ERIE, Pa. — Kamala Harris will rally voters Monday in Erie County, a bellwether that has a knack for predicting who carries Pennsylvania, having mirrored the outcome of this crucial battleground state in the last four elections.
The Democratic vice president’s trip kicks off a campaign blitz this week in a trio of Northern battlegrounds that can make or break her hopes of defeating Republican former President Donald Trump next month.
Former President Barack Obama won Erie County comfortably when Pennsylvania was on a blue streak in 2008 and 2012; then Trump won it by about under 2 points in his successful 2016 campaign, before President Joe Biden flipped it back by just 1 point in 2020 as he ousted Trump.
“Pennsylvania is like a smaller version of America,” said Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., who carried the county by 9 percentage points in his 2022 Senate victory. “And Erie is like a smaller version of Pennsylvania.”
The county is along Lake Erie in northwest Pennsylvania, sandwiched between eastern Ohio and upstate New York. Its median income is lower than the national average, as is its share of college-educated people, according to the Census Bureau.
“I really do believe Erie is the top bellwether county in Pennsylvania. Certainly top five in the nation,” Fetterman said, citing its mix of urban and rural areas. “If you can’t sell it in Erie, then it’s going to be really difficult to sell that across Pennsylvania.”
Fetterman carried the state by maximizing votes in the metropolitan areas and limiting his margins of defeat in the red-trending rural areas. Now, he’s trying to help Harris do the same. While Obama and Gov. Josh Shapiro rallied Thursday in Pittsburgh, Fetterman toured the red counties to make the case for her.
He emphasized that defeating Trump here won’t be easy.
“Trump has a very unique and special connection there [in rural Pennsylvania], and that’s why he’s going to be incredibly difficult,” Fetterman said, noting that rural counties are packed with pro-Trump insignia. “It’s kind of like a Taylor Swift concert where you have so much swag it goes beyond a typical kind of politics.”
It’ll be a busy week for Harris in the three battleground states often called the “blue wall” — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — which could be must-wins as polling indicates that competitive Sun Belt states that Biden narrowly carried in 2020, like Arizona and Nevada, are heavier lifts for her.
“With just three weeks until Election Day, Vice President Harris and Governor Walz are leaving it all on the field — blanketing the battlegrounds with an aggressive campaign schedule primarily across the Blue Wall this week,” a Harris official said by email.
Along with returning to Pennsylvania midweek, the official said, Harris will also make stops in Detroit, Grand Rapids, Lansing and Oakland County in Michigan, as well as Milwaukee, La Crosse and Green Bay in Wisconsin.
Harris can’t afford backsliding among Black voters. Tuesday’s stop in Detroit will feature radio host Charlamagne Tha God as she seeks to mobilize Black men — a demographic Obama sounded the alarm about when he campaigned for Harris in Pennsylvania last week.
“We have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all quarters of our neighborhoods and communities as we saw when I was running,” he said Thursday at a stop before a rally in Pittsburgh area. “Now, I also want to say that that seems to be more pronounced with the brothers.”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the vice presidential nominee, will campaign this week in Wisconsin and western Pennsylvania, the Harris official said. And he’ll stop in Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes Omaha and comes with one electoral vote that might prove pivotal for Harris if the Sun Belt breaks for Trump.
The Trump campaign is seeking to capitalize on a new wave of polls that indicate Harris’ edge is shrinking. It released a memo Sunday titled, “Is the Kamala Campaign Cracking?”
“What happened to all of the supposed Harris ‘momentum?’ Frankly, it never really existed beyond the confines of July,” wrote Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio and campaign managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles.
Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg said Harris should work to limit the margins of defeat in rural areas. But she cautioned that reversing the party’s fortunes there will be extremely difficult, especially with the decline of local newspapers and the growth of “information silos” since Obama’s two campaigns.
“It was Hillary Clinton where the bottom fell out. And I think [Harris] is smart to be campaigning everywhere and have Walz everywhere,” she said. “But rural America is very tough. Very, very, very tough. It is not an easy place for a Black woman from California.”
To make up for any losses in rural areas, Harris’ campaign has sought to court Nikki Haley voters from the GOP primaries, who are concentrated largely in well-educated suburbs and could help Harris grow her coalition and improve on Biden’s 2020 margins.
“I do think these suburban folks — Nikki Haley folks — are very uncomfortable with Trump, uncomfortable with all of his crazy s—, and we have such a great opening,” said Paulette Aniskoff, the top adviser for Harris in Pennsylvania. “And I think they’re hearing from their own friends. They’re hearing from our door knocks. They’re hearing from Liz Cheney. … These things — they all really add up, and we feel like they’re coming our way.”
And the red areas and small towns?
“The most critical thing we do is listen to these people instead of talking at them. We train our folks to do that,” Aniskoff said, referring to the campaign’s field program. “That keeps it human, but it also allows us to really get a sense of what’s on their mind.”
Fetterman said Harris doesn’t need to win rural Pennsylvania — just lose by less — to carry its 19 electoral votes.
“Sometimes it’s not about turning these counties blue. You’re not going to change the culture of rural-county Pennsylvania. It’s about reaching out to reachable people,” he said. “I would be surprised if she wins by 3 points. She will win Pennsylvania, but I would expect it might be closer than that.”
