PITTSBURGH, PA. – As Governor Tim Walz, a former Minnesota state football championship coach, takes the field to speak at a televised, invite-only event at an Aliquippa football stadium, he can’t contain his joy at being there. The battered blue-collar team is the only program in America that has produced three Hall of Famers and five state champions.
“This is (a) pretty sacred place, people in Minnesota know about this place,” says Walz. “We know about this team. We know about the people you produce. Not just NFL players, but men of character, who come out of this program.”
Standing beside him, nodding, is Hall of Fame Steelers legend Jerome Bettis aka “the Bus.”
In 2004, Bettis, the son of blue collars workers, donated to George W. Bush. Then, in 2008, he led Barack Obama on a tour of the Braddock Steel Works during the election.
However, since then, Bettis has largely remained out of politics until Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, which he publicly endorsed to much fanfare at rallies in the Pittsburgh region on Sunday.
“It bodes well for the middle class that you have a voice like hers,” Bettis told supporters at a rally earlier in the day. “I like the lineup they have.”
In many ways, Bettis’ politics represents those of many in Western Pennsylvania, swinging between political parties and being inactive over the past two decades. New polling shows that many Pennsylvania voters have returned to the Democratic Party just as Jerome Bettis did.
According to a new poll released by Emerson College, while Trump was leading among union voters by a margin of 50% to 45% in July, the trend has now reversed dramatically, with Kamala Harris leading among union voters by a whopping margin of 56.8% to 42%.
This is part of a larger trend where union voters are attracted to the Kamala Harris and Tim Walz ticket. Walz, himself, was a member of a teachers’ union for 24 years, something he brings up regularly in media appearances.
In her campaign stop in Aliquippa alongside Walz and Bettis, Vice President Kamala Harris says people are flocking towards their campaign because of the message of inclusivity, something which unions represent for many in a blue collar Rust Belt region like Pittsburgh.
“Over the last several years, there’s been this kind of perversion that has taken place, I think, which is to suggest that the measure of the strength of a leader is based on who you beat down when,” Harris said on Sunday. “What we know is the real and true measure of the strength of a leader is based on who you lift up.”
Union leaders said the message resonates with their membership, leading to a surge of support among union voters for their ticket.
“Walz and Harris are about freedom—the freedom to join a union, to thrive in the economy, to make our own healthcare decisions, to be free from gun violence,” says American Federation of Teachers Union President Randi Weingarten, who pushed heavily for Walz’s selection. “They will stand up for the middle class against a weak, dark, dystopian alternative that wants to send us back to the past.”
Meanwhile, Trump is attacking unions, suggesting that it be legal for Elon Musk to fire unionized workers threatening to strike at Tesla.
Some union leaders like the UAW President Shawn Fain call him a “scab,” After Fain called him a “scab,” searches for what the word means skyrocketed on Google.
While it may seem that the wind is at the back of Democrats trying to win support from union members, Jerome Bettis isn’t so confident that it’s gonna be as easy to persuade folks to support Kamala as it was for him.
“It is going to be a tough race. Both sides are committed,” Bettis told supporters last Sunday. “Whoever has the ball last is probably going to win.”
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