RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A presidential campaign that has lurched through a felony trial, the ouster of a sitting president and multiple assassination attempts is ending in a final push through a handful of states on the eve of Election Day.
Kamala Harris is spending Monday in Pennsylvania, whose 19 electoral votes represent the largest prize among the states expected to decide the Electoral College outcome. The vice president and Democratic nominee will visit working-class neighborhoods including Allentown and conclude with a nightly rally in Philadelphia featuring Lady Gaga and Oprah Winfrey.
Donald Trump kicked off four rallies in three states with an address to a cheering crowd in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he declared, “I’ve always made it with North Carolina.”
“It’s up to us to lose,” he said.
Trump spoke about his tough immigration policies and reviewed some of his complaints about his Democratic opponents. He also appeared to reference the video that nearly derailed his 2016 campaign, as he expressed amazement at two giant mechanical arms catching Elon Musk’s reusable rocket — “like grabbing your beautiful baby.”
“Look, I’m feeling much better. Years ago I would have said something different. But I learned,” Trump said, sparking laughter from the crowd. “I would have been a little more daring.”
In the slow stages of the 2016 campaign, the Access Hollywood tape surfaced in which Trump bragged about grabbing women by their genitals.
Trump has later events in Reading, Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh – both places Harris also visits. The Republican candidate and former president is ending his campaign the same way he ended the first two: with a late-night event in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
There were plenty of empty seats at JS Dorton Arena, a 5,000-seat venue with additional seating on the Raleigh Arena floor where Trump opened his campaign day. One attendee, Ebony Coots, said she regretted voting for Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 and now supports Trump – but was nervous about Tuesday’s vote.
“You know, I could actually try to travel to another planet,” said Coots, a 48-year-old delivery driver, if Harris won.
About 77 million Americans have already voted early. Any outcome on Election Day will result in a historic result.
A Trump victory would make him the first modern president to be charged and convicted of a crime following his hush-money trial in New York. He will be given the authority to close other federal investigations pending against him. Trump would also be only the second president in history to win non-consecutive terms in the White House, after Grover Cleveland in the slow 19th century.
Harris is vying to become the first woman, the first Black woman and the first person of South Asian descent to reach the Oval Office, four years after she broke the same hurdles in national office by becoming President Joe Biden’s running mate.
The vice president rose to the top of the Democratic ticket after Biden’s disastrous performance in a June debate set in motion his withdrawal from the race – one of several convulsions to hit this year’s campaign.
Trump survived a bullet from a suspected assassin at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, by just millimeters. His intelligence unit foiled a second attempt in September when a gunman set up a rifle as Trump was golfing at one of his golf courses in Florida.
Harris, 60, has downplayed the historic nature of her candidacy, which came only after the 81-year-old president ended his re-election bid after his June debate against the 78-year-old Trump accentuated the question of Biden’s age.
Instead, Harris portrayed herself as a generational change, emphasizing her support for abortion rights after the 2022 Supreme Court decision that struck down the constitutional right to abortion services and regularly pointing to the former president’s role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6 . January.
Harris assembled a coalition that ranged from progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York to former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney. fascist.”
As of Monday, Harris has largely stopped mentioning Trump by name, instead calling him “the other guy.” She promises to solve problems and seek consensus while striking an almost exclusively confident tone, reminiscent of the early days of her campaign, when she embraced “the politics of joy” and the campaign theme of “freedom.”
During the vice president’s first visit to Scranton, Pennsylvania, she told the crowd, “For the next 24 hours, let’s enjoy this moment of knocking on a neighbor’s door.”
“Let’s get this done,” Harris said.
In Allentown, home to tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans, Harris will host a rally with rapper Fat Joe. She later visits a Puerto Rican restaurant in Reading with Ocasio-Cortez. Both Fat Joe, whose real name is Joseph Cartagena, and Ocasio-Cortez are of Puerto Rican descent.
The stops come after a comic at a recent Donald Trump rally suggested Puerto Rico was a “floating island of trash.”
Ron Kessler, 54, an Air Force veteran and Republican turned Democrat, stood in line for Harris’ Allentown rally and said he planned to vote for only the second time in his life. Kessler said he didn’t vote for a long time because he thought the country would “vote for the right candidate.”
But “now that I’m older and much wiser, I think it’s important, it’s my civic duty. And it’s important that I vote for myself and for democracy and the country.”
Just on Sunday, Trump renewed his false claims that the U.S. election was being rigged against him, ruminated about violence against journalists and said he “shouldn’t have left” the White House in 2021 – shadowy twists that further anchor his closing arguments: “Kamala ruined it. I’ll fix it.”
The election is expected to be decided in seven states. Trump won Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin in 2016 but saw them pass to Biden in 2020. North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada join the Sun Belt on the presidential battleground map.
Harris’ team has expressed confidence in recent days, pointing to a wide gender gap in early voting data and research that shows late-deciding voters went her way. They also believe in the strength of their campaign infrastructure. This weekend, more than 90,000 Harris campaign volunteers turned out voters – knocking on more than three million doors in the battleground states. Still, Harris aides insist she remains the underdog.
Trump’s campaign is also confident, arguing that the former president’s populist appeal will attract younger and working-class voters across racial and ethnic lines. The idea is that Trump can build an atypical Republican coalition even as other time-honored GOP blocs — particularly college-educated voters — become more Democratic.
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Superville reported from Scranton, Pennsylvania. Barrow reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Makiya Seminera in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Zeke Miller, Will Weissert and Michelle L. Price in Washington contributed to this report.
