LANCASTER, Pennsylvania — “This is my kind of place,” said Vice President Mike Pence as he looked around Lyndon Diner, its booths packed with supporters and its aisles filled with waitstaff in T-shirts emblazoned with shamrock logos.
While Washington obsessed over impeachment and waited for the Senate’s final vote, Pence got out of town to woo voters in Pennsylvania, dispensing folksy charm and selfies in a crucial battleground state.
The visit on Wednesday illustrates Trump 2020’s two-pronged attack. A day after the president’s reality TV know-how was on display at a State of the Union address filled with surprise reveals and viral moments, Pence was ordering a bacon cheeseburger at a counter, posing for selfies, and signing hats.
Diner stops have become a feature of his campaign trips.
“I hope you didn’t make any fuss,” he told diners, who tittered while journalists jostled for position and Secret Service agents policed the tables against the backdrop of the campaign bus looming just beyond the windows.
Trump won Pennsylvania by 44,000 votes. At less than 1% of votes cast, it proved to be one of three tight victories, along with Michigan and Wisconsin, that delivered his Electoral College victory.
Those are the states that Pence is expected to target, using his experience as governor of Indiana, to woo voters.
“Manufacturing and agriculture are things that he understands and make him a natural campaigner in the places that we need to win,” said a campaign source. “It’s not that the president can’t do that. He’ll be in those states, as well, but the two have different backgrounds that can be harnessed in different ways.”
The president’s approval rating is rising in the state, but Pennsylvania could be the toughest challenge, with 2018 midterm results and polls suggesting it is reverting to a blue state.
Which brings us to Pence’s road trip, landing Air Force Two in Philadelphia before driving to Harrisburg with a diner pit stop outside Lancaster and a Women for Trump rally at the end of the day. If much of the west of the state, in union strongholds around Wilkes-Barre, is reliably in Trump’s corner, this part of the southeast could be where the entire election is won or lost.
Sipping coffee in his tour bus, just as the Senate prepared to make its historic impeachment vote, Pence cut a relaxed figure.
He joked about the Democrats’ disastrous caucus in Iowa two days earlier — “Are these the same people that did the Obamacare website?” — and shrugged off the likely effect of impeachment.
“People have lives to lead,” he said. “I think it’s backfired and will continue to backfire on the Democrats.”
Winning Pennsylvania for a second time means hammering the same themes that worked in 2016, this time bolstered with a record of cutting regulation and taxes and creating prosperity and opportunity.
“It’s a jobs message,” he said. “I think the trade message really resonated, and the president’s commitment to end the war on coal resonated big.”
Ask pro-Trump diner customers which of the Democratic contenders they fear, and the answer is often none of them. They are moving too far to the left.
Ask again, and one name comes up: Michael Bloomberg. It is mostly about his money, but, for some, it is that he is seen as more of a centrist than the others.
“He’s moderate. He’s not a nut case,” is how Paul Collura, 74, a retired radiologist, put it. “He has a record of running New York City.”
Pence stopped by his table, posing for a photograph and autographing a news clipping about the State of the Union address. After more than 30 minutes, and, making sure he had stopped by every single booth, Pence was back on his bus for the next event.
