(Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Democratic leaders in Pennsylvania are frustrated with Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign efforts in the must-win battleground state, saying the operation is "a mess."
"Pennsylvania is such a mess, and it’s incredibly frustrating," one elected Democratic state official told Politico. "I feel like we’re going to win here, but we’re going to win it in spite of the Harris state campaign."
Pennsylvania officials, party leaders, and allies criticized the campaign's weak relationship with key Democratic figures, particularly in Philadelphia and its suburbs, according to Politico. Many elected state officials said they have been excluded from Harris events, that surrogates have not been used effectively, and that the local campaign needs to do more to engage black, Asian, and Latino voters.
Pennsylvania and its 19 electoral votes are seen as a must-win for the Harris team. Although the vice president has visited the swing state more than a dozen times since replacing President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, she is only ahead of former president Donald Trump by less than half a percentage point in the state. She held a more than 2-percentage-point lead just a month ago.
Democratic leaders are worried that Harris is not doing enough to win over Pennsylvania’s black, Asian, and Latino voters, demographics that have historically supported the party but that Harris has struggled to win over.
One Democratic Pennsylvania official told Politico that "the party infrastructure is non-existent" in Asian and Latino grassroots organizations.
Mariel Joy Kornblith Martin, the campaign’s former Pennsylvania Latino coalition manager, quit the Harris campaign after two weeks, writing a damning letter to Pennsylvania party leaders in August. She wrote that she was given "no access to necessary data on Latino demographics" and "no infrastructure to plan events or engage the Latino community."
"Please give us the tools to win," Martin wrote, "for as we all know, you do not win PA without Latinos, and you do not win the presidency without PA."
Multiple Democratic leaders blamed Harris’s Pennsylvania campaign manager, Nikki Lu, for the vice president’s struggles in the state. One Democratic state official said Lu was "AWOL," and a party strategist said that Lu "empowers a culture" that leaves elected officials feeling unengaged and disrespected.
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