Kamala Harris recalls beating a ‘tough Jersey girl’ in her first-ever campaign during Philly visit with Mayor Parker, college students

Vice President Kamala Harris visited a group of student leaders from colleges across Philadelphia on Tuesday in a brief campaign stop in which she recalled her first run for office: freshman class representative of the Liberal Arts Student Council at Howard University.

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker burst out in laughter and cheers at the reminiscence.

”Mayor, it was a tough race,” Harris said at the event at Community College of Philadelphia. “I ran against this girl from Jersey and she was tough, but I was from Oakland, so we were all right.”

Harris, who was in town for a conversation with journalists from the National Association of Black Journalists at WHYY studios, stopped to mark National Voter Registration Day on the college campus in the Spring Garden neighborhood.

Students from Democratic clubs at the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, and CCP attended.

» READ MORE: Kamala Harris says she is ‘working to earn’ votes of Black men during wide-ranging NABJ interview in Philly

She received a rousing ovation from the students in a room where homemade signs read: “Shirley ran so Kamala can win” — a reference to former New York Rep. Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman to campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nomination — and “Vote like your life depends on it.”

Harris asked which schools were represented and got a roar of overlapping responses. A lone “UPenn” rang out at the end.

”Poor guy, are you the only one from Penn?” she asked to laughter, and then gave him a high five.

Dajuan Wortham, 20, a CCP student who spoke at the event, said he was shocked to see Harris in real life, and to shake her hand.

“She was so happy … she was interested. That’s how it felt. She really was interested,” said Wortham, a CCP business major involved in the college’s Center for Male Engagement, and committed to getting other young male voters to be active in the election.

Wortham said he and the event’s other speakers intended to tell the crowd of about 60 students congregated at the CCP Pavilion Building how to register to vote, but when all the attendees showed up fully registered, they pivoted to instructing the attendees on how to encourage their friends to be civically engaged.

“My hope is that everybody gets out and use their voices … so that they can make a change,” Wortham said. “Especially the people around my age, my peers, people younger … we’re the future, and we got to start shaping the future. We need somebody that’s going to shape the future.”

Recent polling shows Harris has made up ground that President Joe Biden appeared to have lost with young voters, and she appealed to the young adults on their critical home turf Tuesday.

”You guys know how I feel about you and your generation,” Harris said.

“You all are just killing it … the thing I love about you, you’re brilliant, you care, you are impatient,” she said to laughter. “You’re like, I’m not waiting for someone else to handle this. I’m gonna work on getting it done.”

She encouraged the students to work hard to get people registered to vote ahead of the Oct. 21 deadline in Pennsylvania, a crucial battleground for both campaigns.

”Remind them about why it’s important … because their voice is their power,” Harris said. “Their power is their voice. We’re gonna remind people: Don’t ever let anybody silence your power.”