Left to right, first lady Jill Biden, President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Douglas Emhoff take part in a ”Reproductive Freedom Campaign Rally” at George Mason University on Jan. 23, 2024 in Manassas, Virginia. It was the first joint rally of the campaign for the president and vice president.(Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
PHILADELPHIA — For the first time this year in Pennsylvania, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will participate in a campaign event together, in the battleground state’s biggest city. The joint appearance at Girard College announcing the launch of Black Voters for Biden-Harris underscores the importance of Black voters to the Biden-Harris campaign, a crucial voting bloc that helped the ticket win Pennsylvania in 2020.
“We will continue to be aggressive, innovative, and thorough in our work to earn the support of the very voters who sent Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the White House in 2020 and will do so again in 2024,” Biden-Harris 2024 Principal Deputy Campaign Manager Quentin Fulks said in a statement Wednesday announcing the launch.
Biden and Harris will be joined at the event by Black leaders including Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Congressional Black Caucus Chairperson U.S. Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV), Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis, and Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker.
Following the speech at Girard College, Biden will attend a small business event with the Black Chamber of Commerce at a local Black-owned small business. The campaign will also host a voter registration phone bank with U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) and others after the event.
Having the support of Black voters has been key for Democratic presidential tickets for decades.
In 2020, Pennsylvania exit polling shows 92% of Black voters supported Biden’s candidacy, while 7% voted for former President Donald Trump, the presumptive 2024 GOP nominee. However, recent polling finds that Biden does not appear to be garnering that same level of support this cycle, potentially putting his reelection bid in danger in Pennsylvania and beyond.
To that end, the campaign has renewed its focus on courting Black voters. Harris gave the keynote address to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) convention in Philadelphia last week, as the group elected its first Black woman president.
VP Harris continues Biden campaign focus on courting union voters in Philadelphia visit
Earlier this month, Biden delivered the commencement address at Morehouse College in Georgia, a historically Black college. He pledged to continue supporting HBCUs, touting that during his administration, the federal funding for HBCUs has surpassed $16 billion.
And both the Biden and Trump campaigns have aired ads focused on Black voters in battleground states, including Pennsylvania. As early as last fall, the Biden-Harris campaign was running ads in swing states focused on Black voters, part of a $25 million campaign in key battleground states. Titled “Get Ahead,” one of the spots touted how the Biden-Harris administration had “made equity a cornerstone of their administration’s policy agenda.”
State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D-Philadelphia) is on the Biden-Harris National Advisory Board and has campaigned for the ticket across Pennsylvania, as well as in South Carolina and Wisconsin.
“The President’s consistent outreach is about treating people with respect, not telling them they have to vote, making a case for why they can vote,” Kenyatta told the Capital-Star. “I’m beyond confident that he and the Vice President are more than capable of doing that, and that we’re going to be successful in large part because this president has a record of success and Donald Trump only has a record of cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans.”
Biden last appeared in Philadelphia at the end of a weeklong swing through three Pennsylvania cities in April, ahead of the state’s primary election. He received the endorsement of several members of the Kennedy family at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Recreation Center in North Philadelphia. During that visit, he discussed sitting behind the resolute desk and having busts of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., saying he thinks of what they would do in difficult situations.
Biden makes unions and steel the focus of his first 2024 visit to Pittsburgh
On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Biden volunteered at Philadelphia food bank Philabundance alongside Mayor Cherelle Parker, the third time he’s visited there on the holiday since winning the presidential election in 2020. Also this year on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, several Pennsylvania elected officials including Gov. Josh Shapiro and U.S. Sen. Bob Casey were at Girard College for what is described as the nation’s largest Day of Service event honoring King’s legacy.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, who helped propel Biden to victory in the Palmetto State’s primary election in 2020, has campaigned for the Biden-Harris ticket in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh this year, in an effort to boost support among Black voters. Clyburn is widely credited with helping Biden clinch the Democratic nomination in 2020, as the influential Congressman was an early endorser of Biden’s campaign.
Wednesday is Biden’s eighth visit to Pennsylvania this cycle. This is Harris’s fifth visit to the state in 2024, four of them in the southeast.
Trump has made three visits to Pennsylvania so far in 2024, appearing in Philadelphia once, to announce a new line of Trump-branded sneakers. Although Trump hasn’t visited the Keystone State since his April rally in the Lehigh Valley, he rallied supporters in Wildwood, New Jersey earlier this month before an audience with plenty of Pennsylvanians in attendance.
The latest polling shows Trump with a slight edge over Biden, and with U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) holding a narrow lead over Republican challenger David McCormick.
Multiple national ratings outlets, including the Cook Political Report, rate the presidential race as a “toss-up” in Pennsylvania. The 19 electoral votes on the line make it the largest swing state in this category for the 2024 cycle.
This is a a developing story that will be updated.
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