Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, greet supporters at Pittsburgh International Airport in Pittsburgh on Sunday.
Julia Nikhinson/AP
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Julia Nikhinson/AP
Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz campaigned in western Pennsylvania Sunday, making their pitch to voters in the key battleground state ahead of the Democratic National Convention.
The first stop on the Democrats’ “bus tour” was at a campaign field office in conservative Beaver County, where Harris and Walz participated in a phone bank. Former President Trump carried Beaver County with nearly 60% of the vote in 2020.
Harris and Emhoff telephone prospective voters from a campaign field office in Rochester, Pa., on Sunday. (Photo by Kevin Lamarque / POOL / AFP via Getty Images)
KEVIN LAMARQUE/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
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KEVIN LAMARQUE/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Pennsylvania, which Trump won in 2016 and Biden in 2020, remains perhaps the state most coveted by both candidates. Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, will make campaign stops, separately, in York and Philadelphia on Monday.
Harris and Walz later spoke to supporters outside the field office. Harris told the crowd that her campaign was “born out of love of country.”
“When you know what you stand for, you know what to fight for,” Harris said. “When you stand for working people, you fight for working people. When you stand for freedom — whether it be to make decisions about your own body or love, who you love — you fight for those things…That’s what our election is about.”
Harris also said there has been “a perversion” in the last several years “to suggest that the measure of the strength of a leader is based on who you beat down when what we know is the real and true measure of the strength of a leader is based on who you lift up.”
In his remarks, Walz recalled his days as a high school football coach.
“There’s an old saying, ‘You don’t hope you’re gonna win. You prepare to win, and you give it the best you got,'” Walz said. “And you know, when that game’s over, you want to know you left it all on the field. And that’s all we’re asking. Let’s leave it all in the field.”
The bus tour is expected to include other stops in Beaver County, as well as the Democratic stronghold of Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh and its suburbs. Trump campaigned on the opposite side of the state Saturday, holding a rally in Wilkes-Barre.