing to America’s downfall,” Kenyatta said, “and the only way we can fix that is to give him all the power.”
While Trump’s first term was a period of “head-banging,” Kenyatta said, the architects of Project 2025 had developed a plan on how to achieve some of the goals of the party’s far-right wing, such as a nationwide abortion ban and abolishing the U.S. Department of Education.
Kenyatta added that he did not believe in the political concept of giving all power to one person who fixes everything.
“Our vote is the ultimate demonstration of collective power that we have,” he said. “If we elect Kamala Harris in November and then say, ‘OK, see you in four years at the next convention. I hope you solve all the problems!’ then we’ve lost the plot. The purpose of this moment is to use our collective power to elect someone who cares about us and then work hand in hand with her to help implement the things that she’s talking about.”
During the final Pennsylvania delegate breakfast on Thursday, U.S. Rep. Summer Lee (D-12th District) appealed to delegates from key swing states to keep the convention momentum going.
“We’re here to hone our tools so that we can go out and do the hard work, not for Kamala Harris. We’re not doing the hard work for Summer Lee or any of my colleagues,” Lee said, but rather for marginalized and vulnerable people. “Think about that person whose name is in that book on hundreds and hundreds of pages of Project 2025, who we see there, that we have to make sure doesn’t come under the evil and the horrors that they’ve prepared for them and have prepared for them.”
Davis, Pennsylvania’s youngest and first black lieutenant governor, spoke at the convention Monday night and spoke about the importance of building bridges. He appeared on stage with Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor Sarah Rodriguez, Harris County Executive Lena Hidalgo in Texas and California Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis, who all shared stories of how Harris has impacted their communities.
“I grew up with working-class parents in a small steel town in southwestern Pennsylvania, and the opportunity to speak on a national stage was incredibly humbling for me,” Davis told the Capital-Star. “It was just an example of how someone can live the American dream, so I hope people who saw me understood that America should be a place where everyone has the same opportunities.”
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis to Speak at Democratic Convention on Importance of Building Bridges
Davis said the question he heard most often during the convention was whether Democrats could win Pennsylvania. “And I tell them, absolutely, we just have to show up everywhere, compete in places where sometimes it’s not easy to be a Democrat,” he said.
Asked if there are “red” areas of the state where he thinks they could flip blue, he pointed to central Pennsylvania as the area with the most potential, particularly in the 10th Congressional District race between former WGAL anchor Janelle Stelson and Republican Rep. Scott Perry.
“I think we have a great candidate in Janelle Stelson,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of energy in [state Rep.] Patty Kim is running for State Senate. So I think Dauphin, Lancaster, Cumberland — Area Governor Shapiro won “when we were candidates.”
But Davis said not everyone was impressed by his TV stardom. His daughter Harper, whose first birthday is next month, was asleep when he appeared Monday night. “We’ll play it again for her, but she’s not bothered by it,” he said. “She only cares when I FaceTime her and she says, ‘Dad, when are you coming home?’”
