United States Sens. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) spoke to college students in Philadelphia on Oct. 23 during a campaign stop focused on turning out young voters in the 2024 election.
The event, which took place at the TLO Event Complex on the edge of Temple University’s campus in North Philadelphia, hosted around 50 college students from schools in the city and its surrounding area — including Penn and Temple. Casey and Warnock urged attendees to continue to participate in grassroots campaigning and to encourage their friends to turn out to vote on Nov. 5.
“This effort to get out the vote is going to be led by your generation,” Casey said to the crowd. “Your fellow students … could determine the entire future of the country based on what we do between now and eight o’clock on Election Day.”
Warnock, who spoke before Casey, had a similar message.
“There’s never been any great change in our country without young people,” Warnock said. “We need your voice now more than ever.”
The crowd frequently broke into applause as the speakers cited the “basic rights” they considered to be at the heart of the 2024 election, including rights to voting, abortion, and labor organization.
Temple junior and Temple University Democrats President Lourdes Cardamone spoke first before introducing the senators.
“Our votes are our power,” she said during her introductory remarks. “They are how we express ourselves, how we carve out the future that we want to see as young people. We are fired up, we are passionate, we are opinionated, we are impatient, because it is our future and our lives that are on the line.”
The senators also stumped for Vice President Kamala Harris in her race against former President and 1968 Wharton graduate Donald Trump.
“There's no such thing as not voting. To not vote is to vote,” Warnock said after the event. “It pushes a dangerous man — Donald Trump — closer to the White House.”
According to Casey — who encouraged attendees not just to continue to canvass and attend rallies, but to also encourage other students to do the same — becoming civically engaged understates the role of America’s youth in the 2024 election.
“I think young people — whether they're on college campuses or otherwise — have an outsized role to play in this race,” he told The Daily Pennsylvanian after the event. “They might be the one demographic group that determines this election, and therefore the next 50 years … Wherever I go in the state, wherever young people are, you see that intensity and that enthusiasm to vote, and they know what the choice is.”
For both senators, the importance of voting among college students was the recurring message of the day.
“College students often think their vote doesn’t matter,” Temple junior and Temple University Democrats Secretary Jaiman Kondisetty told the DP. “But if we show up and show that we’re a valuable part of the electorate, politicians will work for us too.”
Penn and Philadelphia have experienced heightened political activity throughout the election season, as Philadelphia has hosted the presidential debate and several campaign events for both the Harris and Trump campaigns.
“We should be taking advantage of our location in Philadelphia in times like this, to get out there, get civically engaged,” College junior Asher Zemmel, who also attended the event, said. “We have the unique privilege of going to school here at a time like this.”
The campaign visit came just 13 days before Election Day, where Casey will face Republican Dave McCormick for one of Pennsylvania’s senate seats — a race that could help define the makeup of the Senate as the Democrats look to hold their slim majority. The Cook Political Report recently moved the race from its “lean Democrat” to its “toss up” category, with Casey’s small lead falling within the margin of error for polling.
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