WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are heading purposefully toward the swing states they hope to flip in their favor this year, both seeking to widen their narrow path to victory in a hotly contested presidential race.
Harris has her sights set on North Carolina, where she will hold rallies in Charlotte and Greensboro on Thursday. This will be her first political event after wowing supporters with her compelling performance at Tuesday’s debate.
Trump is heading west to Tucson, Arizona, to stabilize his campaign, which is still struggling to refocus nearly two months after Harris replaced President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket. Although Harris’ team said she was ready to do another debate, the Republican nominee has wavered.
“Are we going to have a rematch?” Trump said on Wednesday. “I just don’t know.”
The candidates are on tour one day after marking the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a somber occasion that gave them little respite from party politics in a busy campaign season.
At a fire station in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, near the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 after passengers fought back against their hijackers, Trump posed for photos with children wearing campaign shirts, one of which said former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Biden and Harris were “dumb and dumber and dumbest.”
Biden and Harris visited the same fire station earlier in the day. Someone there offered Biden a red, white and blue baseball cap with the words “Trump 2024” emblazoned on it and suggested the president wear it to demonstrate his commitment to bipartisan unity. Biden put the cap on briefly and grinned broadly.
Only a handful of swing states will decide the outcome of the election.
Democrats have not won an electoral vote in North Carolina since 2008, when President Barack Obama was first elected. However, Trump’s 1.3 percentage point margin in 2020 was his narrowest victory of any state this year, and Democrats are hoping North Carolina’s growing and more diverse population will give them an advantage this time around.
Harris’ campaign said this will be her ninth trip to the state this year, and recent polls suggest a neck-and-neck race. More than two dozen joint campaign offices – supporting Harris and the rest of the party’s candidates – have opened, and popular Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper is one of her key surrogates.
Republicans are confident of Trump’s chances in the state and the former president held rallies there in August.
Registered independents – known in North Carolina as “unaffiliated” – are the state’s largest voting bloc and typically play a crucial role in determining the outcome of statewide elections. A ruling by the state Supreme Court this week upholding that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. must be removed from North Carolina ballots could bring additional votes to Trump given Kennedy’s support.
The state Republican Party has dismissed concerns that a needy showing by its gubernatorial candidate, Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, could damage the electoral chances of other candidates in his party, including Trump.
Democratic candidate Josh Stein and his allies have criticized Robinson for months on the radio and social media for his past harsh comments on abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. Stein, the state’s attorney general, had a lead over Robinson in several recent polls of North Carolina voters.
Arizona is another state where the presidential race could be at least partially influenced by lower-ballot voting. Kari Lake, a prominent Republican voter who lost her gubernatorial race in 2020, is running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Kyrsten Sinema.
Lake is an example of the state party’s shift to the right in the Trump era. Her opponent is Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, who has led in several recent polls but narrowly missed in another.
Republicans have won nearly every presidential election in Arizona since World War II, but Biden narrowly won in 2020.
The rise of Democrats in Arizona can be attributed to the arrival of immigrants from Democratic states and a political realignment that saw suburban voters, particularly college-educated women, turn away from Republicans.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Harris’s running mate, held a rally in the state on Tuesday ahead of the debate, and Democrats campaigned together there last month.
In Arizona, Republicans still outnumber Democrats, but a third of voters are independent. Ohio Senator JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, appeared last week in a heavily Republican area of the Phoenix metropolitan area with Charlie Kirk, the founder of an influential conservative youth group.
Trump was last in Arizona two weeks ago to attend a press conference at the US-Mexico border. There he launched one of his most effective attacks on Harris over the high number of people crossing the border to seek asylum. He then held a rally at a former hockey arena near Phoenix.
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Cooper reported from Phoenix and Robertson from Raleigh, North Carolina.
