Biden campaign leans into Pennsylvania roots to woo critical battleground state voters
President Biden's re-election campaign has kept a keen focus on Pennsylvania going into the November general election, as the state promises to be one of the deciding battlegrounds in the match up.
To bolster their efforts, Biden's team has worked to highlight his connections to the Keystone State, a move which some suggest could tip the scales in this crucial East Coast swing state.
"He's been actively engaged, certainly in southeastern Pennsylvania stuff, forever," said Daniel Fee, a prominent political strategist in Democratic circles in the Keystone State and founder of The Echo Group, a Philadelphia-based Democratic political consulting firm. He also pointed to Biden's place of birth in Scranton.
"He taught at [the University of Pennsylvania] after he was done being vice president. He married a woman from Pennsylvania [who] wears her Pennsylvania pride proudly," said Fee.
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Jack Doyle, Pennsylvania spokesperson for Biden's campaign, told Fox News Digital in a statement, "This election is about Scranton vs. Mar-a-Lago," demonstrating the campaign's effort to draw a contrast between Biden's more rural roots and former President Donald Trump's lavish estate in southern Florida.
"While Joe Biden is fighting so every Pennsylvanian has a fair shot to get ahead, Donald Trump is fighting his own trials, tribulations and personal grievances," he said. "In 2020, Pennsylvanians rejected Trump’s extremism and delivered the presidency for Joe Biden, and that’s exactly what will happen again this November."
According to Ray Zaborney, a Pennsylvania Republican strategist, "Biden is trying to remind voters that he’s from Pennsylvania, obviously."
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The president's strategy is to portray himself as a "blue collar guy from a blue collar town," he added.
Berwood Yost, director of Floyd Institute's Center for Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College, noted that candidates are going to use everything they can to their advantage in 2024, given the competitive nature of the state. And "ensuring that the state's residents know and understand his connections to the state certainly can't hurt Mr. Biden," he said.
He added that the president "seems to genuinely believe that Pennsylvania in general and Scranton specifically are important pieces for understanding his life's story, so it makes sense to tell that story to the state's residents."
As for the effectiveness of Biden's attempt, Zaborney said, "Politically, though, it doesn’t seem to help much."
He noted that in Lackawanna County, where Scranton is located, both then-gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro and then-Senate candidate John Fetterman outperformed Biden.
"He actually underperformed two of the three row officers (treasurer and attorney general) running on the same ticket as he did in 2020," Zaborney said.
And Biden only did "marginally" better than Hillary Clinton in the county, he added.
Mark Harris, another GOP strategist in Pennsylvania, remarked that Biden's connection to the state is "overblown."
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"I've never seen in any of our data any evidence that there's any sense of Biden being the hometown boy in Pennsylvania," he said.
Harris claimed issues like taxes and immigration far outweigh any influence Biden's Pennsylvania roots may have.
"I know they lean on it a lot, but it certainly isn't something that I think is an effective gambit for them or approach," he said.
Yost said that Biden's strategy "probably helped him in 2020, but his standing among the state's voters has slid since the last election."
He suggested it could potentially help Biden strengthen his standing with those lapsed supporters.
In a statement to Fox News Digital, Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said, "With just 35% job approval, Joe Biden is floundering in his home state of Pennsylvania. Between higher gas prices, surging crime, and failed Democrat policies crushing families at every corner, it's no wonder that Pennsylvanians across the commonwealth are increasingly rejecting the failed Biden agenda and supporting President Trump."
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Earlier this month, a Fox News Poll showed Biden and Trump in a dead heat in Pennsylvania, 48% to 48%. The vote share between the two in 2020 was 49.85% to 48.69%, Biden to Trump.
When including several third-party candidates, Trump defeats Biden by a small margin, 44% to 42%.
There is no doubt that Pennsylvania will be close, Pennsylvania Democratic strategist Mike Mikus emphasized.
At the same time, Biden's focus on the Keystone State "definitely helps," he said.
It "reminds people" why they voted for the president in 2020, Mikus said.
Fee asserted that Biden's Pennsylvania affinity was so evident during his career that "he was widely described as Pennsylvania's third senator."
But Harris pushed back at this, explaining, "He wasn't the senator from Pennsylvania."
"It's been so long since he's had any real ties here," he said.
Harris likened the roots Biden has highlighted in the state to "a one-liner in his biography," which isn't going to resonate with Keystone State voters come November.
The Pennsylvania Democratic operatives also pointed to the significance of the state's proximity to Delaware, which Biden had long-represented in the Senate. According to Democratic Pennsylvania strategist J.J. Balaban, "he was a senator in the Philadelphia media market — the largest media market in Pennsylvania — for decades."
This has laid the groundwork for a "cultural affinity that goes beyond where he lived as a boy," he said.