TRUMP PLANS CAMPAIGN RALLY IN NEWPORT NEWS
President Donald Trump will be in Newport News Friday, holding a rally as part of his reelection campaign.
The rally will be at the Newport News/ Williamsburg International Airport. The president’s stop in Newport News will come in between campaign visits in two battleground states: Jacksonville, Florida, on Thursday and Middletown, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.
Doors for the rally open at 6 p.m., and the rally begins at 9 p.m. All tickets are first-come, firstserved, and two tickets may be reserved per mobile number. Ticket reservations can be made at events.donaldjtrump.com.
A poll released by Virginia Commonwealth University on Sept. 15 shows Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is ahead of Trump by 14 points in Virginia. In Northeast Virginia, that lead widens to 23 points. Republicans haven’t won a statewide race in Virginia in a decade. Hillary Clinton won the state in 2016 with 49.75% of the vote, and President Barack Obama won Virginia in 2008 and 2012.
Politico first reported on the campaign visit Tuesday. The article said Trump advisers said the idea behind the rally was to reach voters in neighboring North Carolina, a key battleground state. The article said the Newport News media market covers eight
hard-to-reach rural counties in North Carolina.
Trump last was in the region in March, when he visited Norfolk to see off the USNS Comfort, a Navy hospital ship that was bound for New York to help fight the coronavirus pandemic.
Biden also came to Norfolk in March, holding a campaign event at Booker T. Washington High School just days before the primary.
Absentee voting has begun in both Virginia and North Carolina. As of Monday, 69,261 people in Virginia had cast an absentee ballot in person, and 5,860 ballots had been returned by mail, according to the nonpartisan organization Virginia Public Access Project. Another 877,089 voters had applied for mail ballot applications but had not yet returned the ballots.
On Friday, when early voting began in Virginia, Trump tweeted that he was going to win the state. He called Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, “crazy.”
Northam’s coronavirus-related emergency order still limits gatherings to 250 people and requires people to wear masks indoors, with exemptions for people who can’t wear a mask for medical reasons.