HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania — Democratic and Republican lawyers are hovering over Pennsylvania, brushing up on election case law, and are ready to swoop in if there’s a post-Nov. 3 balloting fight.
Pennsylvania’s 20 Electoral College votes are key in paths to the campaigns of both President Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden, as each work frantically to stitch together a state-by-state majority of 270 or more.
Trump is making repeated trips to the Keystone State in the campaign’s waning hours. And Biden, the former vice president and 36-year senator in neighboring Delaware, is playing hard there. Plans for Monday, the final full day of the campaign, include a Pennsylvania “barnstorming” tour by Biden, former second lady Jill Biden, Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris, and her husband, attorney Doug Emhoff.
And while Pennsylvania may come to resemble Florida in 2000, with thousands of out-of-town lawyers, operatives, and other political types descending on the state to fight for their presidential candidate, so far, it’s pretty quiet in the state’s central region.
Hotels say room bookings in the state capital of Harrisburg are winding down, and restaurants haven’t noticed an increase in bookings, those who work there told the Washington Examiner. The apparent sleepiness of Pennsylvania’s capital seems out of sync with the predictions many political analysts have been making for the last several weeks, who say that the state may decide whether the country has a new president next year.
“I was laid off because of the pandemic, so I was driving Uber full time during the last few months, now I just do it on weekends, and if anything, there’s been less people to pick up the last week,” said Unk Desai, a software programmer in the Harrisburg area. “It just seems like everyone already voted,” he added with a laugh.
On Saturday, Trump made four stops in the state and another on Sunday, signaling the importance of a victory there in his quests for 270 Electoral College votes on Election Day.
Biden “goes for a year ‘there will be no fracking,’ then he comes to Pennsylvania. Listen, we have a million jobs for fracking we’ve got $2 gasoline,” Trump said in Montoursville on Saturday night. “He’s like, ‘Let me just change my [position],’ and he’s never questioned about it from the fake news.”
Biden, meanwhile, headed to Philadelphia on Sunday afternoon on his “Souls to the Polls” tour to help gin up black turnout, both with early voting and on Election Day.
And if Pennsylvania’s cities seem a bit sleepy on Sunday, Biden is sure to generate some buzz on Monday when he, Jill Biden, Harris, and Emhoff, make nearly a dozen stops, according to the campaign. The night will end with an “Election Night Eve drive-in event,” featuring Lady Gaga in Pittsburgh and John Legend in Philadelphia.
Trump’s campaign has repeatedly said that the president’s easiest path to victory is holding Pennsylvania, along with other states competitive in 2020, such as Arizona, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina.
“We win Pennsylvania, we win it all,” he told supporters in Butler County on Saturday. “You know that, right? We win Pennsylvania, we win it all.”
But with 1.5 million Pennsylvanians who have already voted, the normal rush by campaign operatives to hotel bars and steakhouses in the nights immediately preceding and following Election Day hasn’t taken shape yet and provided the shot of fiscal stimulus this year for a state suffering from the economic damage of the coronavirus pandemic.
“This is the most crowded I’ve seen the bars in Harrisburg, but that’s just because it’s Halloween I think,” said Fred Donald, who donned a 1980s ski-bum outfit, on Saturday night. “I always try to leave a big tip here because it’s just been a total ghost town here.”
In Pennsylvania, the loss of service-sector jobs in restaurants and retail shops run the risk of being permanent, according to a report from the state’s Independent Fiscal Office released last week.
“We do think it is a major concern because we do not think that many of these former jobs will return,” the agency’s executive director Matthew Knittel said.
