Vice President Kamala Harris was in Massachusetts this weekend for her first fundraiser since Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid and endorsed her for president.
Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll shared photos on her social media showing the vice president's arrival Saturday afternoon, saying it's always an honor to greet Harris on the tarmac.
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"Welcome back to Massachusetts, Vice President Harris," Driscoll wrote on X.
Harris was also in Massachusetts last Saturday where she headlined a high-profile political fundraiser in Provincetown on behalf of Biden's reelection campaign. The next day, of course, Biden announced he was dropping out of the race.
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Harris traveled to Pittsfield on Saturday where she was expected to raise more than $1.4 million, her campaign announced, from an audience of hundreds at the Colonial Theatre on South Street.
The City of Pittsfield had posted a traffic advisory on its Facebook page saying there was a special event occurring in the downtown area. Drivers were told to expect delays and consider alternate routes, as parking restrictions were in place.
With supporters singing in the streets and police closing down roads, the vice president’s campaign fundraiser looked more like a parade from the outside.
Tickets to the Colonial Theatre were completely sold out.
"I’m here because my grandfather had an extra ticket and he invited me," said Connecticut voter Jennifer Croughwell.
“My son works at Williams College and he got me a ticket for my birthday,” said Cheshire resident Deborah Tenczar.
Hundreds of people lined South Street with signs in hand just to get a glimpse of Harris on Saturday.
“We love to see a woman president, a Black woman president,” said Colby Lederman, a Pittsfield resident.
“People are like, 'women can’t be president because they experience emotion,' and I think that’s why she should be president because she’s a human being,” said Boston resident Jaelyn Carr.
Harris supporters were briefly interrupted by a Palestinian protest, but they didn’t let them rain on the motorcade.
“I think it’s just history in the making, what she stands for, she’s a class act,” said Raya Stockton, another Pittsfield resident.
“And it’s good for my daughters to see that they can be whatever they want to be and I like that," said Tina Maria Smith, who lives in Pittsfield.
Inside the theater, Harris told an excited group of supporters that she entered the race as an “underdog,” while expressing confidence that her surging campaign could defeat Trump.
“I will fight to move our nation forward,” Harris said. “Donald Trump intends to take our country backwards.”
Harris also poked at Trump, and his running mate Sen. JD Vance, for lobbing peculiar attacks at her and other Democrats. The vice president appeared to be alluding to a 2021 interview with Vance in which he slammed some prominent Democrats without biological children, including Harris, as “childless cat ladies” with “no direct stake” in America.
“You may have noticed Donald Trump has been resorting to some wild lies about my record and some of what he and his running mate are saying, it is just plain weird,” Harris said. “I mean that's the box you put that in, right?”
Harris' branding the Republican ticket as “weird” appears to be part of a concerted effort by her campaign to spotlight some of Trump and Vance's rhetoric as questionable. Earlier this week, the Harris campaign on the social media site X called Vance “weird and creepy” for some of his stances on women's reproductive rights. Trump, meanwhile, has raised the fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter from the film “Silence of the Lambs” in stump speeches.
“These guys are just weird,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat who is on Harris' shortlist for vice president, said in an MSNBC interview earlier this week. “They’re running for He-man women-haters club or something.”
Supporters for the fundraiser included musician James Taylor and many of the state's Democratic heavyweights, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, former Gov. Deval Patrick and Rep. Richie Neal.
Harris took in more than $100 million in donations in the first 48 hours after Biden quit the race, a presidential record, and aides said she has continued to raise money at a steady clip.
“This is a people-powered campaign,” Harris said. “And we have momentum.”
Harris, a former prosecutor in her home state of California, also derided Trump for his legal troubles. She noted his recent conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records in New York, a jury finding the former president of being liable for sexual abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in 1996, and a $25 million settlement paid to attendees of the now-defunct real estate seminar called Trump University.
“I've been dealing with people like him my entire career,” Harris said. She added, “So in this campaign, and I say in all seriousness, I will proudly put my record against his any day.”
Harris began her remarks with praise for Biden, who opted to end his reelection bid and endorse Harris last weekend after his campaign fell into a tailspin following his disastrous June 27 debate performance against Trump.
She called Biden’s legacy of accomplishment over the past three and a half years “unmatched in modern history.”
Trump denigrated Harris as a “radical left lunatic” who wants to defund the police during a keynote address at a bitcoin conference in Nashville on Saturday.
He said she was worse than Biden but was probably his second preference for a candidate to run against after Biden.
Trump told the crowd of bitcoin supporters that he would embrace the cryptocurrency more than the Biden-Harris administration has and vowed to “replace the Biden-Harris economic stagnation” with an economic boom.
The vice president told supporters at her Massachusetts fundraiser that her economic agenda would sharply contrast with Trump's, who she claimed is squarely focused on lowering tax rates for wealthy Americans and improving the bottom lines of corporations.
“Building up the middle class will be the defining goal of my presidency,” Harris said. She added, “Let us make no mistake, this campaign is not just about us versus Donald Trump. Our campaign has always been about two very different visions for our nation.”
The vice president's visit to the Bay State comes the day after former President Barack Obama endorsed Harris for president, just days after she launched her campaign following President Joe Biden's withdrawal from the race.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
