MILWAUKEE (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump held rallies within 7 miles of each other in the Milwaukee area Friday night as part of a feverish final campaign campaign in swing state Wisconsin’s largest county.
Milwaukee is home to most Democrats in Wisconsin, but the conservative suburbs are home to most Republicans and are a critical area for Trump as he tries to retake the state he narrowly won in 2016 and lost in 2020. One reason for his defeat was a decline in support in these Milwaukee suburbs and an escalate in Democratic votes in the city.
“Both candidates recognize that the path to the White House runs directly through Milwaukee County,” said Hilario Deleon, chairman of the county Republican Party.
Air Force Two, the vice president’s plane, landed at the Milwaukee airport about 40 minutes before Trump’s private plane, which he named Trump Force One. The planes parked close together, but the candidates did not cross paths; Harris’ motorcade was gone before Trump landed.
Both venues attracted roughly the same number of people, according to individual campaign estimates. Trump took the stage seven minutes before Harris.
The two rallies – Trump held in downtown Milwaukee and Harris in suburban areas – could be the candidates’ final appearances in Wisconsin before Election Day. Both sides say the race for the state’s 10 electoral votes is once again extremely close. Four of the last six presidential elections in Wisconsin have been decided by less than one point, or fewer than 23,000 votes.
It was mail-in votes from Milwaukee, typically reported early in the morning after Election Day, that tipped Wisconsin for President Joe Biden in 2020.
Democrats know they need to woo voters in Milwaukee, which also has the state’s largest black population, to counter Trump’s support in the suburbs and rural areas. Harris hopes to match and even exceed the 2020 turnout in the city, which voted 79% for Biden that year.
Trump is trying to reduce the Democrats’ room for maneuver. Deleon called it a “lose by doing less” mentality.
Before traveling to Milwaukee, Harris campaigned in the southern Wisconsin city of Janesville, where she voiced her support for organized labor in a speech at a local of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
“No one understands better than a union member that as Americans we all rise or fall together,” Harris said. She promised to eliminate “unnecessary” degree requirements for federal jobs and push private sector employers to do the same.
She called Trump “an existential threat to the American labor movement” and said the country has lost manufacturing jobs during his presidency.
Trump, whose base includes working-class voters, has made sporadic attempts to reach out to rank-and-file union members who have traditionally formed the core of the Democratic coalition.
Harris later took on Trump on health care, telling hundreds packed into a Little Chute high school that the former president wanted to undo the Affordable Care Act and take the United States back to the days when insurers covered people Pre-existing conditions could deny insurance coverage.
Rapper Cardi B was among the celebrities at Harris’ third and final Wisconsin rally in the Milwaukee suburb of West Allis.
“Did you hear what Donny Trump said the other day?” Cardi B said on stage, referencing Trump’s statement that he will protect women “whether they like it or not.”
“Donny, don’t,” she said. “Please.”
At the same rally, Harris told the boisterous crowd that Trump was bad for the economy, its health care and women’s reproductive rights.
“We know who Donald Trump is,” she said. “This is not someone thinking about how to improve their life. This is someone who is increasingly unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed by resentment, and the man is on a quest for uncontrolled power.”
Across town, Trump railed against the Biden economy. The U.S. jobs report released Friday, which shows employers added just 12,000 jobs in October, suggests the Biden-Harris administration is failing economically, he said.
“This is like a depression,” Trump said of the numbers and heaped insults on Harris.
Economists estimate that Hurricanes Helene and Milton, combined with strikes at Boeing and elsewhere in October, reduced net employment growth by tens of thousands of jobs.
Trump held his microphone for most of the rally after the audience struggled to hear him. He complained about the weight of the microphone and joked, “It’s like I’m lifting weights.” He then vented his frustration to the production team.
“Do you want to see me beat the hell out of people backstage?” he asked the crowd.
Trump supporters waiting in line at his rally in Milwaukee said they were positive about his chances of winning next week.
“I feel like the only way the Democrats can win is to cheat,” said Matt Kumorkiewicz, 55, a retired carpenter from nearby Oak Creek, echoing a repeated refrain of the former president.
He and several others in line wore yellow reflective safety vests in response to Biden’s comment that appeared to call Trump supporters “trash.”
Trump spent the afternoon in the Detroit area, where he stopped to meet with supporters at a restaurant in Dearborn, the country’s largest Arab-majority city. Many in the community remain suspicious after his first act in 2017 was to sign an executive order that effectively banned travelers from predominantly Muslim countries.
In Milwaukee, many Democrats are “fearful and cautiously optimistic,” said Angela Lang, founder and executive director of Black Leaders Organizing for Communities in Milwaukee.
“Especially given that there wasn’t the same amount of energy in 2016, I think it’s clear that Democrats have learned their lessons about the importance of Milwaukee and Wisconsin as a whole,” she said.
In another delayed outreach effort aimed at black voters, former President Bill Clinton campaigned with local faith leaders Thursday night at a center celebrating African-American music and art in Milwaukee.
Hillary Clinton did not campaign in 2016 after her primary loss in Wisconsin, a mistake Harris did not repeat. Friday’s stop marks her ninth stop in the state as a presidential candidate. It will be Trump’s 10th visit to Wisconsin, not counting the Republican National Convention, which took place in Milwaukee.
Wisconsin Republican Party Chairman Brian Schimming said Harris’ return to the Democratic stronghold of Milwaukee shows she is on defense while Trump is on offense.
The Milwaukee Election Commission estimated Thursday that it expects to receive more than 100,000 ballots by Election Day. But that lags behind early voting results from the conservative suburbs.
Lang, the Milwaukee organizer, said it’s a tradition for many voters her group interacts with to cast their ballots on Election Day. And if not?
“Then we’re in a world of trouble,” said Mandela Barnes, a former lieutenant governor and president of Power to the Polls, a group that works to escalate voter turnout.
Trump’s rally was held in the same arena that hosted the Republican National Convention three months ago. The Harris Rally, held at State Fair Park in West Allis, included performances from GloRilla, Flo Milli, MC Lyte and DJ Gemini Gilly.
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Associated Press writers Darlene Superville in Washington and Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix contributed to this report.
