Donald Trump and Kamala Harris were fully involved in the battle for Michigan on Saturday, with the candidates campaigning miles apart with the presidency on the line, and a popular former first lady joining the fray.
The long lines at early voting centers in Kalamazoo were so numerous that voters turned around in wait times of an hour and a half.
Trump made the rare decision to give up his own bed and spend the night in Detroit after his Friday night rally in Traverse City, northern Michigan, started nearly three hours late following the extensive interview in Trump podcast with Joe Rogan.
He gathered thousands of supporters at an indoor venue in Novi, suburban Detroit, and polls showed a close race in Michigan and the seven battleground states.
‘This campaign is on fire, you can feel it!’ said Michigan Rep. Lisa McClain, energizing the crowd at Trump’s rally in Novi, a Detroit suburb.
Harris will hold a campaign rally with Michelle Obama at the Wings Event Center in Kalamazoo later Saturday, the first day of early voting in the state.
She is considered a beloved campaign “closer” who had Democrats on their feet at the party’s convention in Chicago in August.
Trump will hold another rally in State College, Pennsylvania, later Saturday.
It is the debut of the 2024 campaign for the former first lady, one of the most popular figures in the Democratic Party and a dream candidate to replace Joe Biden, 81.
Harris supporters began lining up early on the cool fall day for a chance to participate in the Democratic presidential candidate’s rally.
The event puts Harris about 100 miles away from Trump. There were already lines around the block.
She will return to the state on Monday, her campaign just announced, with a rally also billed as a concert with singer Maggie Rogers in Ann Arbor.
That event is a clear measure to try to increase the score among young voters, who had been moving away from the Democrats with Biden in the lead.
Now, Harris is relying on young voters and women to overcome Trump’s gains among minority men and a wild card of the state’s roughly 200,000 Arab American voters.
California Rep. Darrell Issa referenced the Arab-Israeli conflict “like an Arab American” in his remarks to the Novi crowd.
He said the peace process “is in ruins today (and) can only be restored by a return to the kind of compromise we saw during the four years of Trump.” Issa’s father was the son of Lebanese immigrants.
Steven Miller, a longtime Trump adviser, pointed to the electoral support Trump was gaining from Arab and Muslim voters in Michigan.
“It’s going to break all kinds of records,” Miller told the crowd in Novi. “That’s one more reason why Michigan is going to win.”
More than 1.4 million people have already voted in Michigan even before in-person early voting began Saturday, according to tracking by the University of Florida Election Laboratory.
A long line of Harris supporters waiting to enter her rally with Michelle Obama in Kalamazoo, MI, on Saturday.
Even President Joe Biden is getting in on the act, flying to Pittsburgh even after making a rhetorical stumble at his last event, in the surprisingly nearby state of New Hampshire. It was there that he said “lock him up” when talking about Trump, and then backed away from the comment to say “politically.”
Biden was asked before boarding Air Force One about Trump’s comments comparing the United States to a “garbage can.”
“Trump has no class,” Biden responded, keeping his response clean.
The race in Michigan couldn’t be much closer. Polls show a virtual tie, with Trump leading by just a few tenths of a percent in the RealClearPolitics average.
After accusing Harris of taking things slow and spending time preparing for television appearances, Trump plans to immediately travel to State College, Pennsylvania, where he will hold a huge rally in another battleground state that is a pure disaster.
Taking a page from John McCain’s playbook in his race against Barack Obama, Trump is trying to use Harris’ string of celebrity appearances against him.
On Friday night, he accused his rival of “partying” as Israel attacked Iran amid continuing fears of an expanding conflict in the Middle East.
He had been accepting high-profile endorsements from singer Beyoncé Knowles, who talked but didn’t act.
The vice president focused her speech on reproductive rights and a series of speakers shared deeply personal stories of women facing Texas’ abortion ban.