Harris slated for a visit to Texas thisweek
Vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris is set to campaign in Texas this week, with Democratic sources saying Houston will be one of her stops.
Harris, a U.S. senator from California, is set to be in Texas on Friday in a push to get more voters to the polls on the final day of early voting. The exact location and times have not been released publicly.
Her trip marks the first time in over 30 years that a Democratic vice presidential nominee has been sent to campaign in the Lone Star State this close to Election Day.
It is yet another sign that the campaigns of Donald Trump and Joe Biden have vastly different views of political conditions in Texas.
“The president is going to win Texas,” Tim Murtaugh, the communications director for Trump’s re-election campaign, said Sunday. “And the president will be focusing his time and travel and energy on the states that will decide the election.”
But public polls over the last week have shown Trump and Biden locked in a deadheat. A Dallas Morning News and University of Texas at Tyler poll released Sunday showed Biden leading Trump 48 percent to 45 percent.
The Biden campaign is convinced early voter data shows Democrats have a legitimate shot of delivering Texas for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time since 1976.
In the last two weeks, the campaign has sent Joe Biden’s wife, Jill Biden, to Houston, Dallas and El Paso and Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, to McAllen, San Antonio and Dallas. That all comes as the Biden campaign has begun spending money on Texas television — targeting San Antonio and El Paso specifically.
“The national party and our leadership see that Texas is the biggest battleground state, period,” U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Houston, said of all the attention. “I think the momentum is with us.”
And the Trump campaign has already seemingly ruled out any chance Trump will be in Texas before Election Day.
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, on a conference call with reporters Sunday, said he doesn’t expect Trump to campaign in the state.
“The president has made his case here,” Perry said, encouraging Trump to focus on other states.
That is not to say Trump has ignored Texas. Since hewas inaugurated in 2017, Trump has visited Texas 16 times, including four trips just this year. By comparison, President Barack Obama made just four trips to the state during his first term in office.
Trump last campaigned in Texas in the summer, when he made appearances in Midland and Odessa.
The Trump campaign has emphasized that it has assembled one of the most impressive ground games ever built to get out the vote. They point to years of developing and training volunteer networks in places such as Texas as evidence that Trump will do better in Texas this year than he did in 2016.
Trump won Texas by 9 percentage points over Democrat Hillary Clinton. But that was the worst showing for a Republican presidential candidate since Bob Dole carried Texas by 5 points in 1996 over then-President Bill Clinton.