Kamala Harris delivers urgent message to voters in Pennsylvania’s state capital: ‘Ours is a fight for democracy’
As the two pro-Palestinian protesters were escorted out of the rally, Harris told attendees it was OK that they disagreed.
HARRISBURG — Vice President Kamala Harris had an urgent but animated message for south-central Pennsylvania voters Wednesday in the homestretch of the election. With six days left until Election Day, Harris said, “ours is a fight for democracy.”
Harris campaigned before the crowd at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex and Expo Center in Harrisburg — her first visit to central Pennsylvania since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee. After her speech was disrupted by a handful of pro-Palestinian protesters, Harris used the moment to underscore the importance of being able to disagree with one another.
“This is what is on the line in this election,” Harris said. “Everybody has a right to be heard, but right now, I am speaking.”
As Election Day looms less than a week away and the race between Harris and former President Donald Trump is neck and neck in battleground Pennsylvania, Harris appeared more fired up than at previous rallies as she billed herself as a fighter and highlighted the economic benefits of her policy proposals. She talked about offering a tax cut to 100 million Americans, restated her commitment to enacting a federal price-gouging ban, and emphasized affordability for housing, health care, childcare, and eldercare, which would be covered by Medicare under her plan.
Harris gave the pump-up stump speech to several thousand supporters at the Farm Show Complex, the state’s 1 million-square-foot campus that hosts the nation’s largest indoor agricultural event each January. Trump has appeared here — in a separate arena on the other side of the building — in two recent events: a campaign rally and a town hall with Fox News’ Sean Hannity.
In her remarks, which lasted less than 30 minutes, Harris also pledged to unify the country and work on behalf of people who disagree with her, as some attendees held “Republicans for Harris” signs.
As the two pro-Palestinian protesters were escorted out, the crowd booed them. Harris told attendees it was OK that the protesters disagreed.
“At this particular moment it should be emphasized that, unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe that people who disagree with me are the enemy from within,” Harris said. “He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at the table.”
Harris’ remarks hammered home the risk she said another Trump presidency would pose to abortion rights and reproductive health.
She noted that when Trump was president, he chose three conservative justices with the intention that they would overturn the abortion protections of 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 as the crowd began to boo in agreement. ”He would ban abortion nationwide — yes, even here in Pennsylvania — if he was successful,” she added.
Harris warned of other restrictions to reproductive rights she claimed a Trump presidency would entail, including restricting access to birth control and putting in vitro fertilization treatments at risk, a reference to provisions outlined in the conservative Project 2025, a 900-page policy proposal Trump has distanced himself from. The project was composed by more than 100 former Trump administration staffers.
Nervous — but excited — Pa. voters
Natalie Dozier will turn 33 on Nov. 6, the day after the election. She thinks she’ll be celebrating Harris’ win, and she made new friends at the Harrisburg rally whom she invited to her birthday party later that week.
“This is my first rally. This is my first presidential election I ever donated to. This is surreal for me. I can’t even describe it,” Dozier said. “I love her. I know she’s gonna make a great president.”
Dozier, who described herself as half-Black, half-Puerto Rican, and married to another woman, said she is “all of the targets” that she fears a Trump presidency would attack. And she had a message to the Hispanic and Latino community, which she said in Spanish before translating to English: “We’re gonna go forward. We’re not going back.”
The rally featured the hype playlist — featuring songs from Beyoncé, DMX, DJ Khaled, and others — strobe lights, and light-up bracelets now commonplace at Harris rallies.
Harris supporters in Harrisburg — a somewhat diverse crowd for the majority-white county that is home to Pennsylvania’s Capitol — capitalized on the vice president’s name with signs that read “Harris Burg.”
More than a half-dozen Harris supporters said they were cautiously optimistic that Pennsylvania will elect her over Trump. But none were feeling confident.
“The race is too close,” said Chris Smith, 65, of Harrisburg.
Carol Butler, 80, who once thought she was the only Democrat in Dauphin County decades ago, said Wednesday she believed Harris would win.
“One day I feel that way, but the next I don’t,” she added.
Butler said she hoped that Harris would counter Republican arguments about the U.S.-Mexico border with the facts of how President Joe Biden’s administration had made progress on the issue. Harris did not talk about illegal immigration in her stump speech.
The McGann family of York County came out in full force to see Harris, including their two young sons, one age 5, the other 10 months old. Their mother, Mida McGann, 38, said they brought a handwritten card with a photo of their family to give to Harris, but were unable to deliver it to the vice president before she left town.
“I wanted my sons to be part of history,” she said.