Tim Walz holds rally at Acrisure Stadium

By Adam Babetski and Jonathan Salant / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Like the former high school coach he was, Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz rallied his team of supporters at Acrisure Stadium to get to the polls this fall.

With surveys showing Pennsylvania deadlocked three weeks before Election Day, Mr. Walz told hundreds of people gathered in the FedEx Great Hall at the Steelers’ stadium that they can’t hope to win without working to make it happen, just like the Super Bowl champions prepare long before they take the field on the day of the big game.

“You don’t win the Super Bowl just on that day, you win the Super Bowl months before with the work that you do,” Mr. Walz said. “Hope is great, but it’s not a damn plan. We cannot hope we beat Donald Trump. We cannot hope we restore Roe v. Wade. We cannot hope that unions grow in this country. We have to make a plan to do it, and it starts with voting.”

He said, “Our recital is in 21 days, people. We’re about done practicing here. We have to get this done.

“One or two votes in Pennsylvania per precinct could swing this election for the entire country,” he said. “The rest of the world is watching. Please, America, show some sanity and elect Kamala Harris because they need us.”

Mr. Walz ticked off the campaign’s various proposals to lower costs, such as a higher Child Tax Credit and help with the downpayment to buy a home.

He also poked fun at the Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, who on Monday abruptly ended a town hall in suburban Philadelphia and stopped taking questions after two people needed medical attention, after which Trump stood on stage as music played for almost 40 minutes.

Mr. Walz seized the incident as a chance to highlight Trump’s age (78) and his mental fitness the way Republicans did to President Joe Biden (81) when he was the Democratic nominee.

“If this was your grandfather, you’d take the keys away,” Mr. Walz said.

Standing outside the stadium before the event, Krista Delorenzo, 30, from New Castle, said she made a snap decision to drive an hour south to Pittsburgh for her first-ever political rally. Fittingly, she was wearing a Franco Harris jersey under her coat; she said it doubled as an endorsement of Ms. Harris.

Ms. Delorenzo works as a birth doula, meaning that she provides information and emotional support for pregnant women. She said she was worried about the “catastrophic” effects of another Trump presidency on her clients -– including the possibility of a national abortion ban.

“I also am a mom of two girls, so, just generally, what kind of world I want them to live in is a big deal,” she said.

Lola Hodgins, 22, and Carly Moroney, 21, both students at the University of Pittsburgh, found out about the event this morning and jumped at the chance to see Mr. Walz while he was in the area.

They said their top issues in the election this year were climate change and abortion, besides opposing Trump.

“I think he is a threat to everybody’s rights who isn’t a white, straight, cis[gender] man,” Ms. Hodgins said.

Ms. Hodgins, who is from Philadelphia, is used to her home state being critical in the election but still feels overwhelmed by the amount of attention Pennsylvania is getting this year, even after she cast her vote.

“I have people texting me every 10 minutes asking me for money or asking me to vote,” she said. “It’s definitely really anxiety-inducing to talk to people my age about voting at all.”

Dre Payton, 20, a construction worker from Cleveland, was busy hawking custom-made Harris hats and T-shirts to those in line as droplets of rain pattered around him.

Mr. Payton said that he generally didn’t pay attention to Trump’s rhetoric but called his claim that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets “weird.”

But the Harris campaign is aware of more work to be done.

Mr. Payton’s father, who declined to give his first name, is an independent voter who has been selling political merchandise to supporters of both parties since 2008.

He felt that he and other black men were being alienated by the Democrats’ perceived overemphasis of LGBT issues and Ms. Harris’ background as a prosecutor.

This cycle, he’s leaning toward voting for Trump, he said, and he doesn’t think he’s alone.

“You know how many Black people are in Pittsburgh? There’s like 10 Black people in line,” he said, gesturing at the rally entrance.

Polls show Ms. Harris, the first Black woman and first South Asian to run for president as the nominee of a major political party, not doing as well with Black voters — especially Black men — as President Joe Biden did in 2020 when he narrowly carried Pennsylvania, the most populous swing state.

In a New York Times/Siena College poll, 83% of Black women supported Ms. Harris, compared to 70% of Black men. In 2020, 85% of Black men supported Mr. Biden in the same poll.

Mr. Payton’s father said he was offended by Barack Obama’s appearance in Pittsburgh last week, during which the former president said it appears that some Black men “just aren't feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you're coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that.” He said it was “not acceptable” that some Black men were “thinking about sitting out or supporting somebody who has a history of denigrating you, because you think that’s a sign of strength, because that’s what being a man is?”

Mr. Payton’s father said, “I think Obama is a cool dude, but don’t tell me how to vote,” he said. “I’m blacker than he is.”

Before her rally in Erie Monday night, Ms. Harris visited a Black-owned small business where she talked to Black men from the area, according to pool reports.

Similarly, on Tuesday, Mr. Walz was appealing to rural voters.

Earlier in the day, Mr. Walz donned a baseball cap emblazoned “Minnesota Grown” and a red and black hunting jacket at a family farm in Volant in Lawrence County to discuss the campaign’s plan to help rural Americans.

Planks included adding 10,000 health care professionals by offering scholarships, loan forgiveness and other benefits to doctors and nurses willing to work in rural areas; increasing access to emergency ambulances; expanding telemedicine by permanently extending Medicare coverage for benefits and doubling federal funding for equipment and technologies; and providing more funding for volunteer EMS programs to boost the number of ambulances serving rural communities.

Other proposals would make it easier for new farmers to get federal loans, expand farmland protection programs, find new markets for agricultural products and help farmers sell their products, and support smaller farms against consolidation.

Mr. Walz talked about growing up on a farm in Nebraska and living in a small rural community. He said Ms. Harris’ home state of California was the largest agricultural state in the nation. And he talked about his efforts to champion agriculture when he served in the U.S. House before being elected governor of Minnesota.

“The perspective I brought with me to Congress was I represented a rural district for 12 years where I worked across the aisle and was responsible for helping write three farm bills, expanding support for farmers and ranchers, expanding access to crop insurance and job training. That’s what we did.”

Republican National Committee spokeswoman Anna Kelly pointed out that Ms. Harris voted against the new free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, which contained provisions to expand U.S. agricultural exports.

“Rural Americans have long felt left behind by Kamala Harris’ weak, failed, dangerously liberal policies,” Ms. Kelly said. “Harris can try to rewrite history, but it’s too little, too late — rural voters are tired of being failed by Democrats, and they are lining up to support President Trump.”

Pennsylvania is hosting wall-to-wall candidates this week, with both major party nominees and their running mates visiting the nation’s most populous battleground state and President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden campaigning here, too.