Kamala Harris visits local bookstore, rallies supporters during Johnstown, Pa. visit

Vice President Kamala Harris swooped into Johnstown, Pa. Friday to greet supporters at the airport and then stopped at a local bookstore downtown, before jumping back on her plane and heading to a rally in Wilkes-Barre on the other side of the state.

She took only one question from a reporter during the visit: How does she view her chances in Pennsylvania this November?

“I am feeling very good about Pennsylvania because there are a lot of people in Pennsylvania who deserve to be seen and heard,” she said. “ And I will be continuing to travel around the state to make sure that I'm listening as much as we are talking. And ultimately, I feel very strongly that I gotta earn every vote.”

Harris has spent more time in Pennsylvania than any other state in recent weeks, including spending both Labor Day and five days last week in Pittsburgh to prepare for her debate with Donald Trump.

Her approach seems to be working with some supporters. Jacki Trexler, a lifelong Johnstown resident, volunteered for the Harris campaign last week. This is the first time she’s volunteered for a candidate since Barack Obama, she said.

Trexler said she is very concerned about immigration and abortion. She didn’t like the way families were separated at the border under President Donald Trump. 

“I don't think that's a way to treat human beings,” she said. “I do believe in a positive approach, though, that people have to take the right steps in order to become legal immigrants in this nation and eventually citizenship, because that's honestly how we all came here.”

But it’s not clear that Harris’s approach is working with everyone. Johnstown resident Nicole Oswalt has voted for both Democrats and Republicans in previous presidential elections, including Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and Donald Trump when he first ran in 2016. But in 2020, she became disenchanted with Trump and voted for the Libertarian Party’s candidate.

Oswalt still hasn’t made up her mind this year. During the debate between Harris and Trump on Tuesday, Oswalt said she didn’t think the vice president gave honest, clear answers about what she would do for the economy. And Trump, she said, made offensive statements and spread lies. But the way Trump speaks, she said, is appealing to the many factory workers in Johnstown.

“If you take a walk through any one of these bigger manufacturing companies that are located here in Johnstown, for example, like JWF [Industries] or even JWI, Johnstown Wire Industries,” she said. “And any one of those men that wear a hard hat in there, listen to how they talk, and then you listen to how Trump talks. That's why he's resonating much more with that particular type of blue collar worker.”

Diana Tessari, Oswalt’s coworker at American Eagle Screen Print in downtown Johnstown, is planning to vote for Trump again. She said if she was Trump’s mother she would “smack him one in the head.” But she also thinks Trump’s way of speaking makes him relatable.

“He makes you think more of the common man or the common person, not the elite, the way he speaks,” she said.

The dozens of Trump signs lining Franklin Street, the road between Johnstown’s airport and its downtown, seemed to echo Tessari’s point, signaling how much the former president’s tenure as the head of the GOP has changed the political landscape in a place like Johnstown. Once represented in Congress by Democrat John Murtha, the Johnstown area has become reliably Republican over the last two decades. But the Republican tilt turned into overwhelming margins for Trump, who won the county by 37 points in both 2016 and 2020.

Indeed, Harris’s stop on Friday is unlikely to get her anywhere close to garnering more votes than Trump in a county like Cambria — even several local Democrats said they believed that a majority of voters there would vote for Trump. Instead, the campaign hopes to make marginal gains in rural Pennsylvania counties, through visits to places like Classic Elements, a Johnstown bookstore. In close elections — such as in 2020, when President Biden won Pennsylvania by only 80,000 votes — small improvements can make a big difference .

The two female owners of Classic Elements — Jen Gailote and Michelle Kupchella — told Harris that they opened the store because they wanted to be part of improving the downtown. One wanted to own a bookstore and the other wanted to own a gift shop, so they decided to combine their ideas together. They told Harris that regulars come to the shop to do puzzles or talk business.

Harris thanked them for creating a safe space where everyone in the community is welcome and feels a sense of belonging. “And in the midst of so many forces that are trying to kind of make people feel alone or divide us, I think it's really important that we're intentional about creating these kinds of spaces,” Harris said.

Members of the media were then ushered out of the space, as Harris and Trump supporters outside tried to outshout each other. About 30 minutes later Harris was back at the airport shaking the hands of the staff who had helped organize her trip, before heading back up the stairs to Air Force Two.

Just as she reached the top of the steps, Harris stumbled. It was the kind of small misstep that might have drawn attention away from the campaign’s message if the candidate was still President Biden, dogged by persistent concerns and questions about his age. But without skipping a beat Harris took the last couple of steps, turned around, smiled, waved and then was on her way to another campaign stop in Wilkes-Barre.