Harris and Trump launch furious last attack before Election Day | News, sports, work

From left, Wood County maintenance workers Eric Moles, Steve Bennett and Wyatt Marshall prepare to load election equipment and materials needed for today’s general election into election workers’ cars Monday afternoon at the Parkersburg County Courthouse. (Photo: Evan Bevins)

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) – A presidential campaign that ended with a felony trial, the unseated president and multiple assassination attempts is ending in a final sprint in several states on the eve of Election Day.

Kamala Harris spends Monday in Pennsylvania, where its 19 electoral votes offer the biggest prize among the states expected to decide the Electoral College result. The vice president and Democratic nominee will visit working-class areas, including Allentown, and end with a late-night rally in Philadelphia featuring Lady Gaga and Oprah Winfrey.

Donald Trump kicked off four rallies in three states, speaking to a roaring crowd in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he declared: “I always managed to do that in North Carolina.”

“It’s Our Loss” he said.

Trump talked about his tough immigration policies and outlined some of the complaints about his Democratic opponents. He also seemed to reference the video that nearly sank his 2016 campaign, expressing amazement at the two giant mechanical arms that grabbed Elon Musk’s reusable rocket — “like you were holding your beautiful baby.”

Supporters arrive before Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Santander Arena, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024, in Reading, Pennsylvania (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

“You see, I felt much better. Years ago I would have said something different. But I learned Trump said, drawing laughter from the crowd. “I would be a little more adventurous.”

In the late stages of the 2016 campaign, he came to light “Access to Hollywood” a tape in which Trump bragged about grabbing women by their genitals.

Later, Trump holds events in Reading, Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh – both places Harris also visits. The Republican Party candidate and former president ends his campaign in the same way he ended his previous two campaigns, with an evening event in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

There were plenty of empty seats at JS Dorton Arena, a 5,000-seat venue with additional seating on the arena floor in Raleigh where Trump began his campaign day. One attendee, Ebony Coots, said she regrets voting for Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 and currently supports Trump but is nervous about Tuesday’s election.

“You know, I could actually try to go to another planet.” Coots, a 48-year-old delivery driver, said whether Harris would win.

Participants holding a Puerto Rican flag cheer as Allentown, Pennsylvania. Mayor Matt Tuerk speaks during a campaign rally for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris at Memorial Hall at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

About 77 million Americans have already voted. Any result on Election Day will be historic.

A victory for Trump would make him the first new president to be charged and convicted of a crime after a secret trial in New York. He will gain the authority to end other ongoing federal investigations against him. Trump would also become the second president in history, after Grover Cleveland in the late 19th century, to win nonconsecutive terms in the White House.

Harris is seeking to become the first woman, first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to reach the Oval Office – four years after she broke the same barriers in national office to become President Joe Biden’s deputy.

The vice president rose to the top of the Democratic ticket after Biden’s disastrous performance in the June debate caused him to withdraw from the race, one of a series of convulsions that have hit this year’s campaign.

Trump survived his would-be assassin’s bullet by millimeters during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. His Secret Service officers thwarted a second attempt in September when a gunman set up a rifle while Trump was playing golf at one of his Florida courses.

Chelsey Salama (right) hands out flyers as a volunteer with Abandon Harris encouraging voters to choose Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024, Dearborn, Mich. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Harris, 60, portrayed herself as a generational change from Biden, 81, and Trump, 78. She emphasized her support for abortion rights after the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision that struck down a constitutional right to abortion services, and regularly noted the former president’s role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Assembling a coalition that included progressives ranging from Republican Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York to former GOP Vice President Dick Cheney, Harris called Trump a threat to democracy and, late in the campaign, even welcomed criticism that Trump was accurately described as “fascist”.

On Monday, Harris mostly stopped mentioning Trump by name and instead called him “that other guy.” He promises to solve problems and seek consensus.

Harris’ campaign chairwoman, Jen O’Malley Dillion, said on a call with reporters that not naming Trump was intentional because voters “they want to see in their leader an optimistic, hopeful and patriotic vision of the future.”

During her first stop in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Harris talked about how she once ran for San Francisco District Attorney in 2002 when she became a sharpshooter, and how “I once campaigned with my ironing board.”

“I would go outside the grocery store and set up an ironing board, because an ironing board is a really great standing desk.” Harris said, remembering how she taped her posters to the outside of the board, filled the top with flyers and “require people to talk to me when they come in and out.”

In Allentown, home to tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans, the vice president will hold a rally with rapper Fat Joe. Later, he visits a Puerto Rican restaurant in Reading with Ocasio-Cortez. Both Fat Joe, whose real name is Joseph Cartagena, and Ocasio-Cortez, are of Puerto Rican descent.

The stops came after a cartoon from a recent Donald Trump rally suggested that Puerto Rico was… “Floating Garbage Island”.

Standing in line at Harris’ rally in Allentown, Ron Kessler, 54, an Air Force veteran and Republican-turned-Democrat, said he planned to vote for only the second time in his life. Kessler said he didn’t vote for a long time, thinking about the country “I would vote for the right candidate.”

But “Now that I’m older and much wiser, I think it’s important, it’s my civic duty. It is important that I vote for myself and for democracy and the country.”

As recently as Sunday, Trump renewed his false claims that the US election was rigged against him, mused about violence against journalists and declared that “I shouldn’t have left” The White House in 2021 – dark turns that overshadowed another anchor of his closing argument: “Kamala broke it. I’ll fix it.

The election will likely be decided by all seven states. Trump won Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin in 2016 before turning to Biden in 2020. North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada are adding the Sun Belt area to the presidential battleground map.

Harris’ team has been projecting confidence in recent days, pointing to wide gender gaps in early voting data and research showing that late-acting voters have broken her path. They also believe in the strength of their campaign infrastructure. This weekend, Harris’ campaign drew more than 90,000 volunteers to help get out the vote and knock on more than 3 million doors in battleground states. Still, Harris’s advisers insisted she remained the underdog.

The Trump campaign also says it feels confident in arguing that the former president’s populist appeal will attract younger, working-class voters across racial and ethnic lines. The idea is that Trump can assemble an unlikely Republican coalition even as other traditional GOP blocs – especially college-educated voters – become more Democratic.

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Superville reports from Scranton, Pennsylvania. Barrow reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Makiya Seminer in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Zeke Miller, Will Weissert and Michelle L. Price in Washington contributed to this report.