A final swing on the trail
TAMPA, Fla. — Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump distilled the campaign styles they’ve showcased for more than a year into a final blitz of intense campaigning as they wrapped up their pitches for the White House.
Clinton, true to type, chose a tightly disciplined path, holding rallies and events in Florida and Pennsylvania on Saturday in hopes of building a traditional electoral firewall by appealing to women, minorities and millennials. But to stem any last-minute defections, she also added a stop in Michigan on Monday, a
sign that the race may be tightening in some unexpected places.
Trump, who made it this far largely on improvisation, zigzagged across the country as part of his campaign’s plan to reshape the political map with a come-from-behind victory.
“We’re going into what they used to call Democrat strongholds,” Trump said in Tampa, Fla., beginning a day that also took him to North Carolina, Nevada and Colorado.
Trump’s rally in Reno briefly erupted in commotion when he was rushed from the stage by Secret Service agents, adding to a sense of unease that has built throughout the hardfought campaign. Secret Service agents reacted to someone in the crowd who shouted “gun,” but no weapon was found. A protester was questioned and released, and Trump returned to the stage minutes later.
Earlier in the day, Trump vowed he would also go to Minnesota, a state he added to a frenetic Sunday schedule that already includes stops in Iowa, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
Polls show him trailing by about 5 percentage points in Minnesota, a state that has not voted Republican in a presidential election since 1972, a longer streak than any other state. But Trump, whose path to victory is narrower than Clinton’s, has shown a willingness to upend conventional thinking throughout the campaign — to the frustration of mainstream Republican strategists and the delight of his enthusiastic supporters.
His communications director, Jason Miller, told reporters in a conference call Saturday that internal polls show many states, including Michigan, Minnesota and New Mexico, are closer than public polls suggest, thanks to a late surge of excitement combined with tough headlines for Clinton related to the ongoing FBI email investigation.
Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, said that scheduled visits from Clinton and President Obama to Michigan in the campaign’s final days were not a sign of concern that Democrats are losing ground in the traditionally blue state. Instead, he told reporters, it’s a matter of ending in states where voters cast more of their ballots on election day, rather than by early voting.
“Trump is basically going everywhere,” Mook told reporters. “As far as I’m concerned, the more time he spends in Minnesota and Nevada the better. We have tried to calibrate our schedule to be in states at the peak time for voting.”
Clinton, hoarse yet energetic, rallied supporters Saturday in Pembroke Pines, Fla., one of the most important Democratic strongholds in the country, as a downpour cut short her first big speech of the day. She stopped at Miami’s Haitian and Cuban American neighborhoods, hoping to boost crucial minority turnout, and she publicized a phone call with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, trying to close the sale with liberal and millennial holdouts.
“Let’s make it happen,” she told supporters at a field office in Miami’s Little Haiti.
She continued to rely on the large stable of celebrities on her side, including a planned concert with pop star Katy Perry in Philadelphia on Saturday night, the day after appearing in Cleveland with Beyoncé and Jay Z. Wins in Florida and Pennsylvania, where Clinton holds narrow leads in polls, would make a Trump victory nearly impossible.
Unlike Florida, where nearly 6 million voters had already cast ballots by Saturday morning, Pennsylvania does not have early voting, so Clinton is focusing more attention there. Democrats, who trailed Republicans in mail-in balloting in Florida, made up ground with in-person early voting, holding an overall lead among early voters of about 7,000 by early Saturday. That was less than their lead of more than 100,000 votes at the same point in 2012, suggesting the state remains up for grabs.
Veteran Nevada journalist Jon Ralston reported Saturday that a surge of early voting by Democrats in Clark County had all but killed Trump’s chances in the state. But Bill Dunn, director of early and absentee voting for the Republican National Committee, said Trump can make up ground in rural counties and with strong turnout from Republicans on election day.
As polls have tightened, Trump has tried to minimize the risk of any last-minute mistakes by sticking to scripted remarks on blocking Syrian refugees from entering the U.S., building a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico and other staples of his campaign, including scathing rhetorical assaults on Clinton’s integrity.
“If she ever got into the Oval Office, Hillary and her special interests would rob this country blind,” he said in North Carolina.
But he veered off script a bit more at his Tampa rally, where he could not resist a lewd joke as he reveled in the FBI’s search of a “treasure trove” of new emails for links to Clinton’s private server, messages that were found on the computer of former Rep. Anthony Weiner.
“Anthony Weiner has probably every classified email ever sent,” Trump told a few thousand supporters in Tampa. “And knowing this guy, he probably studied every single one, in between using his machine for other purposes.”
Trump also took a shot at profanities used by Jay Z at the Clinton concert.
“I actually like Jay Z, but you know the language last night — oooooohhhh. Oooooohhhhh,” said Trump, whose own foul language is featured in Clinton’s advertising. “Can you imagine if I said that? He used every word in the book.”
Clinton has had the luxury of a much larger cast of high-powered campaign surrogates on her side, including her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who spoke in Florida on Saturday; Sanders, who was in Iowa and Colorado; and Vice President Joe Biden in Pennsylvania with his wife, Jill. Obama spoke in North Carolina on Friday.
Trump has tried to counter with his family. Melania Trump made another rare appearance Saturday, standing beside her husband in North Carolina, two days after she gave her first solo speech of the general election in Pennsylvania.
The appearance came a day after the Associated Press, citing newly obtained documents, reported that Melania Trump, who was born in Slovenia, was paid $20,056 for 10 U.S. modeling jobs before she obtained a work visa.
Melania Trump moved to New York in 1996, obtaining a work visa about seven weeks after her arrival, according to the AP, and became a citizen in 2006.
Trump would not allow it to interfere with his immigration message. When the the crowd chanted, “Build that wall!” Trump goaded them on.
“You know what? The harder they fight us, the higher it goes,” he responded.