Harris and Trump's final push before Election Day brings them to the same patch of
UNB
Publish: 05 Nov 2024, 01:08 PM
ALLENTOWN, Pa. Nov 5 (AP/UNB) - Vice President Kamala Harris and former
President Donald Trump made their final pitches to voters Monday in the same
parts of Pennsylvania at roughly the same time, focusing on the state that
could make or break their chances during the last full day of the presidential
campaign.
In Pittsburgh, Trump
delivered what his campaign aides described as his closing argument after his
previous attempt - a mass rally at Madison Square Garden in New York -- was
derailed by crude and racist jokes. He has also veered off message with
falsehoods about voter fraud and invocations of violence.
"Over the past four
years, Americans have suffered one catastrophic failure, betrayal and
humiliation after another," said the Republican nominee, sounding raspy
yet energetic after speaking for hours each day.
"We do not have to
settle for weakness, incompetence, decline and decay," he went on.
"With your vote tomorrow, we can fix every single problem our country
faces and lead America, and indeed the while world, to new heights of
glory."
The crowd exploded in
cheers when the Republican nominee said the country should tell Harris,
"You're fired," his catchphrase from "The Apprentice," the
reality television show that made him a nationally recognized star.
Trump started Monday in
North Carolina and he's scheduled to hold his last rally of the election in
Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he concluded his 2016 and 2020 campaigns.
Harris, the Democratic
nominee, is spending all of Monday in Pennsylvania, and she was en route to
Pittsburgh while Trump was speaking there. She's holding her final rally in
Philadelphia later in the evening.
"We need everyone in
Pennsylvania to vote," she said during one of her campaign stops.
"You are going to make the difference in this election."
With 19 Electoral College
votes, the state is the biggest prize of any battleground. A Trump victory
there would puncture the Democrats' "blue wall" and make it harder
for Harris to win the necessary 270 votes.
"If we win
Pennsylvania, we win the whole ball of wax," Trump said during an event in
Reading, in the state's southeast corner.
Both candidates visited the
area, which is home to thousands of Latinos, including a sizable Puerto Rican
population. Harris and her allies have repeatedly hit Trump for a comedian's
dig at Puerto Rico during the former president's marquee Madison Square Garden
event. The comedian, Tony Hinchcliffe, referred to Puerto Rico as a "floating
island of garbage."
"It was absurd,"
said German Vega, a Dominican American who lives in Reading and became a U.S.
citizen in 2015. "It bothered so many people - even many Republicans. It
wasn't right, and I feel that Trump should have apologized to Latinos."
But Emilio Feliciano, 43,
waited outside Reading's Santander Arena for a chance to take a photo of
Trump's motorcade. He dismissed the comments about Puerto Rico despite his
family being Puerto Rican, saying he cares about the economy and that's why he
will vote for Trump.
"Is the border going
to be safe? Are you going to keep crime down? That's what I care about,"
he said.
Harris told the crowd,
"I stand here proud of my long-standing commitment to Puerto Rico and her
people."
"And I will be a president
for all Americans," she said, adding that "momentum is on our side.
Can you feel it?"
Trump, meanwhile, stuck to
talking about his proposed crackdown on immigration. He called to the stage
Patty Morin, the mother of 37-year-old Rachel Morin, who was found dead a day
after she went missing during a trip to go hiking. Officials say the suspect in
her death, Victor Antonio Martinez Hernandez, entered the U.S. illegally after
allegedly killing a woman in his home country of El Salvador.
About 77 million Americans
have voted early. A victory by either side would be unprecedented.
Trump winning would make
him the first incoming president to have been indicted and convicted of a
felony, after his hush-money trial in New York. He will gain the power to end
other federal investigations pending against him. Trump would also become only
the second president in history to win nonconsecutive White House terms, after
Grover Cleveland in the late 19th century.
Harris is vying to become the
first woman, first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to reach
the Oval Office - four years after she broke the same barriers in national
office by becoming President Joe Biden's second in command.
Heading into Monday, Harris
has mostly stopped mentioning Trump by name, calling him instead "the
other guy." She is promising to solve problems and seek consensus.
Harris campaign chair Jen
O'Malley Dillon said on a call with reporters that not saying Trump's name was
deliberate because voters "want to see in their leader an optimistic,
hopeful, patriotic vision for the future."
Harris also offered some
insights into her personal formation as a politician that she doesn't often
divulge. In Scranton, she talked about once being a longshot while running for
San Francisco district attorney in 2002 and how she "used to campaign with
my ironing board."
"I'd walk to the front
of the grocery store, outside, and I would stand up my ironing board because,
you see, an ironing board makes a really great standing desk," the vice
president said, recalling how she would tape her posters to the outside of the
board, fill the top with flyers and "require people to talk to me as they
walked in and out."
In Allentown, Harris
rallied with rapper Fat Joe. She then made her own visit to Reading after
Trump's rally had concluded, visiting Old San Juan Cafe, a Puerto Rican
restaurant, with Ocasio-Cortez. Both Fat Joe, whose real name is Joseph
Cartagena, and Ocasio-Cortez are of Puerto Rican heritage.
Supporters chanted "Si
se puede" and "Kamala" as the vice president's motorcade pulled
up. Once inside, Harris chatted with some diners, even mixing in
"Gracias" and a few Spanish words. The vice president later ordered
cassava, yellow rice and pork, saying, "I'm very hungry" as she noted
that she's been too busy campaigning to find time for many meals.
Harris did some of her own
canvassing afterward, stopping at two homes in Reading while flanked by
campaign volunteers.
"It's the day before
the election and I just wanted to come by and say I hope to earn your
vote," she said at one house.
The woman replied,
"You already got my vote" and said her husband would be casting his
ballot the next day.
Standing in line for
Harris' Allentown rally, 54-year-old Ron Kessler, an Air Force veteran and
Republican-turned-Democrat, said he planned to vote for just the second time in
his life. Kessler said that, for a long time, he didn't vote, thinking the
country "would vote for the correct candidate."
But "now that I'm
older and much more wiser, I believe it's important, it's my civic duty. And it's
important that I vote for myself and I vote for the democracy and the
country."
____