Vice President Kamala Harris addresses the SEIU convention in Philadelphia May 21, 2024 (screen capture from White House video)
PHILADELPHIA — Vice President Kamala Harris returned to Pennsylvania on Tuesday, continuing the Biden-Harris campaign’s focus on earning the support of labor unions. Harris delivered the keynote address to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) gathering at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.
“Since your founding SEIU, you have been on the front lines of every major expansion of rights for the American people,” Harris said.
She spoke to the SEIUa day after the organization elected April Verrett its first Black woman president. “Talk about a phenomenal woman and a powerful fighter for justice and fairness,” Harris said of Verrett. “I know firsthand that April is a leader who is always guided by an uncompromising focus on worker empowerment and their rights.”
Competing chants from the audience of “free Palestine” and “four more years” broke out numerous times during Harris’s remarks.
Courting union voters has been a constant for President Joe Biden during his career in elected office. Biden has made an annual Labor Day visit to Pennsylvania in recent years, speaking in the City of Brotherly Love last year on the holiday, touting his administration’s commitment to union jobs. During his first 2024 stop in Pittsburgh last month, Biden thanked US Steelworkers for their support, calling himself a “union guy from belt buckle to shoe sole.”
Tuesday was Harris’s second visit to Pennsylvania this month, following an appearance in Montgomery County where she joined actress Sheryl Lee Ralph for a discussion on reproductive rights. Three of Harris’ four visits to Pennsylvania this year have been in the southeast, a densely populated region where Democrats rely on racking up big numbers to carry the state’s 19 electoral votes.
Biden has made seven appearances in Pennsylvania so far this year, including a weeklong visit to three cities the week before the state’s primary election. Former President Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, has visited Pennsylvania three times in 2024, speaking to gun rights supporters in Harrisburg and at a rally in the Lehigh Valley. His only visit to Philadelphia was in February, where he unveiled a new line of Trump-branded shoes at Sneaker Con.
Trump also held a rally in Wildwood, New Jersey earlier this month, an event with plenty of Pennsyvlanians in attendance.
Polling from AARP Pennsylvania and Muhlenberg College released earlier this month showed Trump with a narrow lead over Biden, although U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) has a slight advantage over Republican challenger David McCormick.
The Cook Political Report, a national ratings outlet, rates the presidential race as a toss-up in Pennsylvania, the state with the most electoral votes on the line with that distinction.
This is a developing story that will be updated
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