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Bob Harvie got the two biggest names Pennsylvania Democrats had left on Saturday. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Gov. Josh Shapiro came to Lower Bucks County to rally for his campaign against Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, 24 days out from an election the party has decided is worth real money.

The timing was not subtle. On Friday, the Cook Political Report moved PA-01 from Likely Republican to Lean Republican, one of 18 House races it shifted toward Democrats in a single update. That is one rung on a seven-point scale and it does not change the bottom line: Cook still gives Fitzpatrick the edge, pointing to his record of outrunning the top of the ticket in a district that has gone Democratic in each of the last three presidential elections. But the direction is what put Jeffries on a stage in Bucks County on a Saturday afternoon.

"It's not an accident that Hakeem Jeffries is here," Harvie told the crowd. "He knows what we're going to do in this district."

Harvie's own case leaned on the corruption argument he has run on all year. In his remarks, he called for overturning Citizens United, banning partisan gerrymandering and barring members of Congress, the executive and the judiciary from trading stocks while in office. Then he made the point that the seat is not the incumbent's to keep.

"This seat doesn't belong to Brian Fitzpatrick. This seat doesn't belong to the Republican Party. This seat doesn't belong to me. This seat belongs to you," he said.

Jeffries framed the race as a choice about Congress itself. "A vote for the current congressman is a vote for the status quo. It's a vote for more of the same. But a vote for Bob Harvie is a vote for dramatic change," he said, adding that Harvie would vote to make health care affordable and to make Congress "a check and balance on an out of control president."

Shapiro, who led his own Republican opponent by double digits in every public poll this year, went straight to the practical ask: electing Harvie would give Jeffries the Speaker's gavel. "We need Bob Harvie in Congress," he said.

Rep. Madeleine Dean offered the sharpest line of the afternoon. "I've spent 8 years working alongside Brian Fitzpatrick in Congress. He is no moderate," she said. "He is complicit in the grotesque chaos, corruption, and cruelty of this administration. It is time."

They were joined by state Democratic chair Eugene DePasquale, state Senate candidate and Bucks County Clerk of Courts Eileen Hartnett Albillar, and a crowd full of raised phones.

What the rally did not settle is the polling. House Majority PAC, a Democratic super PAC, put Harvie at 48 and Fitzpatrick at 49 in a poll conducted in late August, a statistical tie by that survey's own margin. Fitzpatrick's campaign answered with its own survey showing him up nine points, and Fitzpatrick has dismissed the polling entirely. "He's not. We feel very good about it," he told HuffPost.

The incumbent has spent the fall trying to define Harvie first. His ads and mailers accuse Harvie of being the subject of an FBI investigation. Harvie testified before a federal grand jury in 2021 as a witness in a case that produced no charges, and he has sued the pro-Fitzpatrick super PAC behind some of the ads for defamation. Polling in September found three quarters of voters had seen negative messaging about him.

Democrats are betting the closing weeks look different. The DCCC and an allied super PAC started spending millions against Fitzpatrick this month, the first time the national party has put money into this seat since 2020. Saturday was the visible half of that bet.

Election Day is Nov. 3.

Photo: Bob Harvie for Congress