The Kamala Harris campaign in Pennsylvania is in disarray and Democrat leaders are pointing fingers, 29 Democrats leaked to Politico as detailed in a report on Wednesday.
The Keystone State, a key battleground in the 2024 cycle, will likely determine who wins the presidency. Pennsylvania has 19 electoral votes.
Republicans mounted a considerable mail-in-ballot initiative and voter registration effort in select counties to thwart Democrats from repeat wins in the state. Signs show Republicans’ work has delivered results. Five Democrat Pennsylvania counties turned majority Republican since 2020, according to Seth Keshel, a political expert who released voter registration on October 3.
For the Harris campaign, victory relies on turning voters out in the Democrat strongholds of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. “If the campaign can’t get them to the polls, the state — and the presidential race — could be lost,” Politico reported the chaos:
They say some Harris aides lack relationships with key party figures, particularly in Philadelphia and its suburbs. They complain they have been left out of events and surrogates haven’t been deployed effectively. And they’ve urged Harris staff in private meetings to do more to turn out voters of color.
Some are even pointing fingers at Harris’ Pennsylvania campaign manager, Nikki Lu, who they say lacks deep knowledge of Philadelphia, where the vice president must drive up voter turnout in order to win.
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Some of Democrats’ frustrations could be exacerbated by Pennsylvania’s size and long-standing regional differences: Lu hails from Pittsburgh, which is located on the other side of the state from Philadelphia and the major Black and Latino communities in southeastern Pennsylvania. A second Democratic elected official in the state described Lu as “AWOL.” A Pennsylvania Democratic strategist said that Lu “empowers a culture” in the campaign that has left elected officials feeling unengaged and disrespected.
Harris campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodriguez denied the chaos is hurting the party with black and Hispanic voters, but state officials contradicted Rodriguez in leaks to Politico.
“I feel like we’re going to win here, but we’re going to win it in spite of the Harris state campaign,” a Democrat elected official said. “Pennsylvania is such a mess, and it’s incredibly frustrating.”
Mariel Joy Kornblith Martin, a former Hispanic outreach coordinator, who left the campaign, wrote in a memo that the Harris campaign prevented her from obtaining “access to necessary data on Latino demographics” and “no infrastructure to plan events or engage the Latino community.”
“Please give us the tools to win,” she wrote in the memo, “for as we all know, you do not win PA without Latinos, and you do not win the presidency without PA.”
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.