GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — Kamala Harris and Donald Trump sought support from Arab American voters as they campaigned in Michigan on Friday, trying to lock down support in a battleground state that could decide next month’s presidential election.
Trump was expected to visit a novel campaign office in Hamtramck, one of the only Muslim-majority cities in the country, and he will be joined there by Mayor Amer Ghalib, a Democrat who has endorsed him. Meanwhile, three city council members from the same city have endorsed Harris.
Michigan is one of three blue wall states, along with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, that will have a say in the election, and its diverse voting blocs are key to the state’s victory.
“It’s a presidential election. It shouldn’t be a walk in the park for anyone. “There are very important issues at play,” Harris said.
David Plouffe, a top campaign adviser to Harris, said on CNN Friday that he believes all swing states are still in play but that the key is to focus on voting blocs.
“We will treat each cohort as if they were swing voters,” he said. “We will fight for every vote.”
Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, is trying to capitalize on frustration with Harris over U.S. support for Israel’s offensive in Gaza and its invasion of Lebanon after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
His allies have held meetings for months with community leaders in Michigan, where there is a significant population of Arab Americans, particularly in and around Detroit.
In comments following the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, one of the instigators of the Oct. 7 attack, Harris said Friday his death offered an opportunity to stop the bloodshed in Gaza.
“My message remains: First, we must end this war,” she said Friday. “And I think what’s happened now, with the assassination of Sinwar, gives us an opportunity to end this war and bring the hostages home.”
But the Democrat was greeted by demonstrators protesting against US support of Israel in the conflict. During a closed-door meeting Thursday with University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee students, she was confronted with one based on a video posted on social media by a pro-Palestinian student group.
According to the video, Harris was telling students that she was interested in them when a protester interrupted her and said, “And in genocide, right? Billion dollar genocide?”
The protester was eventually escorted by university police while he continued recording.
At their first event of the day, hundreds of supporters gathered at Riverside Park in Grand Rapids on a carpet of fallen orange leaves under a cloudless sky. A phalanx of Democratic governors — Maura Healy of Massachusetts, Wes Moore of Maryland, Tony Evers of Wisconsin, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Kathy Hochul of New York — took the stage before Harris.
Whitmer criticized Trump, calling him “a petty man who tells dangerous lies, and he’s always looking for someone else to blame.”
Harris will travel alongside Lansing, where she will speak at a United Auto Workers union hall and highlight the White House’s track record in supporting domestic auto production. Their final event of the day is a rally in Oakland County, northwest of Detroit.
Trump, who has not publicly commented on Sinwar’s death, is hosting his own event in Oakland County on Friday afternoon before holding a rally in Detroit that evening.
His event in Detroit will be his first there since he insulted the city last week. While he warned what would happen if Harris was elected, he said that “our whole country is going to end up like Detroit.” The city spent years hemorrhaging residents and businesses, falling into deep financial trouble before settling in recovered again in recent years.
One challenge Harris faced in Michigan was union support. Although organized labor is traditionally a Democratic bloc, it has failed to attract some key supporters.
Whitmer, a co-chair of Harris’ campaign, said in an interview Thursday that they always expected “it would be a close election.”
“People say, ‘Oh, it’s so close.’ And I’m like, ‘Haven’t you listened for decades?'” Whitmer said. “Michigan is a divided state. And that’s why we don’t write off the reddest areas on a political map. We show up.”
Kent County, where Harris began her day Friday, has been Republican for many years and was won by Trump by 3% in 2016. But Biden won the county in 2020, and he has voted increasingly Democratic of behind schedule.
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Cappelletti reported from Lansing, Michigan. Associated Press writers Isabella Volmert in Grand Rapids, Colleen Long in Washington and Scott Bauer in Milwaukee contributed to this report.
