Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned through Pennsylvania’s conservative interior on Friday, aiming to shave a few percentage points off former President Donald J. Trump’s winning margins in parts of the state where he remains popular.

At a campaign rally in Wilkes-Barre, the largest city in a county where Mr. Trump won 57 percent of the vote in 2020, Ms. Harris said she would remove “unnecessary degree requirements” for some federal jobs, a pitch to Mr. Trump’s base of voters without a college education in a part of the state where he expects to perform well.

Ms. Harris also emphasized her work in California prosecuting Mexican drug cartels, and said as president she would continue to go after them “for pushing poisons like fentanyl on our children.”

The vice president’s Trump-country pitch amounted to a continuation of her attempt to appeal to moderate and right-leaning voters that began at the Democratic National Convention last month and continued during Tuesday’s debate with the former president.

No longer burdened by the apathy among elements of the Democratic base that characterized President Biden’s re-election campaign, Ms. Harris has begun trying to cut into Mr. Trump’s margin among Republicans. In her remarks on Friday, she reminded the crowd that she had endorsements from some 200 officials who had worked in recent Republican presidential administrations and campaigns.

But her most direct appeal came on policy.

“For far too long our nation has encouraged only one path to success, a four-year college degree,” Ms. Harris said. “Our nation needs to recognize the value of other paths, additional paths such as apprenticeships and technical programs. So as president, I will get rid of the unnecessary degree requirements for federal jobs, to increase jobs for folks without a four-year degree, understanding that requiring a certain degree does not necessarily talk about one’s skills. And I will challenge the private sector to do the same.”