Vice President Kamala Harris vowed Friday to build “an opportunity economy” that gives everyone a chance to own a home, build wealth and start a business in her first trip to northeast Pennsylvania as a presidential candidate.
“I will always put middle-class, working people first. It will always be my priority, always be my priority. I know where I come from,” the Democratic nominee from Oakland, California, told before more than 4,100 in Wilkes University’s McHale Athletic Center in Wilkes-Barre.
Another 700 to 800 watched on a video screen not far from the venue, Wilkes-Barre Fire Chief Jay Delaney said.
Harris’ visit was her second in person to territory that heavily favored former President Donald Trump twice. She’s trying to win back blue-collar, former Democrats who backed Trump so she can win Pennsylvania, essential to winning the White House.
Trump dominated the Luzerne County vote in both previous runs. Harris hopes to duplicate President Joe Biden’s bid in 2020, when he pared down Trump’s 2020 winning margin in Luzerne and many other counties to win back the state for Democrats.
To highlight the effort, the Harris campaign called on a nurse, Mary Grace Vadala, a Scranton native and lifelong Republican, to introduce Harris. Her mother, Grace Weber, died of COVID-19, a crisis she said Trump mishandled.
“Here's the plain truth. Donald Trump doesn't care about families like mine. He cares about himself and Pennsylvania. It's time to turn the page once and for all,” Vadala said.
After Vadala’s introduction, Harris herself appealed to blue-collar voters with a promise that didn’t come up Thursday at her rally in Greensboro, North Carolina.
“I will also make sure good paying jobs are available to all Americans, not just those with college degrees,” Harris said.
“For far too long, our nation has encouraged only one path to success, a four-year college degree. Our nation needs to recognize the value of other paths, additional paths, such as apprenticeships and technical programs.”
Protesters interrupt, get drowned out
During the speech, several protesters interrupted her, shouting “Free Palestine” and other support for ending the war in Israel. Harris ignored them and the crowd drowned them out.
“We’re not going back, we’re not going back, we’re not going back,” they chanted when protesters shouted.
"Hey, listen, listen, now, is the time to get a hostage deal and cease fire," she said. "We have been working around the clock to get that done."
The protesters were escorted out.
The vice president contrasted herself repeatedly with Trump. During their debate Tuesday, she said she talked about “bringing down the cost of living, investing in America's small businesses, protecting reproductive freedom and keeping our nation safe and secure.”
“But that is not what we heard from Donald Trump. Instead, it was the same old show, the same tired playbook we've heard for years with no plan, no plan on how he would address the needs of the American people,” she said. “Well, folks, it's time to turn the page.”
“We’re not going back. We’re not going back. We’re not going back, the crowd chanted.
She said Trump has “exhausted” people with attempts to divide the nation.
“America is ready for a new way forward,” she said to more cheering.
'I stood up for women'
Harris highlighted her career as a prosecutor in Oakland and San Francisco, California, and as that state’s attorney general.
“I stood up for women and children against predators who abused them,” she said. “As attorney general of California, I took on the big banks and delivered $20 billion (for) middle-class families who faced foreclosure. I stood up for veterans and students being scammed by big for-profit colleges, for workers who (were) being cheated out of the wages they were due, for seniors facing elder abuse.”
She also took on “transnational criminal organizations like the Sinaloa cartel that traffic in drugs and threaten the safety of our communities.”
“I know these cartels firsthand, and as president, I will make sure we prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law for pushing poison like fentanyl on our children,” she said.
She highlighted her a $50,000 tax deduction for startup businesses, saying small business form the “backbone” of the nation’s economy. She needled Trump in the process, saying “not everybody, like my opponent, got handed $40 million on a silver tray and then filed for bankruptcy six times.”
She promised to “cut red tape and work with the private sector to build three million new homes by the end of my first term.”
Harris raises Project 2025
By comparison, Trump favors Project 2025, written by a conservative think tank, she said.
“It is a detailed, dangerous blueprint for what he will do if he were elected president again, Donald Trump will give billionaires and corporations massive tax cuts, like he did before,” she said.
She said Trump wants to “cut Social Security and Medicare, and he wants to impose what I call the Trump sales tax on every day, basic necessities, which, as economists have reviewed, would cost the average family nearly $4,000 more a year.”
Her plan would “grow our economy,” Trump’s “would shrink the economy” and reignite inflation, which even the Wall Street bank, Goldman Sachs, predicts, Harris said.
“On top of all of this, Donald Trump intends to end the Affordable Care Act, and let's remember, like we're not here with Trump amnesia,” she said. “We remember when he was president, he tried 60 times to end the Affordable Care Act, and as he said in the debate just this week, he has no plan to replace it.”
Trump has disavowed Project 2025 and pledged to cut corporate taxes from 21% to 14% but not Medicare or Social Security. He has said he wants to replace the Affordable Care Act with a better plan. During the debate, Trump said he has “concepts of a plan.”
Harris mocked that.
“He's going to threaten health insurance for the 45 million people who rely on it based on a concept and take us back … when insurance companies had the power to deny people with preexisting conditions,” she said. “Remember what that was like.”
Trump appointed three U.S. Supreme Court justices with the intent of overturning the national right to an abortion guaranteed by Roe vs. Wade, she said.
“They did just as he intended. And what we have seen is in state after state, they passed laws to criminalize health care providers to punish women now,” she said. “More than 20 states have a Trump abortion ban, many with no exceptions … for rape and incest. Which is immoral, to tell a survivor of a violation to their body that they don't have a right to make a decision about what happens to their body next.”
She said she would sign a bill to restore Roe vs. Wade, though it’s far from clear if such a bill would ever make it through Congress.
Trump has said he opposes a national ban, but would not say during the debate if he would sign a bill banning abortion nationwide.
“And I'll tell you, across our nation, we are witnessing a full-on assault on other hard fought, hard won fundamental freedoms and rights,” Harris said. “Like the freedom to vote, the freedom to be safe from gun violence, the freedom to join a union, and the freedom to love who you love openly and with pride.”
She challenged the crowd to “remember who we are as Americans.”
“Generations before us led the fight for freedom and to the friends here I say the baton is now in our hands,” she said.
In response, Trump campaign spokesman Kush Desai said state residents are “fed up with the rising costs of groceries, gas, and utilities” caused by “the Harris-Biden administration’s disastrous inflationary, anti-energy agenda.”
“The choice between another four years of retirees scraping by off ramen under Kamala or a return to the peace, prosperity, and stability of the Trump administration couldn’t be easier for Pennsylvanians,” Desai said.
Audience gives Harris high marks
Voters left the auditorium energized, excitedly taking campaign posters from staffers while chattering about Harris’ speech.
“I just think she brings such a fresh outlook on politics, policies and everything like that. Like, I’ve never been intrigued to vote before, but she actually drove me to vote. Like, I got in my car and I wanted to come here because she’s so inspiring,” said Janiah Lomas, 21. “And I think she’s inspiring a whole bunch of young people to come and vote.”
Janiah Lomas, 21, said Harris makes her feel empowered in a way no other candidate has before. She’s been able to vote for a few years now, but her first vote will be for Harris.
“I just think she brings such a fresh outlook on politics, policies and everything like that. Like, I’ve never been intrigued to vote before, but she actually drove me to vote. Like, I got in my car and I wanted to come here because she’s so inspiring,” said Lomas. “And I think she’s inspiring a whole bunch of young people to come and vote.”
Educational specialist Ceny Reluzco also found Harris’ speech inspiring. She’s excited to vote for a candidate she feels will put money into public schools and take a stand on gun violence.
“You cannot educate frightened children. It is sad that our children know drills more than they know how to read.”
Nancy Brighton, 75, traveled an hour-and-a-half to the event from Nazareth, and said the speech was well worth the commute.
“I was thrilled to be here,” Brighton said. “I am so excited for her. She’s going to be our next president of the United States.”
Brighton said the rally made her even more excited to vote for the Harris/ Walz ticket come November.
“I will be there, in person, on Nov. 5 to vote for her and Tim Walz,” she said.
Scranton resident Sarah Cruz spent her Friday as a volunteer with the campaign.
“I chose to volunteer today because Pennsylvania is a battleground state, and we need to have a strong coalition,” Cruz said. “There’s a reason they call us the Keystone State, and it’s because we are the key to Harris winning the election.”
Cruz was impressed with Harris’ speech and contrasted it with the “regurgitated garbage” she said she hears from Trump’s campaign events.
“She’s talking about the real issues that matter to real Americans in their real lives,” she said.
