1 of 4 | Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to the press at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Austin on Friday. He appeared Saturday in suburban Detroit seeking to woo Muslim-American voters living in the hotly contested battleground state. Photo by Dustin Safranek/EPA-EFE
Oct. 26 (UPI) — Presidential contenders Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump turned their attention to the hotly contested battleground state of Michigan on Saturday as they remained neck-and-neck heading into the campaign’s final 10 days.
Trump made his second appearance in two days in the state as same-day early voting got underway, holding a noontime rally at the Suburban Collection Showplace event center in Novi, Mich., northwest of Detroit, where he courted the state’s considerable number of Muslim-American voters.
Harris, meanwhile, was scheduled to stump through western Michigan on Saturday, including visiting a doctor’s office in Portage, Mich., “to continue her sustained focus on protecting women’s reproductive freedom,” according to her campaign.
The vice president is later set to hold a rally in nearby Kalamazoo featuring an appearance by former first lady Michele Obama, who will be attending her first Democratic get-out-the-vote rally of the election cycle.
With most polls showing Trump and Harris essentially tied in Michigan only 10 days before the election, each side claimed to be hotly pursuing the possibly decisive votes of the state’s roughly 200,000 registered Muslim voters.
While they have been reliable backers of Democratic candidates for decades, they are now deeply split over the Biden’s administration’s staunch support of Israel in its fierce and bloody war against Sunni and Shiite Arab militants in Gaza and Lebanon, providing a possible inroad for Republicans.
The Harris campaign was on the defensive earlier this week after a Muslim Democrat was removed from the audience during an event featuring Harris and former Republican Rep. Liz Chaney in Royal Oak, Mich.
The campaign apologized for the removal of Ahmed Ghanim, an activist from Ferndale, Mich., and said he was welcome to attend future events, but the incident put a spotlight on strained relations between the Harris campaign and Muslim voters.
The Arab American Political Action Committee last week advised its members to vote for neither Trump nor Harris, saying both “blindly support the criminal Israeli government led by far right extremists, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”
Trump, however, has gained the endorsement of Hamtramck, Mich., Mayor Amer Ghalib and on Saturday sought to woo Muslim voters critical of Harris by appearing onstage with Muslim religious leaders.
During the rally, Trump repeated previous insults aimed at the city of Detroit, saying, “Detroit makes us a developing nation,” and at Harris, calling her “a dope,” while sounding familiar anti-immigrant themes.
The GOP nominee declared that illegal immigrants are taking “Black jobs,” saying, “These people coming into our country… and you’re going to see numbers they should release now, they have them… they’re destroying the Black and Hispanic population jobs in this country.”
Harris’ scheduled appearances in Michigan come on the heels of a major rally late Friday in Houston, where she appeared onstage with pop music superstar Beyoncé, who enthusiastically endorsed her campaign and issued a call for the defense of abortion rights.
“I’m not here as a celebrity,” Beyoncé told a crowd estimated at 30,000 people. “I’m not here as a politician. I’m here as a mother, a mother who cares deeply about the world my children and all of our children live in.”
Using the spotlight provided by the singer, Harris took the opportunity to highlight abortion bans put in place in Texas and other states in the wake of the repeal of Roe vs. Wade by Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices.
“Though we are in Texas tonight, for anyone watching from another state, if you think you are protected from Trump abortion bans because you live in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New York, California or any state where voters or legislators have protected reproductive freedom, please know: No one is protected,” she said. “Because a Donald Trump national ban will outlaw abortion in every single state.”
