Former President Barack Obama will be in the Pittsburgh area next Thursday, when he will launch a national tour of battleground states to support Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
The Harris campaign has offered few details of the October 10th visit, which was disclosed Thursday night by a senior official. But Obama is among the strongest surrogates that Democrats could draw on in the four weeks leading up to election day.
Obama’s speech at this summer’s Democratic National Convention — particularly a mocking and slyly vulgar reference to Donald Trump’s “weird obsession with crowd sizes” — was among the most celebrated moments of the event. And Obama, the first Black president in American history, remains a transformational figure, one whose presidency many younger voters — who Democrats desperately need on Election Day — grew up with.
Obama has made campaign stops here in other high-profile races: Just days before the 2022 mid-term elections, he made a stop in Oakland to boost Senate candidate John Fetterman and other Democrats. Much of his message on that visit still appears in Democratic stump speeches today: that Republicans "make us angry and afraid of one another ... so they can take power" while limiting abortion rights and helping the wealthy.
Beyond such ideological ties, Obama and Harris have long been political allies, supporting each other’s ambitions for roughly two decades. Harris was an early supporter of his presidential effort, and former Obama campaign staffers are helping her with her bid now.
Obama himself has reportedly been helping Harris behind the scenes, but his appearance on the campaign trail reflects a pulling-out-the-stops approach to the final weeks of the campaign, and it reflects Harris’ ability to draw on a broad array of allies to amplify her message.
In a single weekend last month, for example, Pittsburgh received visits on her behalf from Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and appeared on Labor Day with President Joe Biden.
The Trump campaign, meanwhile, has had fewer surrogates to deploy outside of his own running mate, JD Vance. But polling suggests that even so, the race in Pennsylvania remains tight.
