A day before the Democratic National Convention opens, Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will kick off a bus tour of Pennsylvania in Pittsburgh on Sunday, the campaign announced. It will be the couple’s first campaign appearance in western Pennsylvania after Harris introduced Walz at a rally in Philadelphia on Aug. 6. They will be joined by their spouses, Doug Emhoff and Gwen Walz.
Campaign officials said the tour will focus on “meeting voters where they are” in local communities, with stops at campaign kick-off events and local retailers.
Harris officially became the Democratic presidential nominee earlier this month in a roll call vote of Democratic National Committee delegates, after President Joe Biden dropped his re-election bid last month and endorsed her.
The campaign said this will be Harris’ eighth visit to Pennsylvania this year and 18th since being sworn in. She appeared in the commonwealth on July 13 in Philadelphia to court Asian American voters, and has also stopped this cycle in Pittsburgh to tout the administration’s investments in infrastructure, in Philadelphia to speak to educators about student debt, and in Montgomery County to advocate for reproductive rights.
The campaign said it currently has 36 coordinated offices and nearly 300 field workers across Pennsylvania, and in the four weeks since Harris announced her candidacy, more than 43,000 people have signed up to volunteer for the campaign in Pennsylvania.
While Biden has visited the eastern half of the state several times in 2024, he has only visited western Pennsylvania once on the campaign trail, visiting the United Steelworkers union in April ahead of that state’s primary.
Former President Donald Trump, the 2024 Republican presidential candidate, will campaign in Wilkes-Barre on Saturday at a rally at the Mohegan Sun Arena at Casey Plaza. The visit will be Trump’s seventh to the Keystone State in 2024, but his first to northeastern Pennsylvania this cycle. Trump appeared in Harrisburg for a rally July 31, his first visit to Pennsylvania since the attempted bombing at a rally in Butler on July 13.
AND Times-Siena poll released on August 10 show Harris leading Trump by four percentage points in the key swing states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.
