Heading into the last weekend before Election DayHarris campaign continues to remind voters of comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s joke at a Trump rally last Sunday who called Puerto Rico a “garbage island.”
A senior Harris campaign official said internal data shows the vice president is winning battleground voters “who made up their minds last week” — and by a double-digit margin. The campaign, in a telephone briefing with reporters, attributed voters’ late pause on Harris to the negative response to that joke, as well as former President Donald Trump’s violent rhetoric in the final days campaign, including his recent remark using violent images to disparage former Wyoming GOP Rep. Liz Cheney.
“All of these things are affecting the American people and in the final days of his campaign, [Trump] “is clearly focused, as the vice president said, on his ever-growing ‘enemies list,'” the campaign official said.
What was meant to be a joke about Puerto Rico sparked widespread anger among Latinos, a critical voting bloc. Since Sunday, hundreds of people in battleground states have signed up to volunteer for the campaign. Celebrities with millions of followers, like Bad bunny and Jennifer Lopez, publicly announced their support for Harris last week. Spanish-language newspapers also supported the vice president. Latin American organizations also intervened to participate in field operations aimed at mobilizing undecided voters.
Harris campaign officials say some of the recent growth in battleground states has come from Puerto Rican voters, many of whom live in Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania, with its 19 electoral votes, is home to more than a million Latinos and more than 472,000 are of Puerto Rican descent. In a tied race where the margins will be the smallest, the Latino vote is highly coveted.
Sarah Michitch, a Puerto Rican voter living in Pennsylvania, told CBS News that she initially did not plan to attend Harris’ campaign rally in Harrisburg on Wednesday, but was motivated after the incendiary remarks at Trump’s rally.
“I’ve always voted Democratic,” she said. “I was going to vote Democratic, anyway, but this motivated me to get up, put up my flag and come here today.”
Puerto Rican flags were scattered throughout the crowd at Harris’ rally. Many of his supporters have expressed passion for their roots and disdain for jokes directed at the island.
“You just gave us more Latino power, more Hispanic power,” Natalie Dozier, of Puerto Rican descent, told CBS News. She called Trump’s rally rhetoric “troubling” and “devastating.”
“And speaking of trash, we’re going to take out the trash on Election Day,” Dozier said.
In the wake of the controversy surrounding the joke, a senior Trump adviser was quick to clarify that the jokes had not been reviewed or approved in advance and said they did not reflect Trump or his campaign .
The former president is trying to defend his position with Puerto Ricans. During a panel discussion Tuesday in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, Trump said “no president has done more for Puerto Rico than I have,” while recounting helping the island in the wake of Hurricane Maria in 2017. “I got there and took care of a lot of people.”
As president, Trump island tour after the hurricane, he is perhaps best remembered for his stop at a church, where he threw paper napkins to hurricane victims. At the time, two weeks after the storm, 90 percent of the island had no power and many had no water. Trump also withheld $20 billion in hurricane aid for three years, arguing that the money would simply go toward paying off the island’s debt. In 2020six weeks before the election, Trump released the aid.
The political arm of one of the largest Latino civil rights organizations, UnidosUS Action Fund, is working in Pennsylvania, Nevada and Arizona to help mobilize Latino voters in support of Harris. Although the group’s executive director, Rafael Collazo, believes Sunday’s remarks help the vice president, he emphasizes that the group will continue to intensify its “aggressive operations on the ground” in recent days to boost Latino participation .
“The challenge we will face is that a number of undecided Latino voters are very difficult to reach through the usual channels,” Collazo told CBS News, adding that campaigns need to invest heavily in outreach, including word of mouth. by mouth, telephone banking and door-to-door banking. Since launching her presidential campaign, Harris has released 15 ads targeting Latino voters. The latest, an appeal to Puerto Rican voters, was released Thursday and responds to Trump’s “trash” comment at the rally. The narrator says, “We are not trash” and goes on to say that Puerto Ricans are scientists, poets, educators, stars, heroes.
More than 500,000 bilingual phone calls to Latinos have been made since August, according to a Harris campaign official, with the help of grassroots groups that have hosted phone banks in battleground states. These calls will continue until Tuesday.
Harris and Trump are spending the final days of the campaign targeting, among others, Latino voters in Pennsylvania. The two candidates will both stop in Reading, a city whose population is more than 69% Latino. On Monday, Harris will also rally in Allentown with Latinos, who make up more than 54% of the population.
Kathryn Watson and
contributed to this report.
