Pennsylvania becomes 'center of the political universe'

The race for the White House floods the Keystone State

Philadelphia City Council majority leader Katherine Gilmore at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. (Photo Tom LoBianco/24sight News.)

CHICAGO _ For a state delegation losing its home-state hero, “Scranton Joe”, at the top of the Democratic ticket, Pennsylvania’s gathered delegates were quite ebullient all week in Chicago.

That’s probably because the race for the White House is fast focusing on the Keystone State — the biggest prize among the battleground states with just two or so months until the 2024 election wraps. And Pennsylvania’s politico’s are getting all the attention, and about to get even more.

Prime seating at the Republican and Democratic party conventions, big speaking slots, routine campaign stops and rallies from former president Donald Trump, his running mate Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and the presidential debate of the reshaped race, set for Sept. 10 in Philadelphia.

And a big focus on the issues that matter most to them, from the urban cores of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia across the rural stretches and manufacturing towns which connect the massive state.

“Pennsylvania is the center of the political universe,” Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, a Philadelphia Democrat, told 24sight News Monday from the convention floor in Chicago.

In 2016, it was the biggest state in the Democrats’ Rust Belt “Blue Wall” to crack and break for Trump, helping to deliver him to the White House. Four years later, native son Joe Biden swung it back blue to win the White House. And now it is the subject of much political love and adulation, and campaign dollars because by most accounts it is, again, the keystone of any successful campaign for the White House.