Walz campaigns in Erie, a bellwether Pennsylvania county

Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Governor Tim Walz speaks to a gathered crowd of supporters during a campaign rally at the Highmark Amphitheater on September 5, 2024 in Erie. (Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

ERIE — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democrats’ nominee for vice president, wrapped a two-day swing through Pennsylvania on Thursday with a rally in Erie, a key county in must-win Pennsylvania, after Wednesday stops in Lancaster and Pittsburgh.

“There are a million places you could be with your time, your talent and your treasure but you came out here,” Walz told the audience. He joked that it was “two hours from kickoff” for the first NFL game of the season “but you came out here, as the vice president always says, for a simple and beautiful reason: You love this country.”

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, chose Walz as her running mate barely a month ago, and he has had to hit the ground running, introducing himself to voters in critical swing states like Pennsylvania. Their GOP opponents, former President Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio were both in Pennsylvania in recent days. Vance appeared last week in Erie and Trump taped an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Wednesday in Harrisburg.

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“There’s a saying in politics: If you’re explaining, you’re losing,” Walz said. “I did watch part of Trump last night, and I want to say this: 11 times. Eleven times Donald Trump explained to us that he wasn’t weird.” Democrats have leaned into the “weird” label that Walz first applied to the former president.

“But look, when I said that, this isn’t about name calling or anything,” Walz said. “I was pointing out it’s weird to be obsessed with people’s personal lives. It’s weird to be obsessed with people’s health care choices. It’s weird to continue to talk about sharks and batteries and boats and things like that. What’s not weird, is to tell us what you’re going to do about health care. Tell us who’s going to get a tax cut. Tell us that you’re going to protect reproductive rights. Tell us how you’re going to tackle climate change.”

In an emailed statement, Trump campaign spokesman Kush Desai pushed back on Walz’s comments, and criticized him for not taking press questions during the Erie trip. “Erie is going to reject another four years of disaster under Kamala Harris and instead vote to Make America Great Again with President Donald J. Trump,” Desai said.

On Wednesday,  Desai criticized Walz’s visit to Lancaster. “Given Walz can’t even win over his own family members, there’s no chance he or Kamala are going to change the fact that Lancaster County is Trump Country.” He referenced news reports about a group of Walz’s distant cousins who have expressed support for Trump.

During a pitch to the audience Thursday to get their families on board to vote, Walz said “and all of you know I need to talk to my relatives too. Trust me on this.”

Walz gave kudos to Pennsylvania U.S. Sens. Bob Casey and U.S. Sen John Fetterman — “who dresses down better than me” — and Gov. Josh Shapiro, whose comments on former President Donald Trump he quoted: “Whenever Donald Trump talks about America he’s s–-t-talking America,” Walz said. “He does not believe in the promise of America and he continues to put this country down. He can only think of himself.”

About 2,000 people were at the rally at Highmark Amphitheater in Liberty Park, overlooking Presque Isle Bay. Walz was greeted with signs and chants calling him “coach.” He spoke for just over a half hour in the late afternoon sun.

He spoke about Wednesday’s school shooting in Georgia that left four people dead, and repeated a frequent talking point; that he is a gun owner and a hunter, but believes in gun reform. As governor, he passed legislation requiring background checks and a “red flag” law.

“I, for one, am sick and tired of hearing about ‘thoughts and prayers’ rather than actually doing something,” Walz said. “We can’t let them make this just about the Second Amendment. I defend the Second Amendment, but our first responsibility is to keep our kids safe.”

Walz, a former social studies teacher, was introduced at the rally by Erie school teacher Jodie Abbott. “Tim is someone who understands how to lead, how to affect change, and how to do so with compassion, understanding, and, most importantly, grit,” Abbott told the audience.

Before the rally, Walz and his daughter Hope stopped at a campaign field office in downtown Erie to thank volunteers and make a few calls.

“Look, it’s not hyperbole. This election will go right through Erie, Pennsylvania. That is what is going to happen,” Walz told the volunteers. “We know that this is a bellwether county. We know that the work you’re doing here is going to make a difference, and we know this will be a tight race, but the good news is we’ve got a better plan to work with people.”

The Walzes stopped next at Sara’s Restaurant, a well-loved local diner near Presque Isle State Park, where he had a burger, onion rings and a hot fudge shake.

Erie’s role in the ‘battleground’ election

Erie is widely viewed as a key piece of the Pennsylvania electoral puzzle, the bellwether of the must-win battleground state. Former President Donald Trump held one of his first 2024 campaign rallies here in July 2023 , and his running mate, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, spoke in Erie last week. Trump bested Hillary Clinton in Erie County in 2016 by just over 1,900 votes , a crushing loss for Democrats as the state flipped red. Clinton did not make campaign appearances in Erie during her presidential run.

“The Clinton campaign was just wholly and totally and absolutely — almost criminally — absent here in 2016,” Jeff Bloodworth, a professor of American political history at Gannon University in Erie, told the Capital-Star. “I mean, they didn’t even do yard signs.”

Acknowledging that while “yard signs don’t vote,” Bloodworth said he’d never seen anything like the physical presence of the Trump campaign, including signs, in Erie that year.

But Democrats appeared to learn from their 2016 defeat; President Joe Biden eked out a win over Trump in Erie in the 2020 election by a margin of just over 1,400 votes, or 1.03%, as Pennsylvania flipped blue again.

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“Biden, of course, took Erie seriously in ‘20,” Bloodworth said. The Erie County Democratic Party corrected many of its mistakes of 2016, he added, and even though COVID-19 hampered get-out-the-vote efforts in 2020, the party had laid the necessary groundwork coming into 2024.

“It’s hard to imagine there could be a bigger difference in Democrats between ‘16 and ‘24 – it’s like night and day,” Bloodworth said. “It’s a real, professional political operation.”

Sam Talarico, chair of the Erie County Democratic Party, said while interest in the campaign among Democrats here before Biden dropped out was somewhat muted, the mood shifted dramatically after it became clear Harris would top the ticket.

The party opened its office for the fall campaign on June 3 and was open four hours a day. “People would come in every now and then wanting a Biden sign,” he said. “I was waiting, like ‘when are people going to start paying attention to this election?’ And the polls were kind of stuck in the mud.”

After Biden bowed out, “it was like a switch was flipped,” Talarico said. “People were coming in wanting to donate money, we have over 275 people on our volunteer list, and before the switch over it was about 70. We actually got about 1,000 yard signs last Thursday and they’re gone, so when people come in asking for them we put them on a list and tell them we’ll deliver them.”

So Walz has his work cut out for him, and Talarico said the Harris-Walz campaign’s focus on “joy” should translate well in Erie. He suggested Walz shouldn’t focus on differentiating himself from Vance.

“They’re focusing on the future, and I think that’s a smart strategy,” Talarico said. He pointed to Harris’ recent CNN interview, and how she handled a question about Trump’s remark about her race. “She said ‘next question.’ It seems to only empower Trump when you make him the center of the story. So I don’t think they are going to focus a whole lot on their opponents.”

The Erie County GOP didn’t reply to a request for an interview from the Capital-Star.

While he’s in Erie, Walz should focus on being Walz, Bloodworth said. “In Erie, you just need to be a normie, and Walz is like the normie-in-chief,” he said. “That was Biden’s job, right, and why Obama picked him. And Walz is even better than Biden was on the stump. So that’s it: Just be normal. Make some jokes say ‘mind your damn business.’”

Perhaps more than Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Erie mimics Pennsylvania in terms of its rural, urban and suburban populations. Both Bloodworth and Talarico said the economy was a key issue for voters in Erie, but not just the effects of inflation on prices for everyday goods.

The city of Erie remains a Democratic stronghold, but the GOP has made gains at the county level, even as overall population continues to decline. The Harris-Walz campaign would be wise to articulate how it would address that population loss, Bloodworth said, as it’s a key problem across western Pennsylvania.

“Every other person I meet has a child or grandchild who’s moved to North Carolina, or Nashville,” he said. “People want to know, ‘what are you going to do about the cost of groceries,’ but they also want to know ‘what are you going to do so that my grandkids don’t leave once they graduate from the local university?’”

Harris, Bloodworth said, needs to offer a larger economic narrative. “Because Trump at least talks about it. I’m not sure there’s a whole lot of solutions offered in Trump recognizing that, but at least he recognized it.”

This article was updated at 9:25 pm Sept. 5, 2024 with details from Walz’s rally in Erie and again at 11:40 p.m. with an updated statement from the Trump campaign.

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