SCRANTON, Pa. — Anticipation is building as Scranton prepares to welcome President Joe Biden back to his hometown.
The president departed the Washington, D.C. area around 12:45 p.m. Tuesday and arrived at the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport around 1:20 p.m.
He was greeted on the tarmac by Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti.
The president made no remarks at the airport and his motorcade left the tarmac around 1:35 p.m. to head into downtown Scranton.
Several blocks surrounding the Scranton Cultural Center in downtown are blocked off to traffic.
Scranton police, state police, and DPW all have barriers set up, and the entire perimeter is blocked off for both foot traffic and vehicles.
North Washington Avenue, Mulberry Street, and Vine Street are all closed.
There are parking restrictions and barriers waiting to be set up over by the president's former home in the Green Ridge section of the city.
The Democratic president plans to use Scranton, a working-class city of roughly 75,000 people, as the backdrop for his pitch for higher taxes on the rich.
Biden plans to spend Tuesday night in Scranton before continuing to Pittsburgh on Wednesday morning. He then goes back to the White House, only to return to Pennsylvania on Thursday, this time visiting Philadelphia.
By the time the week is over, Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris will have visited the state eight times this year, reflecting its importance to Biden's hopes for a second term.
“It’s hard to draw paths to Biden winning the White House that don’t involve Pennsylvania," said Daniel Hopkins, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania. No Democrat has become president without winning the state since Harry Truman in 1948.
Scranton, the president's first destination, will blend the personal and the political for Biden. He grew up in a three-story colonial home in the Green Ridge neighborhood until his father struggled to find work and moved the family to Delaware when the future president was 10.
Although Delaware eventually became the launching pad for Biden's political career, he often returned to Scranton and grounded his autobiography in the city. He visited so often that he was sometimes called "Pennsylvania's third senator.”
Christopher Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion, described Scranton as a “mythical place in political culture," and it will provide a test for Biden's political appeal.
“It’s an area that, on paper, aligns perfectly with the populist gains of the Republican Party during the Trump era," Borick said.
However, Biden won the city and the surrounding county in 2020. If he's able to carry Scranton and similar places again this year, as well as limit Trump's winning margins in rural areas, Biden may be able to secure another victory in Pennsylvania.
“Everything is on the margin. Everything that we talk about are small shifts,” Borick said.