Kamala Harris to visit Lehigh Valley on Monday
Kamala Harris to visit Lehigh Valley on Monday
Vice President Kamala Harris will make her first presidential campaign stop in the Lehigh Valley on Monday – holding a get-out-the vote rally the day before the Nov. 5 election when she will face former President Donald Trump.
Harris, a Democrat, will stop in Allentown in the early afternoon, according to a campaign advisory. More details were not available. For security reasons, her campaign doesn’t always publicly release locations of such visits.
Her Lehigh Valley visit – dubbed a GOTV rally – is among three stops she will make in Pennsylvania on Monday to close out her campaign. From Allentown, she will go to Pittsburgh then Philadelphia.
Her Allentown visit underscores the importance of the area in capturing Pennsylvania’s 19 Electoral College votes.
With polls showing a tight race, turnout volume is expected to be a deciding factor. Also of importance to both parties will be the turnout of Latino voters. More than half of Allentown’s residents are Latino.
On Tuesday, Trump, a Republican, spoke to about 10,000 supporters at the PPL Center in Allentown.
It was his first campaign stop in an area with a high Puerto Rican population following his rally on Sunday at Madison Square Garden in New York City where warm-up speaker comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” About a quarter of Allentown’s residents are Puerto Rican.
Trump made no reference to Hinchcliffe’s remark, but said, “I’m getting support from Latinos like never before. No one loves our Latino community and our Puerto Rican community like I do.”
Trump previously visited the area in April when he held a rally on the grounds of the Schnecksville Fire Co. in North Whitehall Township.
While she has visited Pennsylvania mutiple times, Harris, who became the Democratic nominee after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race in July, hadn’t put the Lehigh Valley on her schedule until now.
Her campaign opened an office on Hamilton Street in Allentown in August. Actor and activist Martin Sheen dropped by the office on Tuesday to promote Harris.
Gov. Tim Walz, her vice presidential running mate, was in the Lehigh Valley on Oct. 18, where he met with about 25 people at El Tipico, a Dominican restaurant in south Allentown.
His Friday visit follows a stop on Sept. 21 when he spoke at Freedom High School in Bethlehem Township. His wife Gwen Walz made a stop in Easton last week.