Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democrats’ nominee for vice president, called voters at a field office in Lancaster County Sept. 4, 2024 (Capital-Star photo by John Cole)
LANCASTER— During his first solo visit to Pennsylvania since joining the Democratic presidential ticket, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz campaigned in Lancaster County on Wednesday, visiting a campaign office to speak with volunteers and make some calls to voters.
“I think all of you in this room, it’s not hyperbole to say, this election could very well hinge on this county here and this field office here and the folks that we get out,” Walz told campaign volunteers. “That is an awesome responsibility, but it’s also an awesome opportunity.”
Walz spent about 30 minutes at the field office, thanking the volunteers for their work boosting the campaign, and spoke about the issues on the minds of voters in the election.
“We’re here first and foremost to say thank you,” Walz said. “The energy that you’re feeling in this room is across the country.”
Walz said that he and Vice President Kamala Harris, Democrats’ presidential nominee, support policies that would improve people’s lives and specifically cited access to reproductive care and healthcare, good public schools, building infrastructure, and creating jobs that pay a living wage.
He said he believes that the Republican Party’s presidential ticket of former President Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) is providing a different vision of America, one that is pessimistic.
“My God, everytime I hear Donald Trump give a speech, it’s like the next screenplay for Mad Max or something,” Walz said, to laughs in the room. “They’re rooting against America, they do not believe in the exceptionalism of this country, they do not believe in the people who built this country, they simply want to complain about them and by you coming here, and talking neighbor to neighbor, that’s what inspires people.”
In addition to Wednesday being Walz’s first solo campaign trip to Pennsylvania, it is the first time that a candidate from either the Democratic or Republican ticket has made an appearance in Lancaster County in 2024.
According to the 2020 U.S. Census, Lancaster County has the sixth-largest population of the state’s 67 counties. Trump won Lancaster in both 2016 and 2020, the largest Pennsylvania county where he did so. During Trump’s first successful bid for the White House, he won Lancaster County by 20 points over Hillary Clinton and beat Joe Biden there in 2020 by 16 points.
Lancaster County has traditionally been safely conservative, but Democrats see an opportunity to make gains in the 2024 election there. Gov. Josh Shapiro and U.S. Sen. John Fetterman both reduced Republicans’ margins of victory in the county for the 2022 election and statewide judicial candidates continued to close the margins in 2023.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (l) visits a campaign office in Lancaster County Sept. 4, 2024 (Capital-Star photo by John Cole)
“I know gubernatorial and presidential turnout can be a little bit different, but when you look at those types of numbers, obviously it makes sense to invest in Lancaster County,” Stella Sexton, Vice Chair of the Lancaster County Democratic Committee told the Capital-Star.
The Harris-Walz campaign, which has 50 offices across the commonwealth, has two offices in the county, opening its first one in Lancaster in March, which is the earliest a Democratic presidential campaign has done so, according to the campaign. They recently opened a campaign office in Ephrata, which is in a more rural region of Lancaster County.
Sexton also pointed to Democrats’ attempts to court Republicans who supported former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in the GOP presidential primary. Haley received 20% of the vote in Lancaster County, even though by that point she had already ended her bid for the White House.
“So we look at Lancaster County as a place where we can increase our margins everywhere,” Sexton told the Capital-Star. “We do think that there’s a lot of persuadable Republicans out there as well who are not happy with Donald Trump.”
The Trump campaign criticized Walz’s visit to Lancaster in a press release Wednesday. “There’s no chance he or Kamala are going to change the fact that Lancaster County is Trump Country,” Trump spokesman Kush Desai said in the release.
Joining Walz at the campaign office was his daughter, Hope. He also brought apple cider donuts and whoopie pies with him, which he purchased at Cherry Hill Orchards in Lancaster County.
Walz joked that Pennsylvania and Minnesota have so much in common, although he added thatt “Super Bowl rings are not one of them.”
At the beginning of his brief remarks, Walz said he had been briefed on the school shooting in Georgia that left four dead on Wednesday, calling the situation “tragic” and “all too common” and there was work to be done to prevent such shootings in the future.
“Our hearts are out there right now,” Walz said.
Nikki Rivera, Manheim Township School Board President and candidate for the Pennsylvania General Assembly’s 96th state House District, met Walz in the campaign office. They talked briefly about the importance of state legislature races and she thanked him for his background as a teacher, Rivera said.
“I told him how inspiring he is because I, too, am a high school teacher and I’m the GSA advisor where I teach and I said ‘what you’re doing is very inspiring, you’re bringing all people into it and that’s what we should be doing in this country,” Rivera told the Capital-Star. “I thanked him for that.”
Rivera said she most often hears about education funding when talking to voters in the district she’s seeking to represent, while Sexton says she hears most about reproductive rights knocking doors in Lancaster County.
Walz did not take questions from the media during the visit to the Lancaster office. He headed next to Pittsburgh for a “political engagement” according to the campaign.
Walz isn’t the only candidate on either ticket to be in the Keystone State on Wednesday. In the evening, former President Donald Trump is scheduled appear at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg to tape a “town hall” event for Fox News,hosted by Sean Hannity.
Harris will return to Pittsburgh on Thursday, just three days after appearing with President Joe Biden in the Steel City on Labor Day.
Harris and Trump will face off in Philadelphia next week, for a nationally televised debate on ABC News.
The Cook Political Report rates the presidential race for Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes as a toss-up.
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