Biden to Hold First Political Event Since Launching 2024 Campaign

President Joe Biden will hold his first political event since launching his reelection campaign on June 17 in Philadelphia, his campaign and White House announced Friday.

Biden, who officially launched his bid for a second term in April, will travel to Pennsylvania to rally with union workers, the campaign said, highlighting both the importance of the state to his 2024 plans and the way Biden plans to run on his economic record.

News of the event was first reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer.

A source familiar with the planning tells The Messenger the event will include more than 2000 union members. The source labeled it as a "historic coming together of labor" and will include both those unions who are part of AFL-CIO and others, including Service Employees International Union and National Education Association.

In addition to a campaign speech, the source said Biden will be meeting with union members. The event is set to take place at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

Biden has headlined fundraisers and traveled in his official White House capacity since announcing his campaign, but his reelection operation has opted for a slow rollout, planning to use their candidate’s work as president as a clear contrast to his 2024 Republican opponents fighting on the campaign trail.

A source close to the Biden campaign said that the event in Philadelphia does not mean the president's operation plans to go into all-out campaign mode anytime soon, but instead will pick one-off events that fit his message, like the economy and investing in workers.

Biden was born in Scranton and has visited Pennsylvania routinely during his presidency. His 2020 campaign was also based in Philadelphia and the state – which went for Donald Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020 – is a top-tier battleground in 2024.

“It’s good to be home,” Biden told an audience in his birthplace when he visited Scranton as president in 2021.

“When I ran for president, I came back to Scranton,” he said at the event. “I came back to Scranton. And I started here in Scranton. And I resolved to bring Scranton values to bear, to make a fundamental shift in how our economy works for working people, to build the economy from the ground up and the middle out, and not from the top down.”

Unions have also been an animating force in Biden’s political ascension.

“You’re a gigantic reason why I’m standing here,” Biden said last year when he spoke to the AFL-CIO convention in Philadelphia.