In Pennsylvania, Harris appeals to Americans' sense of 'patriotism' at final 2024 rally
PHILADELPHIA — Vice President Kamala Harris called on Americans' sense of patriotism, imploring them to fight for its ideals at the final rally of her fast-track presidential campaign which took the form of a concert in the birthplace of U.S. democracy.
After a day of stops across Pennsylvania, Harris closed her campaign with an election-eve rally at the Philadelphia Museum of Art chock-full of cultural references to her fight against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
The boxing film “Rocky” made the museum a landmark. But for the Harris campaign, its location on Benjamin Franklin Parkway was symbolic of an acute argument the vice president has been making about the fragility of American democracy.
"We love our country. And when you love something, you fight for it," Harris told her supporters as she addressed them just before midnight. "I do believe it is one of the highest forms of patriotism, of our expression of our love for our country, to then fight for its ideals and to fight to realize the promise of America."
The candidates were in a dead heat in surveys heading into the election's last day in which more than 80 million votes had already been cast.
Last week, Harris spoke from the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., where then-President Trump addressed his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, just before they stormed the U.S. Capitol. She has said that Trump, who refused to concede his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden and mused over the weekend that he shouldn't have left the White House, would spend a second term stewing over grievances.
At a rally in Philadelphia, which her campaign said drew 30,000 people, Harris declared: "America is ready for a fresh start, ready for a new way forward, where see our fellow Americans not as an enemy, but as a neighbor."
"My entire career has been driven by a singular purpose, to fight on behalf of the people," she said. "And it is my pledge to you that if you give me a chance to fight on your behalf as president, there is nothing In the world that will stand in my way."
Harris kicked off her last morning on the campaign trail in Detroit, after a series of rallies in Michigan the day before. She made four stops in Pennsylvania ahead of the concert in Philadelphia, where she made her final pitch to voters. The roster for the rally included Ricky Martin, Fat Joe, Oprah Winfrey, and Lady Gaga.
"We don't get to sit this one out," Winfrey said before introducing Harris. "If we don't show up tomorrow, it is entirely possible that we will not have the opportunity to ever cast a ballot again."
The fight for 270 electoral votes
Anxiety was running high for both presidential campaigns as the election came to a close.
“You're going to turn out tomorrow, and we're going to blow this thing away," Trump told a crowd in Grand Rapids, Michigan, not long after Harris' event concluded. "We're leading going in by hundreds of thousands of votes, but just pretend we're tied or losing by a little bit, because we want to put on a display tomorrow of unity and everything."
Harris' campaign said Monday on a call with reporters that it expects to have multiple routes to win the 270 Electoral College votes needed to secure the presidency, and emphasized Harris' recent campaign activity across the battleground states.
"We are expending the resources, building the organization, maximizing our advertising and our programming, and traveling to every one of these battleground states in the blue wall and the Sun Belt, because we see them all as viable for us," Harris campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon said.
But the fact that Harris finished her whirlwind presidential bid in Pennsylvania is a tacit acknowledgment that the state, part of Democrats’ vaunted blue wall, is vital to her ability to win the White House.
“It says what everybody already knew, which is that Pennsylvania is the key to electoral success on Tuesday,” said Trump-backing Republican strategist Charlie Gerow. “And most people believe that, I think correctly, that as Pennsylvania goes, so will go the nation.”
On that, the two campaigns seem to agree. Harris and Trump have each stressed Pennsylvania's importance. Trump told his supporters at an Allentown rally last week that he believes the state, which has 19 electoral votes, will decide the outcome of the election.
"It's in your hands. If we win Pennsylvania, we are going to win the whole deal," the Republican presidential candidate said.
Trump won Pennsylvania by roughly 44,000 votes in 2016 en route to the presidency. Biden won the state in 2020 by more than 80,000 votes and also won the White House.
"You will decide the outcome of this election, Pennsylvania," Harris told her supporters in Philadelphia on Monday evening.
Biden four years ago closed out his campaign in Pittsburgh as Harris held a simultaneous, drive-in rally in Philadelphia, where Black voters make up a significant portion of the population. The 2020 running mates won both cities, plus Erie in the northwest; Harrisburg, in the center; and the Lehigh Valley in the northeastern part of the state.
Harris identified Pennsylvania as a lynchpin for her campaign on a trip to Philadelphia at the end of October. “Pennsylvania will be key. No doubt,” she told reporters.
On Monday afternoon, Harris stopped by a canvass event in Scranton and then made her first visit of the campaign to the majority-Hispanic city of Allentown. She also stopped by a Puerto Rican restaurant in Reading with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.
On the final day of the 2024 campaign trial, Harris also spoke to her supporters in Pittsburgh at a rally and concert with Katy Perry and Andra Day before her late-night rally in Philadelphia.
Harris supporters began arriving at the outdoor rally in the afternoon. Hilltown resident Erica Moore, 38, brought her daughter, Janae, 8, with her to see the vice president. After Harris was elected four years ago, Moore said Janae told her that she wanted to be vice president when she grew up.
"And what I said to my daughter was, by the time you're old enough to run for office, you'll probably be able to be the president," Moore said. "So it was important for her to see how Vice President Harris' hard work over the last four years in serving us has paid off and afforded her this opportunity and for my daughter to see that you can do anything you want with hard work and by putting your best foot forward."
Jasmine Amaya, 37, came to Philadelphia from Los Angeles by way of Harrisburg, where the vice president rallied her supporters last week. She came to Pennsylvania to canvass for Harris and attended the Philadelphia rally with her dog Fezco.
Amaya said the former California attorney general and senator was relatively new to her and she had not cast a ballot for her in her previous roles. "But I'm like totally into her," Amaya said. "There couldn't be a more prepared person to take over our country right now."
Harris uses 2022 election blueprint
The vice president is following a blueprint sketched by Democrats who have won elections in the state over the past four years, including U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, who has been campaigning for Harris in rural parts of the state.
Trump had large victories in many of those counties in the last presidential election, even as Democrats running statewide have been able to minimize their Republican opponents' vote counts.
Fetterman campaigned over the weekend with former President Bill Clinton in Butler County, near Pittsburgh, and Erie County, which the senator described as the “ultimate bellwether” in the state if not in the nation. He spent Sunday in Beaver County, another Trump-won county outside of Pittsburgh, that Harris visited weeks into her campaign.
In a phone call from the road, Fetterman stressed the importance of campaigning beyond Philadelphia and the urban core of Pittsburgh in the redder parts of the state.
“They're the ones that jam up the margins,” Fetterman said. “It's never about turning a county the color on the map."
Harris' initially prioritized Pittsburgh and its surrounding counties before shifting her focus to Philadelphia and its suburbs in the final weeks of the race.
More recently, she has focused on counties that the campaign believes can turn out suburban women and anti-Trump Republicans. She has visited Philadelphia’s collar counties and targeted cities that traditionally voted for Democrats such as Harrisburg.
Former Trump 2024 primary opponent Nikki Haley won roughly one in five GOP voters in those areas even though she was no longer running for president when Pennsylvania's Republicans went to the polls.
Gerow, who lives in the Democratic stronghold of Harrisburg, dismissed the strategy.
“Nikki Haley has made it very, very, very, very clear that she's a hundred percent for Donald Trump, and her supporters aren't going to say, oh, well, we don't like Trump, ergo, we like Harris,” he said. “They're just not going to do that. I mean, Kamala Harris is the most left-wing candidate that has ever run on a major party ticket.”
Harris’ campaign says it's running a strategy that includes communicating with voters in the more conservative parts of the state.
“It's been a really important part of our campaign that we go everywhere and talk to everyone and have very authentic and earnest interactions with folks,” Harris senior Pennsylvania adviser Brendan McPhillips said in an interview. McPhillips was also Fetterman's campaign manager.
Making a play for Allentown
Harris’ late game visit to Allentown on Monday was an example of how in the abbreviated campaign the candidate herself could not be everywhere. Her stop in the city that she and Biden won four years ago came after Trump’s visit and an offensive joke about Puerto Rico from an insult comic at the Republican candidate’s Madison Square Garden rally. Allentown has a large Puerto Rican population.
“She's showing up, and it demonstrates the commitment that she's made throughout this entire campaign, that she's going to fight for every last vote,” Fetterman said of Harris' election eve events across the state.
Second gentleman Doug Emhoff was in Lancaster and Altoona on Saturday while his wife campaigned in other battleground states.
Biden also campaigned in Pennsylvania on Saturday, in his childhood home of Scranton, and former first lady Michelle Obama held a rally in Philadelphia. First lady Jill Biden campaigned in the Philly suburbs and Harrisburg on Sunday.
Harris traveled to Arizona and Nevada late last week, spent Friday in Wisconsin, swung through Georgia and North Carolina on Saturday, and campaigned in Michigan on Sunday before her arrival in Pennsylvania on Monday. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic nominee for vice president, made multiple stops in Wisconsin. He will end his night in Detroit.
“You saw on the national mall what a president sounds like," Walz said at a rally in Milwaukee. "When Kamala and I talk about freedom, we mean the people should be free to make their own decisions, not politicians."
Trump stopped in Reading earlier in the day and closed out his campaign with a stop in Pittsburgh and a final rally in Grand Rapids, Mich. His running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, is ending the 2024 campaign with stops in four different swing states; Newtown, Pa.; Flint, Mich.; La Crosse, Wis.; and Atlanta.
The Republican ticket also had surrogates in Pennsylvania throughout the day on Monday including Republican Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida and former acting U.S. Attorney General Matt Whitaker.
(This story was updated to add new information.)
Contributing: Joey Garrison, Rebecca Morin, and Sudiksha Kochi, Paste BN