Vice President Kamala Harris speaks to an audience of 5,000 at the Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg Oct. 30, 2024 (Photo by Ben Wasserstein for the Capital-Star)
With six days until the election, Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned in Harrisburg Wednesday and kept to her campaign’s primary message: That if reelected, former President Donald Trump would pose a threat to democracy.
Harris said, if given a second term, Trump will seek vengeance and not progress.
“This is someone who is not thinking about how to make your life better,” she said. “This is someone who is unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance and out for unchecked power.”
Pennsylvania has 19 electoral votes, the most of any swing state, making it a “must-win” state for either candidate. During her 25-minute speech at the Farm Show Complex, Harris emphasized the importance of the remaining days of the campaign.
“We need you to vote,” she said. “Because we have just six days left. And one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime. And we have work to do.”
Bethany Thomas from Reading was among the 5,000 people who turned out to see Harris on Wednesday, and was excited to be there, expressing concern over the future of reproductive rights and for her grandchildren should Trump win the election.
“I don’t really want old white guys making their decisions for them [her grandchildren],” she said. “It’s a very personal and private decision to make, and you shouldn’t have a government involved in it.”
Reproductive rights was a topic brought up by several speakers.
“I refuse to allow my daughter to grow up in a country where she has your rights and freedoms than her mother and her grandmother,” Lt. Gov. Austin Davis told the audience.
Harris reminded voters of the three U.S. Supreme Court Justices Trump appointed, and their roles in overturning Roe v. Wade.
“Now in America, one in three women in America lives in a state with a Trump abortion ban, many with no exceptions, even for rape and incest, which is immoral,” she said.
She also criticized the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a conservative policy proposal that would overhaul the federal government and give significant power to the executive branch.
Trump and running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), have tried to distance themselves from it, but several members of Trump’s administration wrote parts of “Mandate for Leadership, which details Project 2025, and Vance wrote the forward for a book by the plan’s primary overseer.
At certain points during her speech, Palestinian supporters spoke out accusing her and President Joe Biden of genocide, though they were ushered out.
Cassandra Blaney drove nearly three hours from Bradford County, where Trump won by 45 points in 2020, to show her support for Harris.
She said the economy concerns her and Trump’s plan won’t fix things.
“I think it’s really noteworthy that you have Nobel Prize-winning economists, conservative economists, telling us that his policies are going to tank our economy,” she said.
Twenty-three Nobel-winning economists signed a letter calling Harris’ economic plan “vastly superior.”
“His [Trump’s] policies, including high tariffs even on goods from our friends and allies and regressive tax cuts for corporations and individuals, will lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality,” the letter stated.
During her speech, Harris brought up parts of her economic plan including a tax cut for 100 million Americans, a federal ban on price gouging on groceries and a proposal to build more affordable housing.
On Saturday, Trump hosted a rally at Madison Square Garden in which comedian Tony Hinchcliffe referred to Puerto Rico as a “pile of garbage in the middle of the ocean.”
Aida Crespo, a Puerto Rican who moved to Harrisburg, was offended by those remarks. She said the half-million Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania will make a difference on Election Day.
“Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania will show respect for the island on Nov. 5,” she said.
Kush Desai, Pennsylvania communications director for the Trump campaign, said Harris’ rally wasn’t trying to reach Republican constituents.
“We know who Kamala Harris isn’t bothering to reach out to in Harrisburg today: the millions of patriotic, Trump-supporting Pennsylvanians who Joe Biden and Democrats consider to be ‘garbage’, ‘deplorables’, ‘ racist’, and ‘Nazis,’” he said in a statement.
Harris closed her speech with a message of unity and a call for people to head to the polls.
“Let us remember, we all have so much more in common than what separates us,” she said. “So remember, your vote is your voice and your voice is your power.”
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