Kamala Harris flew to Detroit Monday morning as part of a two-stage campaign that will culminate in her holding her first campaign event with the man she replaced on the ballot: Joe Biden.
The vice president boarded Air Force One with headphones on and her phone in hand as she prepared for a fresh start just nine weeks before Election Day.
She pressed her headset and did not answer questions from the reporters waiting for her.
Harris and Biden will meet in Pittsburgh, rallying union members in the crucial battleground state.
The date and session of their first observation together are significant: it takes place on Labor Day in a must-win state.
But their trip is overshadowed by the war in the Middle East.
Before leaving for her stop, Harris will join Biden in the Situation Room on Monday to meet with the American hostage deal negotiating team to discuss efforts to free the remaining hostages.
Kamala Harris flew to Detroit Monday morning, part of a two-part campaign that will culminate in her first campaign event with the man she replaced on the ballot: Joe Biden.
Israel announced Sunday morning that it had found the bodies of six hostages, including Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin. The deaths have sparked thousands of protests in the streets of Israel.
Harris has supported Biden’s efforts to arm Israel and secure a hostage-taking deal and a ceasefire. She has also expressed concern about the treatment of civilians in Gaza.
After the reunion at the White House, the duo will hit the road.
Michigan and Pennsylvania are part of the Democrats’ “blue wall,” a series of Midwestern states considered crucial to retaining the White House. Biden won both states in the 2020 election, but Donald Trump won them in the 2016 election.
The two men will be joined in Pittsburgh by Gov. Josh Shapiro, Sen. Bob Casey, Lt. Gov. Austan Davis, Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey and Reps. Summer Lee, Madeleine Dean and Chris Deluzio.
The vice president boarded Air Force One with headphones on and her phone in hand as she prepared for another big splash just nine weeks before Election Day.
Harris waves to reporters and photographers waiting for her as she walks up the two steps of the Air Force Base
Harris and her campaign have been cautious in choosing Biden. The president resigned in July when Democrats began to worry he would lose to Trump and drag them down with him.
But he can still be an effective spokesman among older voters, white men and in Pennsylvania, the state where he was born and considers his second home.
He will continue his solo journey throughout the week: On Thursday, the president will travel to Wisconsin (another “blue wall” state) to tout his administration’s investments in communities there. On Friday, he will travel to Michigan to do the same.
Biden and Harris appeared together on Aug. 15 in Largo, Maryland, at an event touting the administration’s efforts to lower prescription drug prices. But that visit was an official White House visit, not a campaign stop.
They were also on stage together after Biden’s speech on the first day of the Democratic National Convention.
Labor Day traditionally marks the start of the fall election campaign, when millions of voters begin to focus on the race.
Harris and his surrogates are in full swing on the campaign trail for Labor Day: running mate Tim Walz and his wife Gwen Walz will be in Milwaukee, and second gentleman Doug Emhoff will be in Newport News, Virginia.
With less than three months to go until the election, Harris campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon says Harris and Walz are the “clear outsiders” in the race.
“Donald Trump has a motivated base of support, with more support and higher approval ratings than he has had since 2020,” she wrote in a campaign memo, adding that “the race will remain incredibly close, and the voters who will decide this election will require extraordinary work to win them over. But we have the candidate, the message, and the operation that will bring Americans together to chart a new path forward, so we can once again defeat Donald Trump.”
Both parties fear a certain complacency – that their voters will simply stay home on election day.
Unions are a key part of Democrats’ unity and can help turn out voters. Biden was the first sitting president to join a picket line, when he marched alongside striking autoworkers in Michigan.
Harris has the support of the United Auto Workers union, which is strong in Michigan, and the United Steelworkers union, which dominates western Pennsylvania, including Pittsburgh.
The biggest union supporter missing from Harris’ campaign is the Teamsters, who have so far refrained from supporting Harris or Trump.
Harris’ campaign notes that under the Harris administration, support for union membership has reached its highest level in half a century.
The administration also expanded overtime pay protections for workers and helped create millions of union jobs through the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act.
Kamala Harris and Joe Biden were last seen together on stage at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
The couple also appeared together at an official event in Maryland last month.
The stop in Pittsburgh will be Harris’ ninth trip to Pennsylvania this year, while the visit to Detroit will be his sixth to Michigan in 2024.
On Monday, Harris will stop in Detroit, a region that is one of the country’s main Democratic strongholds, to speak to union members.
She will be joined by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, Rep. Elissa Slotkin, Rep. Debbie Dingell, AFT President Randi Weingarten, NEA President Becky Pringle and UAW International President Shawn Fain.
Turnout in the city is expected to exceed 50 percent of registered voters for the general election, the city clerk told The Associated Press.
Polls in Michigan and Pennsylvania show Harris and Trump tied.
The Trump campaign has not publicly announced any events over Labor Day weekend.
The former president will participate in a FOX town hall hosted by Sean Hannity on Wednesday, and later this week he will address the Fraternal Order of Police at its fall meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, and hold a rally in Wisconsin.
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