Kamala Harris became the Democrats’ presidential nominee on Monday. By Saturday, the vice president was filling stadiums and receiving pop star treatment. Harris wrapped up a five-day tour on Saturday with Tim Walz, her vice presidential candidate, to the five states that will decide the November election. The last stop was Nevada, where thousands of people queued for hours in 41-degree heat to get a close-up, and for a few minutes, glimpse of the rising star of American politics. Harris has closed a frenetic week in which she has changed the fortunes of her party in the race against Donald Trump.
“We have 87 days. It will be a close race to the finish. Let’s not look at the polls because we still have a lot of hard work ahead of us,” Harris said at the home of the Rebels, the basketball team of the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. This is her seventh visit to Nevada so far this year, but her first as an official candidate for the White House. “The last time I was here I went to the final training session of the men’s basketball team… And just a few hours ago they won gold,” she said before the crowd cheered the Dream Team’s fifth consecutive gold.
Although Harris does not want to give too much weight to the polls, they have given the Democrats their first good news in months. The New York Times The Democratic Party released recently conducted polls on Saturday that put Harris in the lead in three decisive states: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. The Democratic candidate leads Trump by four points in these three states, 50% against the Republican’s 46%.
Leading electoral analysts have predicted better times ahead for Harris’ campaign. Cook Political Report this week considered that Nevada is up in the air ahead of the November elections. The state was previously leaning towards Donald Trump, but things have changed since the vice president took the nomination. It is not the only territory where Democrats are now better positioned. Their chances of victory have also improved in Arizona, where Harris was on Friday.
“At least in the short term, Harris has reversed the drop in the polls or has been able to stop the hemorrhage that the party had experienced since the June debate between Trump and Biden,” said this week the political scientist Larry Sabato, a professor at the University of Virginia. In his analysis, the professor returns Georgia, which was leaning towards the Republicans, to the column of the states that are in dispute. Georgia was on the agenda this week, but the storms forced her to change her plans. While she visited five states, Trump limited himself to a single rally throughout the week, held in Montana.
Polls are beginning to reflect the changing mood among voters. Tyler, a 25-year-old geologist, has returned to the university from which he graduated to attend his second rally. “My parents took me to see Barack Obama in 2008, when I was nine,” he recalls. Now he has come with his girlfriend, drawn to the rally held a few miles from the Strip, the tourist area where most of the casinos are located. “There is a lot of energy and I think people are catching on to it,” he says.
He wasn’t the only one. Ron Smith, a 65-year-old retiree, had T-shirts made for this afternoon. On the chest was an image of a white hand handing a baton to a black hand. On the back was one of the phrases Harris threw at Trump to heat up the debate between the two: “If you have something to say to me, say it to my face.” “I was very happy to see how Biden passed the baton. He was going to be a one-term president, but he finally did it, so I thank him,” said Smith, who identifies as an independent voter.
Getting into the university stadium was not easy. Thousands of people waited outside for hours in the desert heat, which reached 41 degrees at 4 p.m. This caused fainting, skin burns and sunstroke among the attendees. The Las Vegas police ordered the stadium to be closed an hour before the event, when there were already 12,000 people inside, to prevent people from suffering further from the heat. The local press estimates that there were about 4,000 people waiting to enter when they were asked to leave.
“I heard they had to turn away thousands of people,” said Tim Walz, the vice presidential candidate. “But don’t worry, we’ll be coming a lot,” joked the Minnesota governor, who often breaks the ice with audiences by talking about the weather. Behind him, attendees held up signs reading “Kamala is brat,” “Stop Trump” and “Coach!”, dedicated to Walz, who before entering politics was a football coach during his years as a high school teacher.
Democrats must win Nevada to stay in the White House. Recent polls put Harris slightly ahead of Donald Trump, by a margin of just 2%.
A vital support
The Democratic ticket has gained vital support in Nevada. The powerful union for food service workers, Culinary Workers Local 226, announced its endorsement of Harris and Walz on Friday. “The next president will be a fierce advocate for workers,” the organization said in a statement. releaseThis represents 60,000 employees ranging from hotel and casino maids, cooks, waiters and bartenders.
“We are ready to make history and bring the first Black and Southeast Asian woman to the presidency (…) The path to victory goes through Nevada and the union will give the state to Kamala Harris and Tim Walz,” says the organization, which has 54% of Latinos among its members.
“No one should have to work two jobs to support their family, one should be enough,” said Satoria Patridge, a casino bouncer who is a member of the union. On stage, she vowed to fight for Harris’ victory so that she can put a stop to landlords with a 5% limit on rent increases. Housing prices are one of the issues that most concern voters here.
Mobilizing casino workers was key to Democrats holding on to the state in 2020. The last Republican to win it was George W. Bush in 2004. Donald Trump, who fell four years ago by just 4 percent, has made a point of courting this important group of voters. One of his most appealing initiatives for restaurant and casino employees is to make the tips they earn tax-free. Trump floated the idea June 9 at a rally in the state, which has the highest concentration of tipped workers.
Tonight, Kamala Harris copied that proposal. In addition to raising the minimum wage, she promised to remove taxes on tip income. The move drew a standing ovation from those present. On her previous visits, the vice president has become accustomed to rallies of a few hundred people. Today she stood in the center of a nearly packed stadium chanting: “We are not going back, we are going forward.”
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