PITTSBURGH — Kamala Harris doesn’t want Joe Biden’s baggage. But she’s also counting on him to help her win the election.
Nowhere is that more evident than in Pennsylvania, the critical battleground where Biden spent his youth. Even as working-class voters here continue to blame the president for high prices — and breathe a sigh of relief that a wrinkled Biden is no longer on the ballot — many still see him as “Union Joe.”
For Harris, who appeared with Biden at a campaign event here on Monday, deploying Biden is both an opportunity and a risk. Biden remains an unpopular president, and Republicans are using her position in his administration to convince voters that Harris would be Biden 2.0 if elected. In a nod to that political reality, Harris is not expected to campaign with Biden every weekend or plaster images of him in every ad.
But Harris’ team still plans to deploy Biden strategically, particularly in Pennsylvania and other Rust Belt swing states where he has the most appeal.
It’s no coincidence that Harris chose Labor Day at a Pittsburgh union hall, where rank-and-file members in green IBEW T-shirts were eating hot dogs, sauerkraut and a red, white and blue cake, to do just that. Many Democrats believe Harris has an opening — and a need — to expand her support among rank-and-file union members, some of whom have rallied to Donald Trump even after winning the vast majority of key union endorsements. After Biden ended his reelection bid in July, Harris agreed to meet with the Teamsters — a union that had kept a frosty distance from Biden and denied him an endorsement.
“President Biden has a longstanding, very close, special relationship with Pennsylvania, but particularly with the workers of Western Pennsylvania. If you think back to his 2020 campaign, many of the unions here in Western Pennsylvania are some of the unions that supported him from the beginning,” said Democratic Lt. Gov. Austin Davis, who hails from a former steel town just outside Pittsburgh. “He’s going to be a very strong replacement for Vice President Harris as we head into Election Day, particularly with that group.”
In Pittsburgh, during her first campaign stop with Biden in a key state since she officially became the Democratic nominee, Harris sought to galvanize organized labor, which Biden has been courting, reminding the crowd that mail-in ballots would be mailed in Pennsylvania within days. She praised Pittsburgh as a “cradle of the American labor movement.”
Speaking before an audience of more than 600 people, the setting was far more intimate than the arena-rousing rallies Harris has led in recent weeks.
But the rhetoric was much the same. In blasting her opponent, Harris slammed Trump for opposing minimum wage increases, appointing “union busters” to the National Labor Relations Board and cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy. “America has tried those failed policies before, and we’re not going back,” she said.
Harris also announced for the first time in Pittsburgh her position — shared by Biden and Trump — that U.S. Steel “must remain in American hands,” a priority for the United Steelworkers union, which opposes the proposed sale to Japan’s Nippon Steel Corp.
Harris, along with labor leaders who spoke before her, touted Biden’s record as their shared legacy, highlighting the union jobs created as a result of the administration’s greatest legislative achievements.
Biden came out to chants of “Thank you, Joe” and gave a speech that touched on his Scranton roots, his history of celebrating Labor Day in Pittsburgh and his administration’s pro-union bona fides. He spoke about walking a picket line as president and passing the bipartisan infrastructure law, saying that Trump, by contrast, “hasn’t rebuilt anything!”
He promised that Harris would “build” on the progress his administration had made and become “a historic pro-union president.”
The stop in Pittsburgh was part of a multi-state push by Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, on Labor Day.
Walz campaigned in the swing state of Wisconsin at Laborfest, where he insisted that the so-called “Blue Wall” is strong and is being strengthened by unions: “If these guys think there’s a crack in the Blue Wall, they’re sorely mistaken.”
Harris began her meeting with union members in Detroit on Monday, acknowledging the city’s foundational place in the history of the labor movement and its hard-won achievements, while vowing to continue the fight in the White House.
“Trump is a scumbag!” the crowd chanted, cheered on by Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) who walked among the picnic tables that filled the hardwood floor before the speaking program began.
In a statement, Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said: “Kamala Harris is spending Labor Day campaigning with her partner-in-crime Joe Biden, desperately trying to manipulate the American people. Meanwhile, Americans are working harder than ever on Labor Day to pay for gas, groceries and rent because Kamala Harris destroyed our economy and is proud to have done so.”
Harris’ strategy to campaign with Biden, however cautious, is a gamble: Most voters believe the economy is on the wrong track and that the vice president is a loyal member of the Biden administration, which many see as the culprit.
Now she’s trying to get back on track, expressing sympathy with voters over inflation and promising to crack down on profiteering, while highlighting popular aspects of Biden’s policies in her TV ads, such as capping the cost of insulin.
Polls show Trump ahead of Harris among voters when it comes to who they trust to run the economy, but recent polls show his lead narrowing.
Trump and Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, the GOP vice presidential nominee, are trying to convince voters that Harris is responsible for the parts of Biden’s economic record they don’t like. At a campaign rally in Michigan last week, Vance said that “Kamala Harris is calling the shots” in the Biden administration.
In Pennsylvania, where many in the GOP have known Biden for decades, some Republicans are making a slightly different argument. In an interview over Labor Day weekend, GOP Rep. Mike Kelly, who represents parts of western Pennsylvania, emphasized Harris’ California roots and portrayed her as too liberal for voters here.
Kelly said Harris “is nowhere near the type of Democrat to the people of Pittsburgh that President Biden was.”
“If you were to talk to the people of Pittsburgh, they would recognize Joe Biden, right? Scranton, working class, Catholic, strong blue-collar. Now I think with Vice President Harris, this is an entity that they’re not really familiar with,” he said. “And why would they be? You’re from California, you have a completely different ideology, different ideas than what we have in Pittsburgh.”
Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.), who first met Harris as a union leader in Los Angeles when Harris was running for attorney general, acknowledged that the vice president has “room to grow” among union households. But she said Harris has been a union champion her entire career.
“She will be at least as pro-union as President Biden,” she said. “But I think the opportunities that our country has give her the opportunity to be pro-union.”
Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.
