‘Time to get our country back’: Gov. Shapiro makes final pitch for Democrats in Bucks County as Election Day draws near

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Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat running for reelection, is concluding a 10-day campaign bus tour in the Philadelphia area.

Shapiro made a stop in Doylestown on Saturday, telling a crowd of a few hundred supporters it was “good to be back here in Bucks County.”

“I could not be more thankful to Bucks County for all you have done for me over many years, given me the opportunity to serve as your governor and get stuff done,” he said.

In Doylestown, Shapiro never mentioned his own challenger, Republican state Treasurer Stacy Garrity, and barely mentioned the governor’s race but focused his speech and efforts on downballot candidates, such as Bucks County Commissioner Bob Harvie, who is running for Congress against five-term incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick.

“If you elect Bob Harvie, you quite literally will be the county that decides who will be in charge of the Congress of the United States,” Shapiro said. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want a rubber stamp for Donald Trump. I want a check on Donald Trump.”

Chris Borick, a professor of political science and director of the Lehigh Opinion Observatory, told WHYY News that Fitzpatrick’s efforts to position himself as a moderate Republican independent of President Donald Trump make him a barometer of the strong headwinds facing Republicans this election cycle.

“If on Election Day he hasn’t survived the cycle, it’s going to be an epically bad cycle for Republicans,” Borick said.

Harvie, a former history teacher, recounted the story of Gen. George Washington’s crossing of the icy Delaware River in 1776, a moment celebrated as one of the most daring and logistically “impossible” maneuvers of the Revolutionary War. Harvie said it took cooperation among the soldiers.

“That is what it means to be an American,” he said. “That is what it means to be a patriot, is to believe not just in the nation or the flag, but in each other, that if we work together, there is nothing we cannot do. And that is certainly not what we hear from Donald Trump or Brian Fitzpatrick.”

State Sen. Steve Santarsiero, state Rep. Tim Brennan, Bucks County Sheriff Danny Ceisler and Chair of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party Eugene DePasquale also spoke at the rally.