Progressive Rep. Ro Khanna tours steel and coal towns with an eye on higher office

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — Inside a hollowed-out former railcar wheel plant Friday, Rep. Ro Khanna gathered local political leaders, a powerful labor boss, environmentalists and “Made in America” advocates to help him roll out new legislation to construct modern iron and steel plants in deindustrialized, storied towns like this one.

The event capped one of the most stunning weeks in Democratic Party history — Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race and party stalwarts began rallying behind Vice President Kamala Harris — but Khanna made no mention of either during his 50-minute news conference.

Skipping over that tectonic shift is surprising, given that just days before, Khanna, one of the leading progressive voices in Congress, was a Biden-Harris surrogate who served on the campaign’s national advisory board. Now, he’s a Harris campaign surrogate.

But in an interview after the event, Khanna explained that some policies, like saving and bringing back steel manufacturing jobs — especially here in the heart of Trump country — need to be bipartisan, free of the sniping and finger-pointing that defines today’s politics. He joined three Zooms in support of Harris this past week and will host plenty of other Harris campaign events, he said, including in early September in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where Khanna was raised.

“We had a lot of Republicans working on the legislation ... and I didn’t want to politicize this,” Khanna said at a table in a back room of the Boulevard Grill, where he hosted a separate roundtable with steelworkers after the news conference. “This is something that is about good jobs and national security and modern steel, and we’re going to need the country to come together to pass it. And I want it to pass with