We try to practice serious journalism at the PUP, but sometimes the gods of this profession present us with a situation so filled with what scribes like to call “symbolism” that all of our high-mindedness falls away and we write like 1950s-era screenwriters for Disney.
Take Sunday, for example. The Air Force Two plane carrying Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff landed at Pittsburgh International Airport in a driving rain, and as the plane approached the open end of a hangar where several hundred supporters waited, a heavy mist blew over the crowd, dampening all those blue Harris/Walz signs.
Photographers and TV crews on a riser behind the crowd groaned and cast worried glances at their exposed gear. The rain had arrived without warning. Our first thought was, “Is this an omen?” But it was an easy idea to squash. Serious journalists don’t fall for such literary rubbish.
But then the rain stopped, and, within minutes, the dark and ominous sky turned blue. White puffy clouds arrived from somewhere and then the sun broke through. At that moment, Harris and Emhoff emerged from the plane and waved to cheers. Such things don’t happen in real life, right? In the animated movies we watched as kids, this is the time when singing animals emerge from the forest and birds flutter about happily.
But nothing in life is as it seems, these days. At least in politics and journalism. So we’re going with the flow. Consider the above paragraphs the “lede” to this story.
Sunday’s event at the airport was the launching point for a Harris/Walz bus tour preceding the Democratic National Convention, which begins Monday evening in Chicago. Neither Harris nor her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who was waiting with his wife, Gwen, spoke. After Harris emerged from the plane, she and Walz greeted a line of local and state political leaders — U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, U.S. Reps. Summer Lee and Chris Deluzio, and Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato — and walked along a rope line, shaking hands with supporters in the crowd. Those of us on a riser in the back saw only a sea of cellphones held up by supporters trying to get pictures.
We did see, however, some of the exuberance of people talking about the Harris campaign. Before the event got started, we caught up with Natalya Rodriguez, 34. She was easy to spot — she wore a blue T-shirt with a message: “More scrubs, less suits.” We saw this same message last week, at a rally of union nurses at AHN West Penn Hospital. Rodriguez, a union nurse at Allegheny General Hospital, missed that rally — she was on vacation — but watched it on Facebook and cheered for her union siblings.
What does she like about Harris? Well, she likes the vice president’s support for organized labor, but first she mentioned something a bit more personal.
“I never thought in my lifetime that I would ever look at a candidate that could be president that looked like me — a person of color, a woman — and even have the possibility of winning,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez grew up in a union family. Her grandfather was a member of a laborers union, and she remembers his friends in the union visiting the family’s house and discussing issues of the day.
She’s now a member of SEIU Healthcare.
“My first work with the union was during contract negotiations,” she said. “I emceed a rally and felt the energy, saw the diversity and the support. I was blown away by it. Even when I talk about it, it gives me goosebumps. It’s a good feeling to have. I want to do this all of the time — get people together and help them better their lives through their own voices.”
“The only way you can make real changes is if you stand together,” she added. “And the union gives you that ability.”
Ed Freel, 76, is a Vietnam veteran who used to be a Republican, but he wore a Harris T-shirt to the rally. The GOP lost his support, he said, when it embraced former President Donald Trump a decade ago. On Sunday, he was angry about a statement made last week by the current Republican presidential nominee.
During a speech at his New Jersey golf club, Trump said the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is given to civilians, “is actually much better” than the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military decoration, because service members so honored are “either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead.”
“I was offended by that,” Freel said. “He not only said it, he then doubled down on it. Then [Trump running mate Sen. JD] Vance supported him. And Vance is a Marine veteran from the Iraq War. That’s a message I can’t get out of my head, something that just sticks with you as a veteran.”
Christine Simcic, 56, and daughter Haley, 22, stood near the camera riser while an ABBA tune thumped over the speakers. (Other music selections included songs by Wiz Khalifa — “Black and Yellow,” of course — TLC, Queen, the Bee Gees, Montell Jordan.)
This was Haley’s first political rally.
“I’m so glad to see the people coming together, the energy,” she said. “I’m so done with the orange guy. It’s been 10 years.”
Christine said she’s concerned about several issues, among them the right to choose, education and health care. She said the Harris campaign “is bringing hope; we have hope now.”
Pete Schmidt, Western Pennsylvania district leader for 32BJ SEIU, said he’s noticed the difference in enthusiasm.
“There is an energy that wasn’t necessarily there a month ago,” he said. “They’re energized about our option now.”
There’s a lot at stake in this election, he said, especially for organized labor. Trump appointments to the National Labor Relations Board and to the judiciary have a very real impact on workers, he said.
“We have seen what a Trump presidency has done,” he said. “He stacked the Supreme Court to get the votes he needed for the Janus case.”
In Janus v. AFSCME, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority issued a sweeping ruling that undermined unions representing public sector employees — including teachers, firefighters and police officers. The court struck down state laws that allow public sector unions to charge nonunion members for fees covering their portion of the cost of collective bargaining and job protections.
“That affected about half of our members here in southwestern Pennsylvania,” Schmidt said. “We know what we’re in store for here. We don’t need that.”
For the past month or so, he and other union leaders have been discussing with members the issues they care most about — the economy, health care, affordable housing — “and then we match that with the candidate who will actually address those issues.”
The motorcade of two buses with press vans left at 1:46 p.m., headed for Chicago, where on Thursday, Harris is to formally accept the party’s nomination for president.
But first she and Walz and their spouses had some campaigning to do.
Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, disembark from Air Force Two. (Alexandra Wimley/Pittsburgh Union Progress photos) 
Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic presidential and vice-presidential candidates, greet each other as they arrive at the hangar. 
A young supporter uses an adult’s shoulders to take a photo as Air Force Two taxis to the hangar. 
Pennsylvania’s U.S. Sen. Bob Casey greets Vice President Kamala Harris. 
U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, D-Swissvale, greets Vice President Kamala Harris. 
Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato greets Vice President Kamala Harris. 
Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz wave to supporters. 
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz talks with supporters. 
A supporter talks with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, after he arrived at the Pittsburgh International Airport in Moon. (Alexandra Wimley/Pittsburgh Union Progress) 
A crowd of supporters wave signs and cheer after Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz boarded a bus after arriving at Pittsburgh International Airport in Moon.
According to press pool reports, by USA Today White House correspondent Francesca Chambers, the Harris/Walz motorcade arrived at the Democrats’ Beaver Field Office in Rochester, Pennsylvania, at 2:25 p.m. to more chants — “We’re not going back,” “We won’t go back” — from supporters holding the blue signs.
Harris spoke to a phone bank volunteer and, on another volunteer’s cellphone, talked to a person she referred to as “Hannah,” saying, “How are you doing? … I love Erie. At some point we’ll get to Erie.”
Harris walked around the table to take a seat and continue the conversation. “Tell me about you,” she said. “What issues are you thinking about working on?” At times she said “Mhmm” and “Right” and then said, “Well, you know I started my career at the local level … You’re there on the ground, you develop those relationships” and you have to be “responsive” to people’s needs on the ground.
At another point Harris said, “We are all in this together … 79 days, Hannah.”
Walz was on another call across the table and told the person to whom he was speaking of Harris, “She’s sitting right across from me. I’ll pass that on.”
After he hung up, Walz said, “What a nice person. She’s excited” for the Dem duo, whom he’d described on the phone as “happy warriors.”
Emhoff also took a call and spoke to a voter, and Gwen Walz was also in the room.
In the lead-up to Harris speaking outside that building in a tent, organizers played Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours,” an Obama campaign favorite.
Next stops included one at Aliquippa High School football practice, where Tim Walz, a former high school assistant football coach, was introduced by Emhoff, who was introduced by Steelers Hall of Famer Jerome “The Bus” Bettis, who was part of the entourage. Also present: Franco Dokmanovich “Dok” Harris, the son of the late Steelers Hall of Fame player Franco Harris.
Walz said he is “privileged to be on this team” and while he’s a governor now, for years it was football practice he looked forward to.
He told the team, all taking a knee, “[I] remember every single call” during the first state football championship.
He said politics is similar to football. It’s about dignity, and everyone is in it together, win or lose.
Harris was up next. She said she’d been reading about them all and how they work as a team. “We applaud your ambition. You want to compete. And you want to win.
“You all are the future of our country,” she said.
She said they were all born leaders, who have already chosen that path for themselves. “It’s not easy being a role model. Welcome to the role model club.”
As press was led away, Walz got into a very specific discussion with the team about their offense, asking where their linebackers were.
Later, on the way back to the airport for Harris and Walz to fly to Chicago, the entourage stopped in Moon for snacks at a Sheetz.
In addition to the press pool reporter, USA Today White House correspondent Francesca Chambers, The Union Progress’ Bob Batz Jr. contributed.
Steve is a photojournalist and writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he is currently on strike and working as a Union Progress co-editor. Reach him at smellon@unionprogress.com.