Former President Barack Obama will headline a rally on Thursday in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, as Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign seeks to use one of her party’s most popular politicians to mobilize the Democratic base.
Unleashing Mr. Obama is a sign that Ms. Harris is moving her campaign into its highest gear with Election Day less than a month away and the presidential race exceedingly close. This week, her operation is turning its focus from fund-raising and defining her message to getting out the vote as quickly as possible.
Mr. Obama’s rally on Thursday in Pittsburgh kick-starts that effort. And he is expected to continue rallying Democrats to the polls in several more battleground state events in the coming weeks.
“You bring in someone like Barack Obama to inspire people, to encourage them to participate and to set the stakes and urge them to vote,” said David Axelrod, a former top strategist for Mr. Obama. “There’s no one better.”
Encouraging early voting is a key campaign strategy. As more Democrats cast their ballots early, it becomes easier for the Harris campaign to find and turn out the voters who are harder to reach.
Early voting has already begun in Pennsylvania, which Ms. Harris must almost certainly win to defeat former President Donald J. Trump. She holds a narrow lead in the polls there, having overcome the significant deficit she inherited from President Biden. Democrats are hoping for high voter turnout in the state’s biggest cities, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.
But there are some worrying signs: Ms. Harris’s support among Black voters, for instance, is still lower than what Mr. Biden received when he won the state in 2020, according to a poll last month from The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College.
Black men in particular have been a weak point for Ms. Harris, and the vocal support of Mr. Obama, the first Black president, could help her there.
“He’s the biggest gun that Democrats have in their arsenal,” said Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster who worked on Mr. Obama’s presidential campaigns. “And here at the close, you’ve got to use the biggest gun you’ve got.”
Mr. Obama remains adored by Democrats, making him a natural surrogate for Ms. Harris on the campaign trail. More than 90 percent of Democrats and many independents view him favorably, according to an August survey by The Economist and YouGov — well above other Democrats, including Mr. Biden, Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton.
“They’ve got to release the kraken,” said James Carville, a veteran Democratic strategist, adding that the Harris campaign should be using Mr. Obama and other high-profile surrogates more aggressively. “He’s got, obviously, tremendous appeal to Black voters. He has tremendous appeal to suburban whites, which is another big part of the coalition. And he drives Trump nuts.”
Only Michelle Obama polls similarly well. The Harris campaign has not yet said if the former first lady will hit the trail in the last weeks of the election. Many Democrats saw Mrs. Obama’s speech as one of the sharpest at their national convention this summer, but she has long been reluctant to spend much time on the campaign trail.
In his own convention speech, Mr. Obama cast Ms. Harris as the inheritor of his political movement, saying that it was “up to all of us to fight for the America we believe in,” and reviving the chants of “Yes, we can,” his 2008 campaign motto.
Ms. Harris was an early supporter of Mr. Obama, flying to Iowa in 2007 to knock on doors for the junior senator from Illinois when she was the district attorney of San Francisco.
In addition to campaigning for the top of the ticket, Mr. Obama is trying to help down-ballot candidates. Democrats running for Senate in Florida, Maryland, Michigan and Nevada have released ads featuring him. On Thursday, he is expected to also make a push for Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, who is running for re-election.
The Harris campaign is treating the final stretch before Election Day as a multiweek voting period, urging supporters to return absentee ballots or to cast them at early-voting sites.
Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the vice president’s running mate, and Ms. Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, spent Wednesday in Arizona to mark the first day of the state’s in-person early voting period. On Thursday, Ms. Harris is scheduled to record a town-hall meeting on Univision, which has a large audience of Spanish-speaking voters in both Arizona and Nevada. She will also hold a rally in Phoenix in the evening.
And in a sign that the campaign is acutely concerned about persuading Latino men to vote for Ms. Harris, it announced on Wednesday a voter-turnout effort called “Hombres con Harris” in Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
The pivot by the campaign toward exhortations to vote comes as it adopts a far more aggressive media outreach strategy. This week, Ms. Harris appeared on CBS’s “60 Minutes” and on the podcast “Call Her Daddy” and sat down for friendly discussions with Howard Stern, Stephen Colbert and the hosts of ABC’s “The View.”
Ms. Harris has also begun incorporating directives for supporters to not wait to return their ballots.
Last Friday in Flint, Mich., she reminded the audience that nearly two million voters in the state had already received their absentee ballots.
“If you have received your ballot, please do not wait,” she said. “Fill it out and return it today. Early voting starts statewide on Oct. 26, and now is the time to make your plan to vote because, folks, the election is here.”
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