Harris and Walz make small-town stops and campaign phone calls on Pennsylvania bus tour before DNC

ROCHESTER, Pa. (AP) — Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and running mate Tim Walz gave pep talks to campaign volunteers and a high school football team Sunday, with their bus tour in a corner of Pennsylvania serving as a modest, small-town version of the grand rally she's expected to have at the Democratic nominating convention in Chicago this week.

Vice President Harris and Walz, the governor of Minnesota, were joined by their spouses, Doug Emhoff and Gwen Walz, as they stopped off to visit volunteers at a campaign office not far from Pittsburgh before continuing on to a firehouse and a high school in another town. The tour, in a bright blue bus decorated with the candidates' names and the phrase “A new way forward,” also included pilgrimages to a convenience store and a restaurant known for its towering sandwiches.

Despite running as the sitting vice president, Harris told reporters she feels she has ground to make up in the race against former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee.

“I very much consider us the underdogs," Harris said at a stop in the township of Moon. "We have a lot of work to do to earn the vote of the American people. That’s why we’re on this bus tour today, and we’re going to be traveling this country as we’ve been and talking with folks, listening to folks, and hopefully earning their votes over the next 79 days.”

Southwestern Pennsylvania is a critical part of a key battleground state that has long commanded the attention of presidential candidates. The state voted for Trump in 2016 and for Biden in 2020. Both Harris and Trump are vying to see who can put Pennsylvania in their column on Nov. 5.

Trump, who is counting on strong turnout from his base of white, working-class voters, is not conceding the area. The counties around Pittsburgh have shifted from Democratic to Republican in recent presidential contests, delivering for Trump in both of his earlier runs.

In a demonstration of the area's competing politics, Harris' bus and motorcade twice on Sunday rolled past groups of Trump supporters with signs and banners bearing his name.

At her last stop, the vice president answered a few questions from reporters, something she’s been doing with increasing frequency as Trump has claimed she’s afraid to talk to the media and made a point of holding his own news conferences in recent weeks.

Throughout their tour Sunday, Harris and Walz shied away from policy or much politics in their remarks, instead sticking to broad-strokes messages focused on character, perseverance and the future of the country.

Harris, while speaking to a group of supporters and volunteers outside a campaign office in the borough of Rochester, spoke about strength and leadership. She appeared to make a veiled reference to Trump, who is known for his pugilistic style and projection of a strongman image, when she said the “real and true measure of a strength of a leader is based on who you lift up,” rather than who they beat down.

“Anybody who is about beating down other people is a coward,” she yelled, drawing cheers and applause. “This is what strength looks like.”

Walz seemed to assume the role of his former job coaching high school football and told the volunteers: “Let’s leave it all on the field. Let’s get this thing done.”

The vice president next stopped at a firehouse in Aliquippa, where she met firefighters, petted the station's dog and gave the crew almond pastries, before heading to a nearby high school, she and Walz met with the local football coach and addressed the team, who kneeled on the field to listen.

Walz again slipped into coach mode, reminiscing a bit about his days leading a team before introducing Harris. She praised the young athletes for their leadership: “Our nation is counting on you and your excellence. We applaud your ambition."

She also told them, “Welcome to the role model club.”

Most polls, including recent surveys from the New York Times/Siena College and Fox News, find Harris and Trump locked in a tight race statewide.

Trump held a rally Saturday in Wilkes-Barre in the northeastern part of the state, following his earlier rallies in July in Harrisburg and Butler, where he survived an assassination attempt.

The bus tour marks Harris’ eighth trip to Pennsylvania this year, and her second this month. The vice president chose to make her first joint appearance with Walz on the ticket in Philadelphia on Aug. 6.

On Sunday, Harris and Walz arrived with their spouses at Pittsburgh International Airport, where they held hands and raised their arms together in front of cheering supporters. The foursome then set off on their bus to glad-hand with voters in the Pittsburgh area.

At a stop in the township of Moon, Harris popped into a Sheetz convenience store to seek out Doritos, her go-to snack. She later stopped at a Primanti Bros. restaurant, a famed chain known for sandwiches layered with coleslaw and fries, where she met diners and posed for a few pictures. Both franchises were launched in western Pennsylvania.

Earlier in the day in Rochester, Harris, Walz and their spouses spent a few minutes sitting at tables with volunteers and making phone calls to line up support.

Harris took a cellphone from a volunteer and spoke to the person on the other end.

“I love Erie. At some point we’ll get to Erie,” Harris said.

She continued the conversation and at one point said, “79 days to go."

Walz, sitting across the table from Harris, hung up from a call, said of the caller, “He’s all in,” and gave a thumbs up.

Kristin Kanthak, associate professor of political science at the University of Pittsburgh, said Pennsylvania “is a state that traditionally has been super important, but southwestern Pennsylvania has been really kind of the battleground part of the battleground state.”

After Trump’s surprise win in the state in 2016, Biden flipped Pennsylvania in 2020 — and, in so doing, won the White House — in part by running up his vote totals in heavily Democratic Pittsburgh, the state’s second-largest city.

Trump has embraced protectionist trade policies and insists he is pro-worker. His vow to increase U.S. energy production and “drill, baby, drill” has resonated in southwestern Pennsylvania blue-collar counties like Washington, where a natural gas drilling boom has helped make Pennsylvania the nation’s No. 2 producer after Texas. Harris once wanted to ban fracking, an oil and gas extraction process, before recently disavowing her earlier position — a reversal Trump has hammered her for.

Bus tours like the one Harris embarked on in Pennsylvania have become a staple of political campaigns partly because of the free media coverage they generate. Such trips get the candidates out of their power suits and out of Washington so they can travel the country and score face time with voters in small venues like diners and mom-and-pop shops.

The low-key venues of Harris’ campaign on Sunday will be replaced with their polar opposite Monday when the Democratic National Convention opens in Chicago, offering a prime-time showcase that director Steven Spielberg is helping to choreograph.

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Price reported from New York. Associated Press writers Michael Rubinkam in northeastern Pennsylvania and Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.