‘In no way do I want anyone to feel comfortable’: Sharif Street on the election’s final push

Conflicting polls that can whipsaw voter sentiment multiple times daily, mushrooming election integrity conspiracy theories, conflicting judicial rulings on mail-in ballots – add in the perennial “Dems in Disarray” headlines and it’s easy to understand why Pennsylvania Democratic Party Chair and state Sen. Sharif Street would be stressed.

Except he isn’t. Despite being at ground zero of the most fiercely fought-over battleground state, the soft-spoken Philadelphia Democratic leader never wavered from a sense of calm focus and determination during an interview that covered what his team is – and isn’t – doing to help Democrats win in the commonwealth, from the top to the bottom of the ticket. 

This is the first of a two-part series of conversations with the respective heads of the state political parties. To read our interview with PA GOP Chair Lawrence Tabas, click here. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

City & State: What is the Pennsylvania Democratic Party doing to get Democratic candidates elected, and how do those efforts work with the Democratic National Committee, for example?

Sharif Street: The way that legal political structures work, the coordinated campaign is run through, by, with and in coordination with the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. In other words, the DNC doesn’t act in the state outside of us for legal, financial and functional reasons. We’re the backbone and nucleus of not only the Harris campaign but the field operations for U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee and the House Democratic campaign committee. 

We’re the entity that can do the coordination: We have our 67 county parties, our 18,000 Democratic municipal-level committee people, our 389 Democratic state committee people, we have over 40,000 volunteers knocking doors – we have called hundreds of thousands of houses in live phone banks and sent out hundreds of thousands of text messages through the live texting program. We’re setting records in field organizing, with field offices open in over 50 counties. If we continue to work, there’s a real opportunity for us to make history and elect Kamala Harris President of the United States, to make sure Bob Casey's reelected, to make sure Democrats remain in control of the United States Senate, and to flip a couple of congressional seats. We feel really good about Janelle Stelson’s chances to beat Scott Perry. 

And I can say for the first time in probably longer than anybody can remember, there is a chance to flip the state Senate. I feel really, really good about what’s going on with state Rep. Patty Kim: I think she’s going to fill the state Senate seat being vacated by John DiSanto. We’re in the fight with Nicole Ruscitto in her race with GOP incumbent Devlin Robinson and look, Jim Wertz is making the race in Erie competitive. If we won all three of those races, then the chamber would be split between Democrats and Republicans, 25 to 25, and Austin Davis will vote us into the majority. Finally, we’re going to build on our state House majority. 

Any reason for that optimism? 

I think we’re outworking the Republicans. We have more field offices open, we’ve got a better ground game, we’ve got strong candidates – and I think we’re gonna be alright.

This is your first presidential election cycle as the chair of the state party. What’s being done differently and what’s being done the same as in previous cycles?

Look, every cycle is different. Kamala Harris is not Joe Biden. Joe Biden wasn’t Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. We’ve never had field offices open in this many counties. So that’s a change for the better. We have more volunteers recruiting. We’ve raised more money, we’ve knocked more doors, we sent out more live text messages. One thing I will say about 2016 – and it may sound a little critical – is I think we had to do better at reaching out to both rural Democrats who felt forgotten and urban Democrats who felt they were taken for granted. So we’re targeting both. I imagine whether it’s me or whoever’s running this party in 2028 wants to do a little bit better, no matter how many seats we win in 2024.

Give me some reasons why Harris supporters should feel optimistic – and why they should feel anxious. 

I want every Harris supporter to remain anxious and vigilant to the end of Election Day. We should not take this for granted. That being said, I believe we can win. 

I’ll tell you some things we can do with that nervous energy. You can make sure that you reach out to folks into your community. I keep hearing these national folks say that the election is going to come down to these undecided Black folks. Black folks ain’t undecided. They’re going to vote for Harris. The enthusiasm among African Americans is higher than we’ve seen in quite a while. And I’m not convinced that’s the only factor; we’ve got to make sure that blue-collar white folks in the middle of the state who voted for Barack Obama twice and then voted for Donald Trump –we’ve got to make sure those folks understand that Kamala Harris will speak to their issues in the way Barack Obama did; some of them did leave Donald Trump and they voted for Joe Biden in 2020. We need to make sure that we do everything we can to continue to work with and harness the energy of all women, especially those in the suburbs who are fired up angry about the Dobbs decision. We have to make sure that we speak to both the Jewish and Muslim communities, who are concerned about a whole host of issues, and we have to remind them that Donald Trump is the guy who tried to ban Muslims and said that people who were chanting “Jews will not replace us” were “good people.” People who chant, “Jews will not replace us,” are not good people. You can’t be a friend to the Jewish state if you hate the Jewish people or you are willing to say that people who do hate the Jewish people are good people. You cannot be a friend to Muslims abroad if you want to ban Muslims at home. 

We have focused on reaching out to Latino voters, Si, se puede – Yes, you can make a change – that is so important. We’ve got to make sure we continue to let folks know that we do care, that there is a difference between Republicans and Democrats. We are the Big Tent party, and we’ve got a lot of diverse constituencies that we’ve got to get engaged. We’ve got to make sure the Asian community understands that a man who stokes Asian hate – Trump refused to stop calling COVID-19 the China virus – that was a euphemism for his othering Asian Americans. We’ve got to make sure those people understand their votes and their participation in the process also matters.

In no way do I want anyone to feel comfortable. I think that nervous energy will help us.

When the post mortems on this campaign cycle are being written, what will be the key takeaways?

I hope people will say, God willing, we were successful because we engaged people from every walk of life, and we helped Pennsylvanians see what we had in common and not what divided us. 

If, God forbid, Donald Trump is successful, that would send a message to people that spreading division and hate, antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, anti-immigrant xenophobia, sexism, misogyny – all kinds of division – is the way to win, and it would inspire a new generation of haters. I pray that the post mortem is that love and joy conquer hate and anger, and that bringing people together from all walks of life – like Dick Cheney and AOC, Bernie Sanders and the Republican lieutenant governor in Georgia all supporting the same candidate – will triumph against hating people from all walks of life.