The Kamala Harris get-out-the-vote operation hits full force in critical Philadelphia

A former plant store in North Philadelphia that’s now a tiny campaign office was transformed into a rally site for Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday, led by U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock and Michael Ealy, the actor best known for Barbershop and the Fast and Furious franchise.

Volunteers and campaign staff crammed in to hear Ealy extol the power of their vote, and listen to Warnock tell them why the final 12 days of campaigning matters.

“Our major threat is not showing up in our full strength,” said Warnock, a Baptist pastor and Georgia Democrat considered to be a rising star in the party. “We lose only by the margin of our disengagement. We lose by the margin of our apathy.”

Ealy and Warnock were among a dozen high-profile politicians and celebrities who campaigned for Harris in Philadelphia over the last week, including actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, soccer star Megan Rapinoe, and TV host Padma Lakshmi. And on Monday, Harris’ campaign will hold a rally featuring Bruce Springsteen and former President Barack Obama.

The star power being deployed in the city in the final two weeks before Election Day, which includes Harris herself, isn’t just for show. The most well-known surrogates motivate campaign volunteers — and often attract new ones.

It’s part of a multipronged strategy the campaign has launched to boost turnout in the largest city in a critical battleground state. Much of its get-out-the-vote program relies on volunteers who knock on doors, make phone calls, and send text messages.

» READ MORE: Kamala Harris’ and Donald Trump’s strategies to win Pennsylvania have spanned 50 stops and $500 million in ads

The effort is accelerating. Between the end of July and early October, Harris campaign staff and volunteers knocked on 1 million doors across Pennsylvania. They hit 400,000 over just two days last week and expect to get to 1 million per week in the lead-up to Election Day. (Pennsylvania has about 9 million registered voters.)

“We’re putting up incredible numbers on the doors and on the phones,” said Brendan McPhillips, Harris’ senior adviser for Pennsylvania, who also ran President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign in Pennsylvania. “As we’re heading into the home stretch … you’ll see us doubling down on that.”

Get-out-the-vote operations can be decisive in any campaign. This year, a turnout increase of a few percentage points could yield Harris thousands of additional votes in a state where polls show the race is virtually tied.

But Democrats have expressed concern about turnout in Philadelphia over the last several years — in 2020, the party saw a bigger drop in its vote share here than in any other county in the state. Biden won the city handily, but his margin of victory was smaller than Hillary Clinton’s in 2016. The biggest declines were in working-class neighborhoods with majorities of Black and Latino residents.

» READ MORE: We answered some of the most searched questions about the 2024 election in Pennsylvania

Some of the strategies being deployed this year have met with a lukewarm reception.

The local Democratic Party has for years faced criticism that its turnout operation is inconsistent. Bob Brady, the longtime chairman of Philly’s Democratic City Committee, said much of the program this year isn’t new — workers are tracking registered Democrats’ unreturned mail ballots, a strategy the party has used for several years, and deploying committee members to knock on doors.

The Harris campaign and some Philadelphia Democrats have not been in lockstep, with a handful of prominent operatives in the city complaining the campaign is not in touch with the Black and Latino communities it needs to turn out.

And one of the major nonpartisan efforts the city government launched this year to make it easier to vote — opening 10 new offices where people can request and return their mail ballots in one visit — has not been widely used.

“People are not using them,” City Commissioner Omar Sabir said, noting that communicating the existence of those offices has been a challenge. “We’re very disappointed.”

Still, officials with the Harris campaign and its allies are confident their turnout program — also called a “field operation” or “ground game” — is superior to the one behind former President Donald Trump. The Harris campaign has 50 offices statewide, roughly double the amount that Trump’s campaign says it has.

State Sen. Sharif Street, head of the state Democratic Party, said there’s anxiety about turnout in Philadelphia, but it’s a motivating force.

“There’s only two ways to run: unopposed and scared,” Street said. “We certainly have opposition. And so we’re running scared all the way to the end.”

In absolute terms, the number of people who voted for president in Philadelphia in 2020 was higher than in 2016. About 741,000 people cast presidential ballots four years ago — about 34,000 more than did in 2016.

However, that increase was lower than average compared to the rest of the state, and it has continued trending downward. In the 2022 midterm election, Philadelphians cast 67,000 fewer votes than Allegheny County — home to Pittsburgh — despite having more than 100,000 more residents.

And in a warning sign for Democrats in last year’s municipal election, Philadelphia accounted for less than 15% of total Democratic ballots cast statewide, down from 20% in 2016.

To boost turnout this year, the pro-Harris ground game is made up of a patchwork of groups, including the campaign, the state Democratic Party, and the Democratic City Committee. The Working Families Party, labor unions that back Democrats, and several progressive interest groups also have teams in the city.

The city committee has thousands of elected committeepeople who contact registered Democrats in their area and ensure they have the information to vote. The party is negotiating with the Harris campaign for funding to cover some expenses, like so-called street money paid to committeepeople on Election Day.

And the state Democratic Party has a stronger phone-calling program this year, thanks to newly purchased software that automates calls, said City Councilmember Jim Harrity, who works with the state party. The technology allows phone callers to get on the line only when someone answers.

“We’re pulling out all the stops,” Harrity said. “We’ve been robo-texting, robocalling. Some wards have been phone-banking for months now. There are boots on the ground.”

» READ MORE: Philly’s Democrats are asking the Harris campaign for $1.2M to fund street money and other expenses

Door-knocking can make a difference in densely populated cities like Philadelphia that have a higher concentration of people who face hurdles to voting, such as physical disabilities, language barriers, and inflexible work schedules. Volunteers typically carry information about how voters can get assistance.

J.J. Abbott, a Pennsylvania Democratic strategist, said the party’s get-out-the-vote infrastructure is “much more robust” than it was in 2020, when the pandemic limited in-person campaigning. He said it also surpasses the GOP-backed operation.

“Democrats have a higher ceiling for the impact of field operation because of the density of the places they’re working in,” he said. “I’d rather be us than them.”

Republicans generally acknowledge that turnout operations tend to favor Democrats who canvass with unions and interest groups, but they say their field game in Philadelphia is stronger than in past years.

Much of the Republican voter outreach is being run by groups outside the Trump campaign, including a new super PAC headed by Elon Musk. The group’s effectiveness has been questioned by Democrats and Republicans alike.

“You cannot buy a statewide presidential field operation in the final month of the campaign,” said McPhillips, of the Harris campaign. “You have to build that brick by brick for months, a year, or longer even, of people who are bought in and committed and have relationships on the ground.”

One critique of the Harris campaign from Philadelphia Democrats is that it hasn’t made enough inroads with Black and Latino voters. The concerns, some of which spilled out into public view earlier this month, follow reports that the Trump campaign has made a concerted effort to appeal more to voters of color, especially men.

» READ MORE: Harris campaign drops a plan appealing to Black men voters

But Harris campaign officials say they have made a major push in communities of color. Of the seven offices the campaign has in Philly, six are in North and West Philadelphia. The campaign has worked closely with Black faith leaders, sent surrogates to Philly churches, held events in Latino neighborhoods, and done bilingual door-knocking.

Harris herself campaigned in Black and Latino Philadelphia neighborhoods all day Sunday.

Political groups that operate outside the campaign are also kicking in.

One of the largest door-knocking programs in the city explicitly targets Black and brown voters and is run by the Service Employees International Union 32BJ. This weekend, about 350 volunteers — including buses full of people from New York and New Jersey — knocked on doors.

Last Sunday, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and labor leader Shawn Fain spoke at SEIU 32BJ’s headquarters in Callowhill.

“This race is going to be determined in places like Philadelphia,” Ocasio-Cortez said. She challenged the notion that swing voters are deciding between Harris and Trump. “The real swing voter in this election is deciding whether they’re going to participate or not.”

The event had a varied lineup in addition to Cortez, including an actress from The Walking Dead and an SEIU security guard. Fain, president of the United Auto Workers union, called the moment in Pennsylvania generationally defining.

“Working-class votes are the great equalizer in this,” he said.

That has been a core message for the Working Families Party, a progressive third party running get-out-the-vote programs in the city. The party has deployed dozens of canvassers to knock on more than 400,000 Philadelphia doors this campaign cycle.

Rasheeda Bagwell-Hyland, a mother from North Philadelphia, said she works as a Working Families Party canvasser because her great-grandmother fought in the civil rights movement, and “people died for us to be able to have the rights that we do.”

When she’s talking to voters — especially fellow people of color — Bagwell-Hyland, 43, tries to combat apathy by emphasizing voting as a duty.

“It’s not just about the presidential candidate. You’re not gonna like everybody. No politician is perfect,” she said. “But the right to vote is major. So to not exercise that right is a slap in the face to everyone who came before.”