Oct. 27 (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, delivered a plea to western Michigan voters in Kalamazoo during a rally in which she was introduced by former first lady Michelle Obama, who made her first get-out-the-vote appearance 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 Cheney 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 — eight years after he proposed banning immigration from Muslim countries.
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.”
Later on Saturday at the Wings Event Center in Kalamazoo, Harris continued to pound on the issue of abortion rights and the likelihood of a nationwide abortion ban under second Trump administration, repeating a theme she concentrated on the previous night during a rally in Houston featuring pop megastar Beyonce.
Both she and Obama made pleas to female voters and to men who take the lives of women “seriously” to carefully consider whom to vote for in November.
“Please do not put our lives in the hands of politicians, mostly men, who have no clue of what we’re going through,” Obama said. “Please do not hand our fates over to the likes of Trump, who knows nothing about us.”
Harris, meanwhile, warned that another Trump presidency would have dire consequences for the nation and the world.
“This is not 2016 or 2020 — the stakes are even higher because over the last eight years, Donald Trump has become more confused, more unstable and more angry, and it is clear he has become increasingly unhinged,” she said.
Also on Saturday, President Joe Biden campaigned for Harris in Pittsburgh, where he urged union members to help defeat Trump.
“It’s about decency, it’s about honor,” Biden said during at appearance at the Laborers International Union of North America Local 1058 hall, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “Trump has no character. He’s not demonstrated it. He doesn’t give a damn about union workers. He views unions as getting in the way of accumulation of wealth for individuals.”
He also pointed out that both he and Harris have walked picket lines in support of striking workers.
