Delegates and candidates turn to the work of keeping the battleground state blue
By: Kim Lyons
Penn-Capital Star
August 25, 2024 – CHICAGO — Pennsylvania was the most popular kid in the class at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, and the battleground state and its 19 electoral votes were well represented in Chicago and on the convention’s nightly broadcasts. Each night featured a speaker from the Keystone State, with Lt. Gov. Austin Davis on Monday; state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta on Tuesday; Gov. Josh Shapiro on Wednesday and U.S. Sen. Bob Casey on Thursday.
Shapiro was unquestionably the biggest Pennsylvania presence at the DNC, due in part to his status as a runner-up to be presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate. He was constantly booked during the week, speaking at numerous state delegations’ breakfasts, attracting the ire of GOP nominee former President Donald Trump, and appearing regularly on cable news channels.
Project 2025 played a key role at the convention, as Democrats continued to try to link the conservative policy plan to reshape the federal government and increase presidential authority with Trump.
Kenyatta, a candidate for state Auditor General held the giant Project 2025 book on stage Tuesday night,, and told the audience it was a “radical plan to drag us backwards, bankrupt the middle class and raise prices on working families like yours and mine.”
Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025 but several members of his administration were involved with helping to craft it.
“It’s a big, heavy book full of bad ideas, and it was one of these moments where we’re able to really get people to understand with the visual how serious Trump and this administration are about doubling down on his flawed theory of the case,” Kenyatta told the Capital-Star on the final day of the convention.
Our vote is the highest demonstration of the collective power we have… The purpose of this moment is to use our collective power to elect somebody who gives a damn about us, and then to work side by side with her to help implement the things that she’s talking about.
He added Project 2025 should serve as a warning to Democrats about what they believe a second Trump term would look like.
“When Trump burst onto the political scene, he did so with the thesis that ‘America sucks,’ and that it sucks in large part because our neighbors, the people in our community, people we don’t know — they’re somehow a part of bringing America down,” Kenyatta said, “and the only way we fix it is if we give him all the power.”
While Trump’s first term saw the former president “flailing around,” Kenyatta said, the architects of Project 2025 mapped out a plan for how to reach some of the goals of the far-right wing of the party, such as a national abortion ban and abolishing the U.S. Department of Education.
Kenyatta added he doesn’t believe in the political concept of giving all the power to one person to fix everything.
“Our vote is the highest demonstration of the collective power we have,” he said. “If we elect Kamala Harris in November and then say, ‘OK, we’ll see you in four years at the next convention. Hope you fix all the problems!’ then we’ve missed the thread. The purpose of this moment is to use our collective power to elect somebody who gives a damn about us, and then to work side by side with her to help implement the things that she’s talking about.”
At the final Pennsylvania delegates’ breakfast on Thursday, U.S. Rep. Summer Lee (D-12th District) urged the battleground state delegates to keep up the convention’s momentum.
“We’re here honing our tools so that we can go out and do the very hard work, not for Kamala Harris. We’re not doing hard work for Summer Lee or any of my colleagues,” Lee said, but rather for marginalized and vulnerable people. “Think about that person whose name is in that book over the hundreds and hundreds of pages of Project 2025, who do we see there that we need to make sure is not touched by the evil and the horrors that they have lined up and ready for them.”
Davis, Pennsylvania’s youngest and first-ever Black lieutenant governor, addressed the convention on Monday night and spoke about the importance of building bridges. He appeared on stage with Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Sarah Rodriguez, Harris County, Texas Executive Lena Hidalgo, and California Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, all of whom shared stories about how Harris had made an impact on their communities.
“I grew up with working class parents in a small steel town in southwestern Pennsylvania, and to have the opportunity to speak on a national stage like that was incredibly humbling,” Davis told the Capital-Star. “It was just an example of how someone can live the American dream, so I hope folks who saw me saw that America should be a place where every person has that same opportunity.”
Davis said the question he heard most often over the course of the convention was whether Democrats can win Pennsylvania. “And I tell them, absolutely, we just have to keep showing up everywhere, competing in places that sometimes it’s not easy to be a Democrat,” he said.
Asked if there were “red” areas of the state he saw as possible to flip blue, he pointed to central Pennsylvania as having the most potential, particularly the race in the 10th Congressional District between former WGAL anchor Janelle Stelson and Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Perry.
“I think we have a great candidate in Janelle Stelson,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of energy also with [state Rep.] Patty Kim running for state Senate. So I think Dauphin, Lancaster, Cumberland — an area Governor Shapiro won when we were running on the ballot.”
Davis said not everyone was completely impressed with his star turn on television, however. His daughter Harper, whose 1st birthday is next month, was asleep by the time he appeared Monday night. “We’re going to replay it for her but she doesn’t care,” he said. “She only cares when I FaceTime her and she’s like, ‘Daddy, when are you coming home?’”
Beaver County Blue: Voice of the 17th CD of Progressive Democrats of America 