Former Vice President Joe Biden brought his blue-collar appeal to a Democratic stronghold of Indiana on Friday, heaping praise on Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly as the kind of guy who keeps his word, puts country over party — and would have his back in a street fight.

Around the same time, current Vice President Mike Pence was rallying for Donnelly’s opponent, Mike Braun, in Indianapolis.
Biden told a crowd in the heavily industrial northwest corner of Indiana that “Joe is as good a man as I know,” adding that if they’d grown up in the same neighborhood they would’ve been friends.

“I’ll tell you why: I know that if I were coming through my neighborhood and I got jumped by four guys, even though ... it wouldn’t make a difference, Joe would jump in and help me,” Biden said.

For Donnelly, victory in a neck-and-neck race with the Republican businessman Braun requires a big turnout in the area, which draws more from the machine politics of nearby Chicago than the rural conservatism prevalent elsewhere in the state.

“Northwest Indiana is red meat for Joe Donnelly,” said Hammond Mayor Tom McDermott. “Eight out of 10 of those people that show up are going to vote for Joe Donnelly.”

With early voting starting in Indiana this week, Biden urged the crowd to turn out for Donnelly and bring their friends, saying “if there’s any time we needed character in the United States Senate, it’s now.”

Three hours south, Mike Pence — the state’s former governor — rallied GOP activists at a fundraising dinner with Braun and Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel in Indianapolis.