Two days after hosting competing campaign events in Wisconsin, the campaigns of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump were once again in the state on the same evening, making last-minute appeals to a critical population center in one of the nation’s most critical swing states.
Unlike Wednesday’s events, where Trump visited Ashwaubenon near Green Bay and Harris visited Madison, both were just miles apart in the Milwaukee area.
For some people who live and work in Milwaukee, the increased national attention — and traffic — wasn’t totally welcome.
Stay informed on the latest news
Sign up for WPR’s email newsletter.
“I like the good old days — when nobody talked about who they voted for,” Joan Bernarden of New Berlin said. “Just go in and vote.”
“I’m really tired — tired of the advertisements, and working downtown, they’ve been here enough, don’t you think?” she asked.
Chuckling, Bernarden said she already voted early because she “needed it just to be done, in my brain.”
Michelle D’Acosta said the election was “hard not to think about,” but that she’s been on the “outside” of election campaigns.
“My involvement is basically just informing myself on policies and issues,” she said.
“I’m just being hopeful,” she said. “And just hoping we can all live harmoniously together, regardless of the outcome.”
Candidates vying for every vote in Milwaukee area
But Milwaukee and its surrounding suburbs vote could make or break either candidate’s chances. Harris will need to shore up a sizable share of the vote in the Democratic stronghold, and her Friday event was aimed at young voters and voters of color. Trump is making an effort to chip away at some of that urban base, including among men of color.
Harris focused her remarks on pivoting away from a Trump presidency that she characterized as full of personal grievance at the Wisconsin State Fair Exposition Center in West Allis, the same Milwaukee suburb where she held her first public event after launching her candidacy in July.
“In this election we have an opportunity to finally turn the page on a decade of Donald Trump trying to keep us divided and afraid of each other,” she said. “We are done with it, we are exhausted with it, we are turning the page.”
Nearby, Trump returned to the Fiserv Forum, the same arena where he accepted the Republican nomination to be president at the Republican National Convention in July.
There, he focused on immigration and the economy.
“I will end inflation, I will stop the criminal invasion of our country — the biggest problem we have right now — and I will bring back the American dream,” Trump said.
Milwaukee is Wisconsin’s most populous city, and has long been key to Democratic campaign efforts in the state, while the surrounding suburbs were seen as reliably Republican. But Democrats have made inroads in those suburbs — sometimes referred to as the WOW counties of Waukesha, Washington and Ozaukee — while Republicans have made efforts to open field offices and engage urban residents of the city of Milwaukee.
Both Friday night events started late, and were the latest in a marathon series of events in swing states that both campaigns have been holding in the final lead up to Election Day. Polls show the race essentially tied in a number of swing states, including Wisconsin.
In the final Marquette University Law School Poll released Wednesday, Harris held a 1-point lead in the state, which amounts to a dead heat when accounting for the margin of error.
Harris focuses on ‘promise of America’
Harris’ Milwaukee event came after a full day of campaigning in Wisconsin. She also met with union workers at an IBEW hall in Janesville, at an event that also featured national union leadership and congressional candidate Peter Barca. She also attended a community event in the Fox Valley village of Little Chute.
At the state fairgrounds about 12,000 people packed into the exposition center, pressing up against barricades surrounding the stage hours before the event officially began.
Four students from Bayside Middle School — Simone, Amelie and Eleanor, 11, and Lilly, 12 — were among the crowd. They were excited for their first political rally, and despite the musical opening acts, to see Harris herself.
“We really want Kamla to win. I guess it’s not 110% affecting us now, but we want our futures to be great, too,” said Lilly.
Standing nearby, Simone’s mother, Shanna Gong, said the family will canvass for Harris this weekend as the campaign enters its crucial final few days.
“It’s a historic campaign and election, so we wanted our daughters to see, hopefully, the first female president speak — in our state, too,” she said.
Nearby, Shanelle Garrett said she drove in from Illinois because “I want to be a part of history.”
“My ancestors can’t be here. My mother is gone, my grandmother is gone, so I want to be part of something that’s gonna change America,” she said. Garrett said her central issue is women’s rights, especially abortion access, and that she’s nervous about Tuesday’s outcome.
“The naysayers, they’re not mentally — because of history — ready for a woman president,” she said.
Elected officials including Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, Milwaukee County Executive Dave Crowley and Sen. Tammy Baldwin spoke to the crowd beforehand.
So did comedian Keegan-Michael Key, half of the sketch comedy duo Key and Peele. Before the event began, he passed through the crowd taking selfies. At the podium before Harris’ speech, he said this election will be the most important of his lifetime.
Rally-goers also danced along to musical performances from hip hop acts, including GloRilla and Flo Milli.
Legendary Brooklyn rapper MC Lyte ended her set by imploring the crowd to vote.
“This is the situation. We must — we must — vote this season. There are no maybes about this scenario. That’s how serious it is,” she said. “Please, take this treasure of information with you to those who have not voted yet and stress to them how important it is that on Tuesday night we are celebrating because we put the right person in office.”
Some of the loudest cheers of the night came for Cardi B, who spoke but did not perform in advance of Harris’ speech. She said that she hadn’t planned on voting this cycle until Harris joined the race.
“She’s passionate, she’s compassionate, she shows empathy and most of all, she is not delusional,” she said. “Kamala recognizes that the country is at risk, that the economy needs to get stronger, that the cost of food and the cost of living is too high.”
The superstar also attacked Trump, calling him a “hustler,” and criticizing his recent comments that he would protect women “whether they like it or not.”
Then Harris took the stage, saying it was “good to be back in Wisconsin” — just two days after her last appearance in the state. She framed her candidacy as a choice between a Trump agenda of personal grievances against her own vision of middle class economic support and abortion access.
“It’s either going to be him (in the White House) on day one, walking into that office, stewing over his enemies list. Or when I am elected, walking in on your behalf with my to-do list.”
She said that her top priority would be lowering costs, and she pledged to cut taxes for a third of Americans, ban price gouging, and offer down payment assistance for homebuyers.
On these and other points, she stuck closely to her standard stump speech, which includes pledges to protect the Affordable Care Act as written, sign a federal protection for abortion access and expand Medicare to cover home care. She offered a personal example of her own experience caring for her mother, and framed support for elder and childcare and healthcare as promoting “dignity.”
“Values about the dignity of each of us and the responsibility of real leaders, to — unlike my opponent — not think that the measure of their strength is based on who you beat down, but the true measure of a leader based on who you lift up,” she said.
She told the Wisconsin crowd they would “make the difference in this election,” and said the room represented “the promise of America,” echoing themes from past speeches emphasizing bipartisanship and one of her signature issues of abortion access.
“In the women who refuse to accept a future without reproductive freedom and the men who support them,” she said. “It’s in the Republicans who never voted for a Democrat before but put the Constitution of the United States before party.
Trump returns to Fiserv Forum
Trump returned to Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum for his first rally in the city that he reportedly called “horrible” since the Republican National Convention.
Trump was around 70 minutes late to the event. But that didn’t seem to deter the crowd, some of whom were wearing yellow and orange reflective vests, a nod to Trump wearing a similar vest during his Green Bay rally on Wednesday. Trump donned that outfit as a reference to an ongoing back and forth between the campaigns over comments by a comedian who spoke at a Trump rally and called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” and President Joe Biden’s response.
“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters,” Biden said. “His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable and it’s un-American.”
As U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Oklahoma, took the stage about 50 minutes after Trump was set to speak, one person in the crowd yelled, “we want Trump.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke before Trump took the stage — the crowd erupted when he appeared.
Kennedy Jr. will appear on the ballot in the presidential election in Wisconsin on Tuesday, even after he attempted to get his name removed. While speaking to the crowd, he urged them to vote for Trump instead.
“I do not want your vote, I want you to vote for Donald Trump,” Kennedy Jr. said.
Once Trump took the stage he hammered on the economy and immigration. He called Harris a “low I.Q. person” and claimed he will “fix” the nation.
“Kamala broke it, and I will fix it. And we’ll fix it very quickly,” Trump said. “America will be bigger, better, bolder, richer, safer and stronger than ever before — it’s going to be, you watch.”
Trump spoke about the new U.S. Labor Department report, which found employers across the nation added 12,000 jobs in October. However, a report from NPR found that low number was likely due to the impacts of Hurricane Milton and Hurricane Helene.
However, Trump called that number “pitiful.”
“The economy stinks,” Trump said.
The former president suffered through some technical difficulties during the event. Some people in the crowd chanted “fix the mic” and “turn it up” minutes after he started to speak, leading Trump to take the microphone off the stand and hold it during his remarks.
“I think this mic (microphone) stinks by the way,” Trump said.
Trump also spoke about the integrity of elections in America during the rally, and he falsely claimed he won the presidential election in Wisconsin four years ago.
“I actually won it (Wisconsin) twice, but these are minor details,” Trump said Friday night.
However, Trump’s repeated claims about the election in 2020 have been debunked. Biden beat Trump by about 20,000 votes in Wisconsin four years ago.
Wisconsin Public Radio, © Copyright 2024, Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System and Wisconsin Educational Communications Board.
