US: Pennsylvania County Picks Presidents

The command center for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign in one of the most hotly contested counties in the most important election battleground state of Pennsylvania sits in a small room of a strip-mall office rented by Erie County’s Republican Party.

The otherwise sleepy office comes to life a couple times a week when the two-person staff hosts the volunteer network. The campaign calls Trump Force 47.

They weigh heavily on him, half a world away from where the 60-year-old automotive engineer lives in Detroit’s suburbs.

A few miles away in a bustling office in downtown Erie, paid staff and volunteers on Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign make phone calls, press new campaign buttons, and organize watch parties and phone banking. A chalkboard keeps score of door-knocking: 12,000 households so far toward a goal of 20,000, or nearly one of five in the county.

With just four weeks before the Nov. 5 presidential election, the battle for Erie County – a historically must-win county in a must-win state – demonstrates the urgency of identifying and contacting individual voters in a campaign that remains stubbornly close, according to campaign staff and volunteers for both campaigns.

While the Harris campaign is using its sizable cash advantage and newfound enthusiasm to build a towering ground-game operation aimed at mobilizing supporters and identifying new voters, the Trump campaign is focused on infrequent voters and betting on a voter registration drive that has cut into the traditional Democratic advantage.

Federal Financial Disclosures
Harris and the Democratic Party raised $361 million in August compared to Trump and the Republicans’ $130 million, and she spent nearly three times as much as her opponent that month, federal financial disclosures show.

Reuters interviewed some 40 supporters, campaign staff, volunteers and voters who said that Harris’ ground game advantage could test whether brick and mortar campaigns still prove useful in campaigns that are defined by viral moments, influencers and social media ad wars.

“Trump and his team appear to be banking on the power of his personal pull,” said Chris Borick, a pollster and political science professor at Pennsylvania’s Muhlenberg College.

“Harris and the Democrats are investing deeply in a more traditional ground game here, and thus, this election will be a test of dramatically different strategies.”

The volunteers and voters also described rising tensions as the campaigns dump millions of dollars on divisive digital and television ads, robo calls, text messages, and door-knocking.

“I’ve been pretty bombarded with mail, phone calls and texts,” said Erin Miller, 38, a bartender and mother of six who recently moved to the state from Colorado and has yet to vote locally in a presidential election, making her a prime target for the campaigns.

With 19 electoral votes, Pennsylvania is the biggest prize among the battleground states that will decide the election.

Reuters/Shakirat Sadiq