We spoke to the Pittsburgh-area official who squashed the lanternfly that landed on Kamala Harris

Turns out Vice President Kamala Harris’ recent visit to Pennsylvania wasn’t just about steel and tax credits — it was also a crash course in pest control.

While disembarking from Air Force Two near Pittsburgh International Airport last week for a campaign stop at the Economic Club of Pittsburgh — just weeks before the Nov. 5 election — Harris had an unexpected brush with a longtime Pennsylvania tradition: stomping the notorious spotted lanternfly. The lesson came courtesy of Allegheny County executive Sara Innamorato, who heroically swatted and squashed the invasive critter after it brazenly landed on the vice president.

Spoiler: The lanternfly did not survive.

“As the vice president steps in front of me, I put out my hand, I shake her hand, and then the lieutenant governor turns to me and swats something off my shoulder,” Innamorato said. “I did the little ‘there’s a bug on me’ dance and flicked it off my chest and realized it flew onto the pant leg of the vice president!”

That’s when her instincts kicked in.

“I swatted it off her pant leg and squashed it, then looked up at her and said, ‘We have to kill the spotted lanternflies, we survived this together,’” Innamorato joked of the interaction. “I don’t think she knew what was happening at first.”

Readers should take note of the textbook technique employed by Innamorato. In under a second, Allegheny County’s top official used a swift hand swipe to the vice president’s pant leg followed by a right foot stomp. In the video, now viewed by 1.5 million people online, Innamorato takes a solid stomp foundation and foot placement, quickly pivots, and sends a final stomp follow-through that experts now consider one of the most historic lanternfly stomps in state history.

“The technique was prime, [Innamorato] went with the classic one-two approach,” said Julie Urban, a leading lanternfly expert at Penn State. “Had she stomped it on Vice President Harris that would’ve been disgusting, so that was very diplomatic.”

This isn’t the first time a lanternfly has made a cameo with the White House crew. The spotted menace once landed on President Joe Biden during a 2020 speech, but Urban joked this might be the first instance of a lanternfly joining a presidential campaign “stomp.”

“Pennsylvania is a swing state, but it was demonstrated here that it’s also a swing and stomp state too,” she said.

Innamorato greeted Harris again later that day in a photo line at Harris’ visit to Carnegie Mellon University. “She announced to the room that she googled spotted lanternflies on her drive into CMU after the stomp. I told her, ‘We have to stomp them — it’s our civic duty,’” Innamorato said.

Much of Harris’ Pittsburgh visit centered on proposals for the region’s economic driver, metal manufacturing, like incentivizing industry growth through tax credits and zoning reform.

Biden and Harris’ commitment to decarbonizing manufacturing industries aligns with the region’s own goals, said Innamorato, of striking a balance between a market that employs nearly 100,000 residents and reducing the pollution caused by it. Allegheny County will use federal funds to improve decarbonization efforts in the manufacturing industry and public housing in the coming years.

As for the now-legendary stomp, Innamorato admits it’s “hilarious and slightly mortifying.”

“Secret Service is very deliberate about how you step forward, shake the hand, and may exchange a few words with the vice president, and then they move on,” she said. “ … I broke protocol to stomp the lanternfly.”