Vice President Kamala Harris and running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will take a bus tour of western Pennsylvania with their spouses on Sunday ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Second gentleman Doug Emhoff and Minnesota’s first lady, Gwen Walz, will appear at some stops, making it the first time the quartet has campaigned together since Ms. Harris selected Mr. Walz as her vice presidential choice earlier this month.
The tour will begin in Pittsburgh and “focus on meeting voters where they are in community settings, and will range from a canvass kickoff and phone bank, to local retail stops and more,” the campaign said.
Stops will focus on Allegheny and Beaver counties in the Pittsburgh area. The campaign described the counties as “critical battlegrounds” in the must-win Pennsylvania, which awards 19 electoral votes and could decide who enters the White House.
The Harris campaign said President Biden and Ms. Harris narrowly won Pennsylvania in 2020 by driving up margins in places like Allegheny County.
The campaign will try to appeal to voters by focusing on its support for union jobs and economic benefits from the bipartisan infrastructure law and Mr. Biden’s tax-and-climate law from 2022.
Former President Donald Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, says he is the only candidate who will protect Pennsylvanian jobs. He pointed to Ms. Harris’s call in 2019 to ban fracking, arguing she is likely to revert to that stance despite backing off it during this campaign.
“She’s against fracking, she’s against oil drilling, she wants everybody to have one electric car and share it with the neighbors,” Mr. Trump told a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, rally in July.
Following their tour, Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz will travel to Chicago for their party convention next week, where they will formally accept the Democratic nomination and give acceptance speeches.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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