Minnesota’s first lady Gwen Walz speaks Tuesday at the Blair County Harris-Walz campaign headquarters in the Gables building. Mirror photo by William Kibler

Mickey Port has been voting since John Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon in 1960, and she’s never been as fearful of the potential consequences of a presidential election until now, three weeks short of Trump vs. Harris on Nov. 5, Port said Tuesday.

Port spoke with the Mirror following a mini-rally and volunteer appreciation event featuring would-be Democratic Second Lady Gwen Walz in Altoona.

At Blair County’s Harris-Walz campaign headquarters in the Gables building, Port, other Harris supporters and Walz herself drew a contrast between a Democratic message they call inclusive and inviting and a Republican message they call divisive and mean-spirited.

Since coming on the political scene in 2016, Donald Trump has been “pitting neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend,” said Walz, who spoke in a space the size of a small classroom to about 20 supporters, along with a handful of campaign staffers, reporters and members of the Secret Service.

Based on Trump’s agenda, “a few get ahead,” Walz said. “The rest are left behind.”

“Kamala (Harris) and Tim (her husband) have a different vision,” Walz said. “It’s a future where everyone is included.”

Everyone means everyone, she added for emphasis.

Her mostly low-key presentation was calming, in contrast to Trump’s “bombastic” rallies designed to raise attendees’ blood pressure and stoke their anger, Port said afterward.

“We’re all in this together,” is the Harris-Walz message, in contrast to Trump’s “fearmongering,” said Laura Burke, Blair County’s Democratic commissioner.

The Democratic ticket is trying to unify, while the Republicans are doing the opposite, with their leader spewing “incoherent, rambling s–t,” said Carol Taylor, who has run and lost races for state senator and county commissioner.

“To call Republicans mean-spirited is (speaking) with a broad brush, and it’s not characteristic of myself as a Republican or the Republicans I know, by and large,” said Blair County Republican Chairman Jim Foreman, contacted by phone after the event.

As for Trump, his personality has been evident to everyone since he came down the golden escalator in his New York City building to announce his first candidacy in 2016, Foreman said.

“Trump is Trump,” he said. “His own unapologetic (self).”

For the upcoming election, most Republicans are focused on policy: international affairs, the economy and the border, primarily, Foreman said.

“If all those things were in good places, we (could) talk about nuanced things (like) personality, presentation, style, tone and rhetoric,” he said. “But what is in front of us is voting for president — not a prom queen.”

With the race a dead heat, Democrats are “fired up” to do what they can to help, said Blair County Democratic Chairwoman Gillian Kratzer.

Burke is “energized.”

Even some local Republicans have come into the Democratic campaign office for yard signs and to volunteer, Kratzer said.

They say “they can’t take it anymore,” she said. By “it,” of course, she means Trump, she said.

For Democrats, it won’t be like 2016, when Trump’s victory against Hillary Clinton was a shocker, according to Kratzer.

That election “probably taught us all a very hard lesson,” Kratzer said. “It’s good for people to not take for granted the outcome.”

Asked whether Trump’s adversarial approach to politics has forced Democrats to adopt similar methods, Burke and Taylor demurred.

It’s true Walz called for her supporters to fight, echoing Trump’s call to his supporters after the assasination attempt during the summer, Burke conceded.

But Democrats are “fighting for all of us,” she said. And fighting for something positive, she added.

By contrast, Republicans are fighting for a subset of people in the U.S. — and “fighting against something,” she said.

In Pennsylvania, campaign workers are currently “carrying the weight of the world,” Walz said, channeling the consensus opinion that the state is the key to victory on Nov. 5, because of its electoral vote total and because it’s so evenly divided.

Even so, the only thing to do is “do the work in front of you,” Walz said, echoing her mother’s advice, given at a time when that meant for Walz simply doing the dishes, she said.

For the volunteers, it means calling voters on the phone and knocking on doors, she said.

“It’s crunch time,” Walz said. “We can take a nap after the election.”

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.