PITTSBURGH — Kamala Harris doesn’t want Joe Biden’s baggage. But she’s also counting on him to help her win the election.
That’s nowhere more apparent than in Pennsylvania, the critical battleground where Biden spent his childhood. Even as working-class voters here continue to blame the president for high prices — and breathe a sigh of relief that a wizened Biden is no longer on the ballot — many still view him as “Union Joe.”
For Harris, who appeared with Biden at a campaign stop here Monday, deploying Biden represents both an opportunity and a risk. Biden remains an unpopular president, and Republicans are seizing on 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 isn’t expected to campaign with Biden every weekend or plaster images of him across every ad.
But Harris’ team is still planning to deploy Biden strategically, particularly in Pennsylvania and other Rust Belt swing states where he retains the most appeal.
It’s no accident that Harris chose Labor Day at a union hall in Pittsburgh, where rank-and-file members in green IBEW T-shirts noshed on hot dogs, sauerkraut and a red-white-and-blue sheet cake, to begin doing 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 drifted toward Donald Trump, even after winning the vast majority of top labor endorsements. After Biden ended his reelection bid in July, Harris agreed to meet with the Teamsters — a union that had maintained an icy distance from Biden and withheld an endorsement from him.
“President Biden has long had a very close, special relationship with Pennsylvania, but with western Pennsylvania labor in particular. If you think back to his 2020 campaign, many of the labor unions here in western Pennsylvania are some of the unions that were with him since the very beginning,” said Democratic Lt. Gov. Austin Davis, who hails from a former steel town just outside of Pittsburgh. “He’s going to be a very strong surrogate for Vice President Harris as we head into Election Day, particularly with that group.”
In Pittsburgh, at her first campaign stop with Biden in a battleground state since officially becoming the Democratic nominee, Harris sought to energize organized labor, which Biden courted assiduously, reminding the audience that mail ballots would begin going out in Pennsylvania in mere days. She praised Pittsburgh as a “cradle of the American labor movement.”
Speaking to a crowd of more than 600 people, the setting was far more intimate than the arena-rocking rallies Harris has led in recent weeks.
But the rhetoric was much the same. In savaging her opponent, Harris ripped Trump for opposing increases to the minimum wage, 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 are not going back,” she said.
Harris also announced in Pittsburgh for the first time her position — shared by Biden and Trump — that US Steel “should remain American-owned,” a priority for the United Steelworkers union, which opposes its proposed sale to Nippon Steel Corp. of Japan.
Harris, along with labor leaders who spoke ahead of her, touted Biden’s record and presented it as their shared legacy, emphasizing the union jobs created as a result of the administration’s biggest legislative accomplishments.
Coming out to chants of “Thank you, Joe,” Biden gave a speech that touched on his Scranton roots, his history of celebrating Labor Day in Pittsburgh, and his administration’s pro-union bonafides. He talked about walking a picket line as president and passing the bipartisan infrastructure law, saying that Trump, in contrast, “didn’t rebuild a damn thing!”
He promised that Harris would “build on” the progress that his administration made” and be “a historic pro-union president.”
The Pittsburgh stop was part of a multi-state Labor Day blitz by Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
Walz campaigned in the swing state of Wisconsin at Laborfest, where he insisted that the so-called “Blue Wall” is strong and fortified by unions: “If those guys think there is a crack in the Blue Wall, they are sadly mistaken.”
Harris, meanwhile, began her Monday swing rallying with union members in Detroit, recognizing the city’s foundational place in the labor movement’s history and its hard-won achievements while promising to continue their fight in the Oval Office.
“Trump’s a scab!” the crowd shouted, encouraged by Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) walking 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 gaslight the American people. Meanwhile, this Labor Day the American people are working harder than ever to afford gas, groceries, and rent because Kamala Harris broke our economy and is proud of it.”
Harris’ strategy of campaigning alongside Biden, even if carefully, is a gamble: A majority of voters think the economy is on the wrong track, and the vice president is a loyal member of the Biden administration that many of them believe is at fault.
At the moment, she is trying to thread the needle, expressing sympathy with voters over inflation and promising to crack down on price gouging while also touting pieces of Biden’s record that are popular, such as capping the cost of insulin, in her TV ads.
Surveys show that Trump leads Harris among voters on the question of who they trust to handle the economy, but recent polling shows his edge narrowing.
Trump and Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, the GOP vice presidential nominee, are working to persuade voters that Harris is responsible for the parts of Biden’s economic record that they don’t like. At a campaign stop in Michigan last week, Vance said “Kamala Harris has been calling the shots” in the Biden administration.
In Pennsylvania, where many in the GOP have known Biden for decades, some Republicans make a slightly different argument. In an interview over Labor Day weekend, GOP Rep. Mike Kelly, who represents parts of western Pennsylvania, highlighted Harris’ California roots and portrayed her as too liberal for voters here.
Kelly said Harris is “nowhere near the same type of a Democrat for Pittsburghers as President Biden was.”
“If you were to talk to Pittsburghers, they would recognize Joe Biden, right? Scranton, blue-collar, Catholic, strong labor guy. Now I think with Vice President Harris, this is an entity 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 do in Pittsburgh.”
Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.), who first met Harris as a Los Angeles-based labor leader when Harris was running for attorney general, acknowledged that the vice president has “room to grow” among union households. But she said that Harris has been a labor champion her entire career.
“She will, at minimum, be as pro-union as President Biden,” she said. “But I think the opportunities in front of our country will give her the chance to be more pro-union.”
Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.
