ERIE — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, will wrap up a two-day trip through Pennsylvania in Erie today after stops Wednesday in Lancaster and Pittsburgh. It will be a key campaign rally for Walz, who has little time to introduce himself — and win over — Keystone State voters.
Erie is widely seen as a key piece of Pennsylvania’s electoral puzzle, a must-win state. Former President Donald Trump held one of his first 2024 campaign rallies in July 2023, and his vice presidential candidate, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, spoke in Erie last week. Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in Erie County in 2016 by just over 1900 votesa crushing defeat for Democrats as the state turned red. Clinton did not campaign in Erie during her presidential run.
“The Clinton campaign was just completely, totally, absolutely — almost criminally — absent here in 2016,” Jeff Bloodworth, a professor of American political history at Gannon University in Erie, told the Capital-Star. “I mean, they didn’t even do garden signs.”
While acknowledging that “yard signs don’t vote,” Bloodworth said he had never seen anything like the Trump campaign’s physical presence, including signs, in Erie last year.
But Democrats showed lessons from their 2016 defeat: President Joe Biden managed to defeat Trump in Erie in the 2020 election by a landslide. by a margin of just over 1,400 votes, or 1.03% as Pennsylvania turned blue again.
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“Biden obviously took Erie seriously in 2020,” Bloodworth said. He added that the Erie County Democratic Party has fixed many of the mistakes of 2016, and while COVID-19 has hampered efforts to encourage voting in 2020, the party has laid the necessary groundwork for 2024.
“It’s hard to imagine there being a bigger difference among Democrats between ’16 and ’24 — it’s like night and day,” Bloodworth said. “This is a real, professional political operation.”
Sam Talarico, chairman of the Erie County Democratic Party, said that while interest in the campaign among Democrats had been somewhat muted before Biden withdrew, the mood changed dramatically once it became clear Harris would be the front-runner.
The party opened its fall campaign office on June 3 and was open four hours a day. “People were coming in every now and then, wanting a Biden sign,” he said. “I was waiting, thinking, ‘When are people going to start paying attention to this election?’ And the polls were stuck in the mud.”
After Biden withdrew, “it was like someone flipped a switch,” Talarico said. “People were coming in wanting to donate money, and we have over 275 people on our volunteer list, up from about 70 before the change. Last Thursday, we got about 1,000 yard signs and they were gone, so when people come in and ask for them, we put them on the list and tell them we’ll get them to them.”
Walz has a lot of work ahead of him, and Talarico said the Harris-Walz campaign’s focus on “joy” should translate well to Erie. He suggested Walz shouldn’t focus on distinguishing himself from Vance.
“They’re focused on the future, and I think that’s a smart strategy,” Talarico said. He pointed to Harris’ recent CNN interview and how she handled a question about Trump’s remark about her race. “She said, ‘Next question.’ Trump seems to only get stronger when he’s the center of the story. So I don’t think they’re going to focus on their opponents as much.”
The Erie County Republican Party did not respond to the Capital-Star’s request for an interview.
While he’s in Erie, Walz should focus on being Walz, Bloodworth said. “In Erie, all you have to do is be normal, and Walz is like the normal guy in chief,” he said. “That was Biden’s job, right, and that’s why Obama picked him. And Walz is even better than Biden on the chopping block. That’s it: Just be normal. Make a few jokes to say, ‘Mind your own damn business.’”
Perhaps more than Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Erie follows Pennsylvania in terms of rural, urban and suburban populations. Both Bloodworth and Talarico said the economy was a key issue for Erie voters, but not just the impact of inflation on the prices of everyday goods.
The city of Erie remains a Democratic stronghold, but The Republican Party has been successful at the county level, even as the overall population continues to decline. The Harris-Walz campaign should be shrewd about how to address this population loss, Bloodworth said, because it is a key issue in western Pennsylvania.
“Every other person I meet has a child or grandchild who has moved to North Carolina or Nashville,” he said. “People want to know, ‘What are you going to do about the cost of groceries,’ but they also want to know, ‘What are you going to do to keep my grandchildren from moving away when they graduate from the local college?’”
Harris, Bloodworth said, needs to present a broader economic narrative. “Because Trump is at least talking about it. I’m not sure Trump offers much of a solution in terms of acknowledging it, but at least he’s acknowledged it.”
