The former chief White House speechwriter argued that Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ ongoing struggle with winning over Catholic voters may doom her chances of carrying the swing state of Pennsylvania.

In a Monday op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal, William McGurn called Pennsylvania the “most important” of the seven battleground states that will decide the outcome of next month’s election – an assessment shared by many other experts.

McGurn served as the White House Director of Speechwriting during the George W. Bush administration.

He noted that the most recent polling average from RealClearPolitics “shows Mr. Trump leads 48.3% to 47.9%” in the Keystone State. “Ms. Harris’s problem is that exit polls from 2020 show 30% of the state’s voters are Catholic.”

The speechwriter indicated that Harris’ history of hostility toward Catholics could be the deciding factor in determining which candidate wins Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes, and likely the presidency:

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As California’s attorney general, Ms. Harris signed several friend-of-the-court briefs opposing religious exemptions for private employers such as Hobby Lobby and religious nonprofits such as the Little Sisters of the Poor.

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But perhaps Ms. Harris’s most notorious Catholic moment came after she was elected senator. When Brian Buescher was nominated for a federal judgeship, she grilled him about his membership in the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic men’s fraternal organization.

“Although President John F. Kennedy was also a Knight, Ms. Harris treated the group as though it were the Ku Klux Klan,” McGurn stressed.

He pointed out that according to the Pew Research Center, the Biden-Harris ticket won the Catholic vote by a razor-thin one-point margin in 2020. However, Trump had bested Hillary Clinton among Catholics in his victory four years earlier.

“Today the landscape looks more like 2016 than 2020,” McGurn wrote, citing a recent Pew poll that showed “Ms. Harris trailing Mr. Trump among Catholics nationwide by 5 points, 47% to 52%,” putting the 2024 Democratic nominee “in Mrs. Clinton’s territory.”

“Mr. Biden may be the last of the big-time Democrats whose base was the white working class,” McGurn added. “But it confers a sensibility Ms. Harris is conspicuously lacking.”

Later in his op-ed, McGurn referred to an analysis piece by RealClearPennsylvania founding editor Charles McElwee about Harris’ prospects of carrying the Keystone State.

“As Democrats battle for the state with Kamala Harris as the nominee, their chances of winning in the region or performing well enough there to carry the state are looking considerably dicier,” McElwee wrote:

It’s not just the loss of Biden — an older, white, Catholic man with an affinity for the working class — from the top of the ticket that worries local Democrats. It’s the cultural dissonance with Harris, a Californian and woman of color who has spearheaded the party’s post-Dobbs abortion messaging. That profile makes her an awkward fit in a closely watched, economically hard-pressed working-class region that’s historically been a locus of anti-abortion activity.

McGurn noted that CatholicVote “is highlighting this dissonance” through its “ads, mailings and social-media posts,” as well as “hosting a conversation with” former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday.

Kennedy, a former Democrat and a Catholic, ended his candidacy and endorsed Trump in August.

The speechwriter concluded his op-ed with a quote from CatholicVote President Brian Burch.

“Mr. Kennedy is offering skeptical Democrats social permission to follow his example by leaving the Democratic Party and voting Republican,” Burch said. “Many Catholics in Pennsylvania are Democrats by tradition who might have voted for Joe Biden but have grown increasingly skeptical about their party under Kamala Harris.”

Readers with a Wall Street Journal subscription can find McGurn’s full op-ed here.

LifeNews Note: Joshua Mercer writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.