Pennsylvania Democrats Hope to Press Their Ground Game Advantage

Happy Wednesday! Election Day is 27 days away. David and Mike overnighted in Indiana. No, not the Hoosier State, but the borough of Indiana, in Indiana County, in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Up to Speed

• Former President Donald Trump seized an opportunity Tuesday to criticize Vice President Kamala Harris’s response to a question about what she would have done differently from President Joe Biden. “There is not a thing that comes to mind in terms of—and I’ve been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact,” she said in an appearance on ABC’s The View. Trump posted a clip of her answer and slammed her on X. “The Lamestream Media doesn’t want to pick up the story, the dumb women on the show wish they never asked her the question that led to that Election Defying answer, but the Internet is going WILD,” he wrote. That answer from Harris comes days after the Trump campaign celebrated when Biden said the vice president “helped pass all the laws that are being employed now” and called her “a major player in everything we’ve done” at a Friday press briefing.
• Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, expressed interest in ending the Electoral College at a fundraising event in California on Tuesday. “I think all of us know the Electoral College needs to go. We need, we need national popular vote, but that’s not the world we live in. So we need to win Beaver County, Pennsylvania. We need to be able to go into York, Pennsylvania, win. We need to be in western Wisconsin and win. We need to be in Reno, Nevada, and win,” he said, according to a pool report. The Harris campaign told CNN that Walz’s is not the official campaign position and claimed that the Minnesota governor was “commenting to a crowd of strong supporters about how the campaign is built to win 270 electoral votes.”
• The nonpartisan Cook Political Report changed its rating of Wisconsin’s Senate race from “lean Democrat” to “toss-up” on Tuesday as Republican challenger Eric Hovde has recently proven a more formidable candidate against incumbent Sen. Tammy Baldwin. Cook pointed to the money Hovde and outside Republican groups are spending as a major reason the race is tightening. Hovde has raised more in the third quarter—$10 million, including $7 million of his own money—than previous opponents of Baldwin brought in during their entire campaigns. The rating change comes days after a report indicated Democrats privately were worried about the race amid close internal polling.
• Cook also moved two House races toward Republicans on Tuesday. Virginia’s open 7th Congressional District seat, which Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger gave up to run for governor, changed from “lean Democrat” to “toss-up.” Additionally, Republican Rep. Thomas Kean Jr.’s race in New Jersey’s 7th District shifted from “toss-up” to “lean Republican.” The development comes after Cook moved four races toward Democrats last week.
• The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC with ties to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, said Tuesday that it raised $81.4 million, its largest ever single-quarter fundraising haul. The organization, the chief PAC supporting House Republicans, also announced it was making $11 million in advertising reservations with more coming in the election’s final stretch. The news comes after Republicans complained last month that Democrats are beating them in the money game in House and Senate races.

Up to Speed (Pennsylvania Road Trip Edition)

• David and Mike spotted quite a few more signs and billboards during their drive from Erie to Indiana on Tuesday. In Erie, one billboard along 12th Street featured only the word “UNFIT” over an extreme close-up of Donald Trump’s eyes. Just a bit further down 12th Street was a billboard claiming Kamala Harris “supports protecting Social Security.” Just off Interstate 80 in DuBois, right underneath a large “TRUMP 2024” official campaign sign, a homemade wooden sign, scrawled in black painted letters, bore the website address DonaldJTrump.com. And as they made their way through Punxsutawney (home of the famous groundhog, Phil), a banner hanging on the side of a building read “Welcome to Trumpsutawney.”
• Despite Erie’s “Rust Belt” reputation, there is plenty of natural beauty in this Great Lake city, particularly Presque Isle State Park, directly across the bay from downtown Erie. Situated on a peninsula that juts into Lake Erie and curves back east, the name “Presque Isle” is French for “almost island,” since there is just a thin spit of land connecting the peninsula to the mainland. The park has a lighthouse and numerous beaches and is close to a 128-year-old amusement park called Waldameer. And for those looking to escape the epidemic of campaign signs, the state park is blessedly free of them.
• Terry Noble is a lawyer in Clearfield County, a rural and deeply Republican part of central Pennsylvania that Trump won by nearly 50 points in 2020. But Noble, a longtime Democratic activist, is trying in his own small way to boost his party deep in Trump country. With two additional donors, he opened a tiny field office in the city of DuBois to serve as a hub for distributing yard signs, stamps, and bumper stickers to boost Harris and other Democratic candidates. There’s no affiliation with the Harris campaign (“I don’t even know if they know we exist!” Noble told Dispatch Politics), but Noble said he hopes to remind voters in his community that there is an alternative party that has something to say to them. In recognition of the overwhelming Republican tilt, Noble has taped up on the windows facing the street photos of and articles about Republicans, like Mike Pence and Dick Cheney, who have been critical of Trump. 
• As Noble talked to Dispatch Politics Tuesday afternoon about his hopes to help Harris improve on Biden’s margin in Clearfield County, a woman and her son walked into the office to ask about signs. The son, a young adult, was wearing a Godzilla hat and camouflage Crocs shoes. He grabbed a paper Harris-Walz sign along with two different Harris yard signs, while his mother brought up the vice president’s new proposal to expand Medicare to cover home care for elderly Americans. “Which is great, because how can we afford that?” she said.

‘I’ve Yet to See a Republican’

ERIE, Pennsylvania—The field office for the Kamala Harris campaign downtown on Eighth Street was bustling with activity Tuesday morning. 

Half a dozen volunteers, from senior citizens to young adults, welcomed walk-in visitors and answered phones. A handful of paid staff were at their desks or debriefing canvassers who had just been out trying to get out the vote or encourage those with mail-in ballots to return them. Someone had written on a chalkboard wall the latest running total: “doors knocked: 24,016” in this crucial micro-battleground of this pivotal swing state. The smell of freshly brewed coffee wafted through the air.

A few miles west, at a unit in a strip mall just outside the city limits, there was markedly less happening at the joint headquarters for the Donald Trump campaign and the Erie County Republican Party. 

A volunteer who greeted Dispatch Politics was one of two visible people in the office (not counting the life-sized cardboard display of the former president), although by noon there were a handful of people who walked in to grab yard signs and other materials. No one was available to speak about ongoing efforts to get out the vote for Trump in northwestern Pennsylvania.

Operatives in both parties say Republicans are behind Democrats on their voter turnout efforts, both nationally and specifically here in Pennsylvania. That incongruity could mean the difference in a race that just about everyone here agrees is a coin flip.

Back downtown, at the Erie County Democratic Party headquarters (a separate, corner storefront just a few blocks up State Street from Harris’ field office,) chairman Sam Talarico told Dispatch Politics the disparity between the activity in his and the vice president’s headquarters, and that of Trump and the Republicans, reflects the reality on the ground. 

“I did talk to our canvassers yesterday, and they said this weekend was the first time they saw, you know, literature from the Trump campaign,” Talarico explained. The Harris campaign says it has 14 paid staff based in the Erie area, compared to just three for the Trump campaign. (When asked to confirm that number, a Trump campaign source declined to comment on personnel.) Regardless, much of the pro-Trump door-to-door canvassing in Erie County has fallen to the America PAC, primarily funded by billionaire Elon Musk.

Such voter turnout disparity isn’t just in Erie. Mike Mikus is struck by how one-sided the get-out-the vote effort has looked so far in his evenly split precinct in Allegheny County, in suburban Pittsburgh. A local Democratic campaign consultant, Mikus considers himself “lucky” to know at a neighborhood level how things are going politically; it’s a professional advantage.

“When I see someone out door-knocking, if they don’t come to my door, I make a point to figure out who they are,” Mikus told Dispatch Politics over lunch Monday in the Steel City. In most election cycles, there’s always a healthy mix of canvassers from both parties. But this year, when Pennsylvania is perhaps the key battleground for the presidential election, he’s noticed something’s missing.

“I’ve yet to see a Republican,” Mikus said. “I may have missed them. I might not have been home when they were there.”

In and around Pittsburgh, the well-oiled array of machinery to get out the Democratic vote—unions, civic groups, black churches—is running as strong as ever, while the field offices for the Harris campaign and local Democratic parties are full of volunteers, just like in Erie. 

The Republican National Committee has shifted money and personnel away from turnout in favor of legal efforts to fight claims of “election integrity.” As a result of that and a consequential decision by the Federal Election Commission permitting campaigns to coordinate with super PACs and other political organizations on turnout, the Trump campaign and the GOP have outsourced the labor-intensive, expensive work of targeted door-knocking and phone banking to outside groups like Musk’s. 

“It’s a mistake, okay?” said one Pittsburgh-area Republican operative who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the party’s decision to have super PACs conduct the get-out-the-vote work. The operative told Dispatch Politics that Republicans are constantly having to play catch-up to the Democratic Party’s well-established turnout infrastructure.

“These people are veterans. They’re good at what they do,” this Republican said. “Republicans, we don’t take care of our folks. You know, we’re relying on volunteers every single election. You’ve got to rebuild coalitions every single election.” 

That’s not to say Pennsylvania Republicans don’t feel good about Trump’s ability to win the state. 

The polls show a tied race, and Republicans are confident they have the advantage over Democrats on the issues—plus plenty of enthusiasm, as evidenced by the GOP nominee’s massive rallies held regularly across the Keystone State. (Just a few days earlier, Trump was back in Butler for another event at the site where a gunman shot and injured him in July.) And some Republicans say their nontraditional get-out-the-vote effort allows for better, more efficient targeting that a legion of eager volunteers willing to knock on doors can’t achieve.

But beyond their possible institutional edge over Republicans with get-out-the-vote efforts, Democrats say that in 2024, their party has caught up with the MAGA movement in terms of energy, thanks to Biden’s withdrawal and Harris’ ascension to the nomination. Talarico, the Erie County Democratic chair, told Dispatch Politics he had planned for no more than the usual 30 people for a party to watch the September debate between the presidential candidates. “We had 320,” Talarico said. “We had the vice presidential one last week, and we probably had almost as many people.”

And notably, Democrats have lots of political volunteers from outside the state. 

The Erie County Democrats have a volunteer from MA Flip PA, a group from deep-blue Massachusetts trying to help the party win this crucial swing state. And a canvassing couple from Illinois were at the Harris headquarters Tuesday morning to help knock on doors. Mike Cahill, one of those canvassers, told Dispatch Politics he doesn’t worry about Illinois going for Harris. Since he’s retired, he and his wife plan on spending a lot of time in Erie to help deliver Pennsylvania for the vice president.

“Yesterday was our first day,” Cahill said. “We’re going to be here today and tomorrow, then we’ve got to go home for a few days, then we’re going to come back in a week or so and do another three or four days, and then we’re going to come back and do four or five days.”

Democrats may have a leg up on Republicans in getting out their voters in Pennsylvania, but it hardly guarantees a Harris victory. The Trump strategy of maximizing support from the state’s large rural “T” between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh could work if Harris is unable to recreate and build on Biden’s 2020 coalition in the suburbs.

Yet Pennsylvania Democrats seem cautiously sanguine about things. 

Mike Veon, a Democratic operative in Pittsburgh and former member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, was among the scores of party leaders and insiders from across the commonwealth who convened last weekend in Valley Forge for their regular meeting of the state Democratic committee. As he puffed a cigar and sipped coffee at his regular haunt along Pittsburgh’s Allegheny River, Veon told Dispatch Politics he spoke with committee members and local chairmen who all saw the same encouraging signs he has seen: more volunteers than ever before, plus a robust and well-coordinated voter turnout organization.

“So I walked out of there reaffirming my belief that I’d still rather be us than them,” Veon said.

Eyes on the Trail

• Vice President Kamala Harris begins today in New York, where she will join President Joe Biden for virtual briefings on Hurricane Helene recovery efforts and Hurricane Milton, which is barreling toward Florida.  Afterward, the Democratic nominee heads to Las Vegas in advance of campaign events. 
• Former President Donald Trump this afternoon will deliver remarks in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he is expected to focus on economics. In the evening, the Republican nominee is hosting a rally in Reading, Pennsylvania. 
• Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is in Chandler, Arizona, this morning to headline a Harris campaign “veterans and military families” event. The Democratic vice presidential nominee will be joined by Rep. Ruben Gallego, his party’s nominee for Senate in Arizona, and Jimmy McCain, a military veteran and son of the late John McCain, the 2008 GOP presidential White House nominee and longtime senator from the Grand Canyon State. In the afternoon, Walz will join a second event, also in the Phoenix area, with Gila River Indian Community Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis and other tribal leaders. Afterward, Walz heads to Tucson, Arizona, where he headlines a late afternoon campaign rally featuring actor/singer Jaime Camil. 
• Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio headlines a Trump campaign rally in Tucson, Arizona.
• Second gentleman Doug Emhoff will be in Atlanta this evening to headline a Harris campaign fundraiser.

Notable and Quotable

“Hurricane Helene was NOT geoengineered by the government to seize and access lithium deposits in Chimney Rock.”

—A news release entitled “Debunking Helene Response Myths” from the office of Rep. Chuck Edwards, a North Carolina Republican who serves the part of Asheville suffering from the impacts of Hurricane Helene, October 8, 2024