Pennsylvania Dems rip Harris campaign  just weeks before election: ‘AWOL,’ ‘Being out-messaged’

Democratic lawmakers, stakeholders and operatives in Pennsylvania are sounding the alarm about the Harris-Walz campaign operation in the commonwealth — as polls show a significant slump in enthusiasm for the party’s ticket compared to four years ago.

With fewer than three weeks remaining before election day, sources tell The Post and other outlets that the Democratic campaign is being “out-messaged” by Republicans as the two parties battle for the Keystone State’s 19 vital electoral votes.

One operative said Wednesday that the vice president and her allies are falling down on the job of reaching out to non-white voters, who in 2020 helped push President Biden over the top in his birth state.

“They could do a better job connecting with voters of color,” this person said.

“And I think that the reason they are struggling with that is … not tapping into our local elected officials — those trusted messengers at the bottom of the ticket — or in municipal roles such as the mayor.”

“Some of it is just basic political work that you expect on a campaign — like if you are in a Democratic state rep’s district, they are typically invited to the event,” the operative went on. “And there are a number of instances where that hasn’t happened.”

The chief scapegoat has been Nikki Lu, the Pennsylvania campaign manager for Harris-Walz.

“I have concerns about Nikki Lu,” Ryan Boyer, business manager for the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council labor consortium, told Politico. “I don’t think she understands Philadelphia.”

Other elected officials griped to the outlet anonymously that Lu had been “AWOL” and “empowers a culture” within the campaign that leaves them feeling ignored or disrespected.

Black and Latino Democratic leaders who met with the Harris camp in Philadelphia last month also expressed disappointment with the ground game, five sources told Politico, with one official saying “the party infrastructure is non-existent” to reach Hispanic and Asian voters.

Others like Democratic Easton Mayor Salvatore Panto Jr., the seat of swing Northampton County, have knocked their own party’s communication strategy.

“I think the Democrats are being out-messaged by the Republicans,” Panto told Fox News Monday. “In the one commercial where Kamala Harris is saying, ‘Well, that’s Bidenomics,’ I think that is hurting this because I think the Trump campaign has done a much better job of saying ‘things are really bad.’”

The campaign recently attempted to bolster morale by bringing on Paulette Aniskoff, Barack Obama’s Pennsylvania field director in 2008, as a senior adviser to bolster get-out-the-vote efforts

“I think that Nikki is not deserving of all of the blame, but at the end of the day, she is and has made herself the front of the campaign,” the Dem operative told The Post.. “At some point, the buck has to stop with you.”

In contrast to Lu, the person added, Aniskoff is seen as having a business-like approach and deep knowledge of the coalition that will be needed to win Pennsylvania.

Reached by The Post for comment Wednesday, Boyer restated some of his concerns about Lu by paraphrasing Tip O’Neill, the longtime Democratic House Speaker.

“Every campaign is local,” he said, “and you have to get hyper-local.

“At this point, we’re trying to find our voters and get them out to vote.”

Boyer walked back some of his complaints to Politico, however, saying that “the campaign heard the cries and they fixed it.”

Even when asked about the Teamsters and other unions declining to endorse Harris, Boyer replied, “I’m not worried,” ignoring internal surveys that have shown majorities of rank-and-file union members shifting toward the Republican ticket.

The RealClearPolitics polling average showed former President Donald Trump, 78, leading Vice President Kamala Harris, 59, by 0.3 percentage points as of Wednesday

“It’s within two points either way,” Boyer assessed. “That data is hyper-consistent with what we see on the ground — that it’s gonna be a tough race.”

Internal polls suggest an edge for Trump, with the 45th president besting his performances from 2016 and 2020 in swing states among independent, black and Hispanic voters, as well as voters ages 18 to 44 years old.

On Sunday, the Trump campaign voluntarily released its own polling that showed the former president up by double-digit percentage points among those voting groups.

Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have increased their visits to the must-win state — and spent hundreds of millions of dollars on ads.

“The vice president should move here at this point to camp out for the next three weeks,” prescribed the operative who spoke with The Post, only partly in jest.

The campaign has also engaged high-profile surrogates like former President Barack Obama and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro — even after Harris passed the latter over as her vice presidential pick.

Both Harris and Trump have stumped in northwestern Erie County, long considered a bellwether, but Democrats are mainly focused on ginning up support for Harris in deep-blue, urban and suburban counties like Bucks north of Philadelphia, where Harris appeared Wednesday.

But signs of desperation remain.

Last week, Obama disparaged the lack of “energy” for the Harris campaign among black male voters during a campaign stop in Pittsburgh

“Certainly, we have those concerns,” the operative admiited before citing mobilization efforts with black media outlets across the state and black surrogates like Democratic Lt. Gov. Austin Davis.

“Our campaign is running the largest and most sophisticated operation in Pennsylvania history,” Harris national campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement to Politico. “We invested in targeted advertising to Black and Latino voters starting in August of 2023, and we have now spent more than any previous presidential campaign on outreach to these communities.”

Reps for the Harris campaign did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.