Donald Trump’s Butler visit marks his last campaign stop before the RNC. Could he announce his VP pick there?

Former President Donald Trump’s last campaign stop before next week’s Republican National Convention will be in Western Pennsylvania as speculation builds about his long-awaited choice of a running mate.

The visit to Butler County marks Trump’s fifth visit to Pennsylvania this year, a sign of the state’s crucial importance in the presidential contest. But it marks the first visit this year by either presidential nominee to a county that Trump won in 2020.

It will be Trump’s first stop in Western Pennsylvania this year. Trump’s previous visits were to Philadelphia, Dauphin, Bucks, and Lehigh Counties — all of which went for President Joe Biden the last time Trump was on the ballot. Biden has largely centered his campaign efforts in the state in the Philadelphia area, Scranton, and Pittsburgh.

Butler County has been friendly territory for Trump, going for him by double digits in both 2016 and 2020.

The Saturday rally is scheduled to start at 5 p.m. at the Butler Farm Show, with doors opening four hours earlier. Western Pennsylvania is an area that the former president predominantly carried in 2020.

It will be a busy day for political visits to the commonwealth as both campaigns see Pennsylvania as essential for victory.

Vice President Kamala Harris will be the keynote speaker at the Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote Presidential Town Hall in Philadelphia. First lady Jill Biden will be in Pittsburgh to attend an Italian Sons and Daughters of America dinner. The visits come as Democrats are in cleanup mode in the aftermath of Biden’s lackluster debate performance on June 27.

The former president’s visit to Butler comes amid growing anticipation for the announcement of his vice presidential pick. Trump’s shortlist for VP reportedly includes Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), Sen. J.D. Vance (R., Ohio), and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.

Butler County is about 47 miles east of the Ohio border, which has helped fuel speculation that Trump could be tapping Vance, the junior Ohio senator who frequently wades into culture war issues.

Trump’s visit is the final campaign event before the Republican National Convention commences in Milwaukee on July 15. Trump has suggested that he would want to announce his pick at the convention, but that could present some logistical challenges for the official nomination process.

Butler could be the perfect place to introduce Vance, the Hillbilly Elegy author, to the area’s white, working-class demographic.

Vance has had fluctuating views on Trump. In 2016, told NPR that “I can’t stomach Trump.” He also authored a 2016 op-ed in the New York Times that stated: “Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.”

Once Vance launched his Senate campaign in 2021, he met with Trump and gained his endorsement. In a June interview, Vance said he was wrong about the former president. Vance, once a “Never Trump guy,” is now seen as one of Trump’s top three picks to accompany him on this ticket.

Trump has feuded with his former vice president, Mike Pence, in the years since the Jan. 6 Capitol attack after Pence refused to play a role in an effort to block certification of Biden’s electoral victory.

Trump won the county with almost 66% of the vote in 2020 and 61% of the vote in 2016, according to county election data.

Butler County is in the 16th Congressional District, represented by U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly (R., Pa.), who has shown his support for Trump in the aftermath of his 34 felony convictions. Kelly will also be up for reelection in November and received a Trump endorsement ahead of his primary this past April.

Kelly was also one of 139 U.S. representatives who voted to sustain one or both of the objections to electoral votes in Arizona and Pennsylvania on Jan. 6, 2021.

The county is a largely rural and predominantly white area, which leans heavily toward Republicans. But the county is nearby to areas such as the Pittsburgh suburbs, which could play an important role in deciding the state. Allegheny County (about 45 miles from Butler County) went strongly for Biden in 2020 — with nearly 60% of the vote.

Trump visited Butler County in 2020, delivering remarks at the Butler County Regional Airport.

Trump has been focusing a lot of his campaigning in Pennsylvania on counties and demographics that Biden carried in 2020 in an effort to chip away as many votes as possible from the president’s voter base and the small margin that Biden won by four years ago. Biden won the state by roughly 1 percentage point.

Trump’s most recent Pennsylvania campaign venture was at the Liacouras Center at Temple University on June 22. Before that, he visited Newtown in Bucks County and Schnecksville in Lehigh County in April, and Philly (for a Sneaker Con event) and Harrisburg in Dauphin County in February. Biden won each of these suburban counties with slightly more than 50% of the vote and Philly with 81%.

The former president’s rally at the Liacouras Center last month was his first-ever rally in the city and came a few weeks after he opened his Philly campaign office in Holmesburg in the Northeast. The Biden campaign will continue to rely heavily on the large number of Democratic voters in Philadelphia and its suburbs, but any number of votes that Trump could bring to his side may impact how he fares statewide.

Beyond Pennsylvania, Trump has visited large, diverse cities in other swing states, including Detroit, where he visited a predominantly Black church in June.

Trump’s visits to Philadelphia and Detroit speak to a larger pattern of the campaign trying to make inroads with voters of color. A study from the Pew Research Center in May found that although Black voters still overwhelmingly support Biden, his “advantage” among this voter demographic is not as vast as it was four years ago.