Trump Campaign Mobilizes in Pennsylvania to Block Harris’ Path

Many Trump Force 47 volunteers paired up to knock on doors in surrounding Pennsylvania neighborhoods, while others stayed behind and made phone calls to support the former president’s campaign.

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Volunteers hoped to mobilize Republicans who voted poorly in local elections to pledge to vote for Trump now and to provide their phone numbers so the Republican Party could remind them to vote before the November election.

“I definitely need to see our country get back on track. And I believe former President Trump is the person who can do that job,” said Carolyn Dorazio, a business lawyer in Wexford, a suburb of Pittsburgh, and one of the Trump Force 47 volunteers. “He’s done that job before. I don’t think he has any ulterior motives.”

Supporters like Dorazio could prove key to the Trump campaign’s victory in the key swing state of Pennsylvania, which will likely decide which candidate wins the election.

The easiest path to 270 Electoral College votes for Harris or Trump is to win the Keystone State’s 19 electoral votes. Both campaigns and their allies are investing heavily in the state with paid ads and numerous campaign stops ahead of Tuesday’s presidential debate in Philadelphia.

Despite Democratic enthusiasm for Harris’ campaign after she replaced President Joe Biden as the nominee, and despite polls that showed a tie between the two candidates in Pennsylvania, Republicans still believe Trump will win the state.

“I think Trump will win. This has always been Trump country,” Dorazio said. “If you go to the countryside, and I would like to see that, rather than the urban areas, that controls the issues that involve the entire state.”

Trump’s struggles with suburban Philadelphia voters were especially evident during the Pennsylvania primary, where Trump won nearly 84% of the vote but Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, won nearly 17%, about two months into her presidential campaign.

Philadelphia counties include Bucks, Montgomery, Chester and Delaware, which all went Democratic in 2020, helping Biden win the state by just over 88,000 votes.

But Trump’s campaign is focused on winning back voters in a state that voted for former President Barack Obama and then changed its mind in 2016 to support Trump, seeing him as one of the keys to winning again in November.

Their goal is to remind voters that grocery and gas prices have risen under Biden, that Harris once called for a ban on fracking before changing her position after being nominated, and to point to immigration problems at the southern border, a Trump official said. Washington Examiner.

The official also noted that campaign staff is not concerned that Haley voters will support Harris in November.

David Gehring, 37, another Trump Force 47 volunteer from the Pittsburgh suburb of South Hills, argued that Trump would win because his 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania by just over 44,000 votes broke a Democratic dominance in the state that had lasted since 1988. Harris is also disadvantaged by the fact that the Keystone State has never voted for a woman in a presidential race or had a female governor or senator.

When volunteers talk to neighbors, they meet at the local level to discuss issues like inflation and the energy sector, which is a key part of the Pennsylvania electorate.

“We cannot give in here,” Gehring stressed in an interview for Washington Examiner“We can’t let the Democrats take over and shut down that energy. It’s incredible. It’s important.”

The Trump campaign has taken an unconventional approach this cycle, handing over voter-encouraging opportunities to allies including Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point Action, Elon Musk’s America PAC and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.

SBA Pro-Life America, an anti-abortion group, made at least 310,266 visits to Pennsylvanians in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Scranton and Erie through Monday, aiming to mobilize less engaged anti-abortion voters who might support Trump’s cause, while America PAC sent out mailers in the Keystone State urging voters to plan to vote early.

The Harris campaign’s financial advantage over Trump allowed her to spend more money on advertising and opening field offices in Pennsylvania.

In Pennsylvania alone, the vice president’s future ad bookings will be nearly $26 million, while Trump’s future ad bookings will be nearly $23 million, according to AdImpact.

“We have 50 coordinated offices in Pennsylvania, while the Trump campaign delays and refuses to say where they are,” Harris campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote in a memo released Saturday. A previous campaign memo from August said the campaign also has nearly 300 staffers in the state.

A Trump campaign representative said: Washington Examiner said they have more than two dozen offices in the Keystone State, but did not provide details on how many employees they employ.

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Harris’ financial advantage appears to be no problem for Republicans in the state.

“Harris is such that she is not honest. So she can push out as much information as she wants, but most of it is just fiction,” Gehring said. “No matter how much money she spends, she pushes out lies.”