Through September 13, Vice President Kamala Harris has visited Pennsylvania twelve times. Most of her campaign stops have been in red counties that supported former President Donald Trump in 2020. Along the way, Harris made an assortment of campaign promises and highlighted her resume to generate support for her presidential bid. Harris’ mission is to acquaint voters with her qualifications and her views for the future. A September New York Times/Siena poll found nearly one-third of voters don’t know who Harris is.
Both Harris and Trump have focused on Pennsylvania, the “swingiest” swing state in a must-win tight presidential election. Between the two, they’ve visited the Commonwealth two dozen times, exclusive of the stand-alone visits from Harris’ VP running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Trump’s VP pick, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance. When, in early September, Harris landed at John Murtha Johnstown-Cambria Airport, Pennsylvania Democrat Sen. John Fetterman, his wife Gisele, and Johnstown Democrat Mayor Frank Janakovic joined her. Johnstown, a small city within Cambria County, has a population of 18,000. In 2020, Cambria County voted for Trump over Biden 68% to 31%. On another stop in Wilkes-Barre, part of Luzerne County, Harris, for the first time, pledged to lower the standards for federal government employment. The 2020 election results showed that in Wilkes-Barre Trump defeated Biden by a 57% to 42% margin. Those are powerful margins that Harris would have to overcome to cut into Trump’s popularity.
Harris doubled down on her economic opportunity and pro-small business agenda. If elected, Harris promised to eliminate the “unnecessary degree requirements for federal jobs and increase jobs for folks without a four-year degree, understanding that requiring a certain degree does not necessarily talk about one’s skills.” Instead, Harris called for alternative pathways to good-paying jobs like apprenticeships and vocational training or adult education. Voters who have been casting ballots since the Clinton administration recognize Harris’ promises as empty. President Bill Clinton created GEAR UP, a 1998 program designed to help high-school students better prepare for the professional world. The Department of Education squandered millions on the failed program. In a corporate world that relies heavily on technology, specifically the STEM occupations—science, technology, engineering, and math— a vocational school diploma will rarely replace a college degree.
Then, touting her credentials as the former California Attorney General, Harris pointed to “transnational” cartels, and said, “I know these cartels firsthand, and as president, I will make sure we prosecute them to the full extent of the law for pushing poison like fentanyl on our children.”
In 2022, around 73,838 people in the United States died from a drug overdose that involved fentanyl, the highest number of fentanyl overdose deaths ever recorded, and a significant increase from the 36,319 reported in 2019, just weeks from President Joe Biden’s and Harris’ inauguration. Their open border agenda began immediately. Fentanyl overdoses are the driving force behind the opioid epidemic, accounting for the majority of U.S. overdose fatalities.
Curbing fentanyl deaths is an action Harris, the so called “Border Czar,” could do today if she enforced immigration laws which would prevent cartels and other illegal aliens from entering the nation without inspection. Of all of Harris’ hollow promises, none is less convincing than her vow to prosecute drug cartels. As she moves along in her campaign from swing state to swing state, drug traffickers are crossing the Southwest border daily and pushing their deadly drugs into American communities like Johnstown and Wilkes-Barre. In Pennsylvania, overdose deaths rose by 16.4% in 2020 and continued rising to 5,438 reported overdose deaths in 2021, a 6% year-over-year increase. Expressed in starker terms, an average of 15 Pennsylvanians died each and every day of a drug overdose in the last year. Harris has failed at her most important duty—to keep America safe.
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