DNC Night 2: Pa. Dems cast ceremonial votes for Harris, Malcolm Kenyatta speaks

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A couple weeks ago, delegates from around the country — including from Pennsylvania — voted virtually for Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee. The vote is an official party act normally performed during the convention. However, Democrats wanted to avoid going into the convention without a chosen candidate.

The last time the Democrats had an open, or “brokered,” convention was in 1968 — a condition that may have contributed to nominee Hubert Humphrey’s loss to Richard Nixon in the general election that year.

However, the Democratic National Committee wanted to give their 4,700 delegates an opportunity to “vote” for Kamala Harris at the convention and held a “celebratory” roll call on the floor.

The unofficial and ceremonial nature of the vote didn’t make it any less meaningful to Anne Wakabayashi, a political consultant and delegate from Philly.

“It was thrilling to have my vote counted for Kamala Harris as president of the United States,” she said. “As an AAPI [Asian American and Pacific Islander] woman, I’m particularly excited about making history in that way.”

Wakabayashi, who is married to her wife, with whom she is raising a stepson, said the election is personal.

“Another Trump presidency threatens my marriage,” she said. “It threatens my family. It threatens women’s rights, LGBT rights — it threatens every aspect of my life and threatens my kids’ schools. Everything is on the line here.”

Like other Pennsylvania delegates, Wakabayashi was elected delegate when Joe Biden was the nominee. Wakabayashi called it “selfless” for Biden to drop out of the race, and she was happy he immediately threw his support behind Harris.

As for Joe Biden’s big farewell, “I did feel a lot more emotional than I expected to. I think he’s had a very storied career, and I think that it was nice to be able to reflect on that.”

In another Pennsylvania highlight from the night, state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta spoke; it was his second time at a convention, the first being during the virtual event held during the COVID lockdown of 2020. Like Wakabayashi, he was also a delegate in 2016 and cast his vote for Clinton.

Kenyatta, who is running for state auditor general, spoke about Project 2025, which Democrats have been linking to Trump. The project is a 900-page plan developed by The Heritage Foundation and other prominent conservative think tanks and organizations. It outlines transition and recruitment plans designed to help ensure that Donald Trump is able to implement their agenda early in the transition should Trump be elected again.

Trump has denied knowing what is in it, but many of the authors are his former White House staffers.

“It is a radical plan to drag us backwards, bankrupt the middle class, and raise prices on working families like yours and mine,” Kenyatta told the crowd. He said that Project 2025 would increase taxes on families making more than $75,000 a year and stop Medicare from negotiating lower prescription drug prices.

Kenyatta also talked about how his grandmother, “a civil rights warrior,” called him to apologize that his generation had to fight “the same battles.”

“I said, ‘It’s okay, grandma, it’s just our turn,’” he recounted. “It’s just our turn to stand up for working people and to stand up for our nation’s promise. It’s just our turn to defend our rights and to ensure that democracy doesn’t die on our watch. It’s our turn to make history, my friends, by electing Kamala Harris as the next president of the United States of America.”

Editor’s note: A previous version of this story misstated the office for which state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta is running.