Philadelphia – first-term Republican Representative Welsey Hunt On Tuesday, he was far away from his home state of Texas.
military veterans and Donald Trump The surrogate was in Philadelphia for the opening of the former president’s first campaign office in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state in Trump’s 2024 reelection bid with President Biden.
“The man who is going to come back and save this country from crisis is Donald John Trump,” Hunt, a black Republican and a rising star in the GOP, told supporters and reporters gathered in a small office on the city’s northeast corner.
Though Trump’s fundraising has surged following his conviction last week in the first criminal prosecution of a current or former president, and though he holds a lead over Biden in the latest polling in most key swing states, Trump and the Republican National Committee currently face a major deficit compared to the Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee in terms of grassroots outreach and get-out-the-vote efforts.
Trump took the initiative to conduct early voting in a major reversal from the 2020 stance
Texas GOP Rep. Wesley Hunt announces the opening of the first Trump campaign office in Pennsylvania in Philadelphia on June 4, 2024. (Fox News – Paul Steinhauser)
Biden campaign He said he has hired more than 500 employees and opened more than 175 coordinated offices in war zone states.
and in PennsylvaniaIn what was one of six states Biden needed to win the White House in 2020, the president’s re-election campaign and the DNC and state party have 24 coordinated offices and hundreds of staffers.
Trump’s criminal conviction boosted his fundraising
The president, a Pennsylvania native, has made numerous official and campaign stops in the state — and particularly in Philadelphia — since launching his re-election campaign a year ago. And last week, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned together in Philadelphia for the first time.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris shake hands at a campaign event at Girard College in Philadelphia on Wednesday, May 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
“We still need to grow a little bit, but we’re going to be opening offices all across the state of Pennsylvania,” Vince Fenerty, the GOP chairman in Philadelphia and a ward leader for more than 50 years, told Fox News.
But Fenerty emphasized that “we have time. People are going to get on the Trump train and the engine will move fast.”
Fenerty said, “We did it in this part of the city because it’s ethnically and racially diverse, and that’s where we want to start because we want to build a broad coalition of all Americans in favor of President Trump.”
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Philadelphia is overwhelmingly blue. Four years ago, Biden won the vote over Trump, 81%-18%.
But Hunt emphasized in an interview with Fox News that “we’re boldly going where no Republican has gone in the last 20-30 years. We’re not trying to catch up. We’re actually fishing where the fish are.”
“We know we’re making some really good progress in the black community, and among Hispanic men and Hispanic women,” Hunt said. “So think — we’re not here to catch up, but to put the final nail in the coffin.”
Texas GOP Rep. Wesley Hunt announces the opening of the first Trump campaign office in Pennsylvania in Philadelphia on June 4, 2024. (Fox News – Paul Steinhauser)
Kellan White, a senior adviser for the Pennsylvania Democratic Coordinated Campaign, told Fox News that “Donald Trump is a convicted felon who couldn’t find a single real Pennsylvanian to headline his fake event.”
And he charged that Trump “has spent years running a racist campaign, implementing a racist agenda, and hurting communities of color at every opportunity as president. In contrast, Joe Biden is fighting and working for Pennsylvanians — especially Black Pennsylvanians — by limiting the price of insulin for seniors to $35 a month, creating over 500,000 good-paying jobs in Pennsylvania alone, and protecting our democracy and reproductive freedom.”
The office opening in Philadelphia came just hours after the Trump campaign and the RNC announced a new initiative called “Swamp the Vote USA,” a new effort to encourage Republicans to vote in person or by absentee ballot.
The Trump campaign says the new effort to promote early voting is part of the recently announced Trump Force 47 program, the campaign and the RNC’s neighbor-to-neighbor grassroots organizing program “that focuses on highly targeted voter organizing in key constituencies in battleground states and districts.”
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