Former President Barack Obama plans to crisscross battleground states to win over Kamala Harris next week, starting with a kickoff in the crucial state of Pennsylvania, a Harris campaign official said.
President Obama is scheduled to hold his first event in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, next Thursday, marking the beginning of a major race across a handful of Rust Belt and Sun Belt states that will likely decide the 2024 election.
President Obama will make an appearance in the battleground state after Republican candidate Donald Trump returns on Saturday to Butler, Pennsylvania, where he survived an assassination attempt in July.
Mr. Obama remains one of the Democratic Party’s most powerful surrogates, perhaps second only to his wife Michelle Obama. Her return to the campaign trail follows an impassioned speech at the Democratic National Convention in August in which she touted Harris as an up-and-comer and a natural member of a diverse, youth-powered political coalition. He was positioned as his successor.
“We don’t need four more years of fuss, clumsiness and confusion,” he told the convention in August. “We’ve seen that movie before, and we all know that sequels are usually worse. America is ready for a new chapter.”
Harris was one of Obama’s early supporters when he launched a strong presidential bid against Hillary Clinton in 2007. She continued to knock on doors for Mr. Obama ahead of the 2008 Iowa caucuses.
Harris’ campaign already includes strategist David Plouffe, Stephanie Cutter, who was Obama’s deputy campaign manager in 2012, and Mitch Stewart, who was Obama’s grassroots strategist on both campaigns. This includes several former Obama campaign staffers. Mr. Stewart is Mr. Harris’ adviser in several battleground states, including Pennsylvania, a must-win state for either side.
The key to winning Pennsylvania may be winning over the Latino vote. Writing in The Conversation, Penn State professor AK Sandoval-Strausch said there may be about 90,000 Latino voters still undecided, saying Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny’s endorsement of Harris・He claims that he has the potential to have a bigger impact on the election than Swift. In 2020, Biden won the state by 80,000 votes, or one point. In 2016, Trump won the state by just 44,292 votes.
The latest average of Pennsylvania polls released by The Hill/Decision Desk shows Ms. Harris leading Mr. Trump in the state by just 0.9 percentage points.
