Politics
Harris holds final California fundraisers before the November election
Vice President Kamala Harris wrapped up her final California fundraising swing before the November general election on Sunday at a star-studded event in downtown Los Angeles.
Donors were asked to contribute between $500 and $250,000 to attend the event at the J.W Marriott at L.A. Live, but could chip in as much as $926,300, according to an invitation to the event. The money is split between the Harris campaign, the Democratic National Committee and state parties.
Singers Alanis Morissette and Halle Bailey performed as hundreds of attendees noshed on duck egg rolls, beef Wellington and lobster rolls prior to the Democratic nominee taking the stage shortly after 4:30 p.m.
Harris repeated familiar themes, warning Democrats not to be complacent and saying she viewed herself as the underdog in a very tight race with former President Trump.
“Every four years we say this is the one. This here is the one,” Harris said about the November election. “This election is about two very different visions for our nation and we see that contrast every day on the campaign trail.”
Calling Trump an “unserious man” whose return to the White House would have dire and dangerous impacts on the nation’s future, Harris received a rousing response from the crowd when she spoke about her debate with the former president, her vow to sign legislation establishing federal protection for abortion rights and her prediction that she would be victorious in a little more than a month.
“Let me be clear, we are going to win,” Harris told a crowd that included Stevie Wonder, Keegan-Michael Key, Demi Lovato, Jessica Alba, Lily Tomlin and Reps. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) and Pete Aguilar (D-Redlands).
Harris’ remarks largely mirrored those she made at a fundraiser at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco on Saturday.
Shortly after 6 p.m. on Sunday, Harris flew out of LAX en route to a campaign rally in the battleground state of Nevada — one of the states she will spend the bulk of her time in the remaining weeks before the election.
Roughly $55 million was raised at the two California fundraisers, according to Harris’ campaign.
Politics
Harris ripped for 'word salad' after heckler interruption during campaign speech: 'The gibberish never ends'
Vice President Kamala Harris was mocked by the Trump campaign and other conservatives online for a “word salad” after a heckler interrupted her speech in Nevada on Thursday night.
“You know what?” the vice president said in Reno, Nevada after shouting could be heard from the audience as she spoke. “Let me say something about this.”
“We are here because we are fighting for a democracy. Fighting for a democracy. And understand the difference here, understand the difference here, moving forward, moving forward, understand the difference here.”
“What we are looking at is a difference in this election, let’s move forward and see where we are because on the issue, for example, freedom of choice,” Harris continued as the heckling went on.
TRUMP SUES CBS NEWS FOR $10 BILLION ALLEGING ‘DECEPTIVE DOCTORING’ OF HARRIS’ ’60 MINUTES’ INTERVIEW
RENO, NEVADA – OCTOBER 31: Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, speaks during a campaign rally at the Reno Events Center on October 31, 2024 in Reno, Nevada. With five days to go until election day, Vice President Kamala Harris is campaigning in Arizona and Nevada. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
“That’s OK,” Harris said as the voices of her supporters drowned out the heckling. “That’s alright. That’s OK.”
“You know what? Democracy can be complicated, sometimes it’s okay. We’re fighting for the right for people to be heard and not jailed because they speak their mind. We know what’s at stake.”
Harris quickly drew criticism from conservative critics on social media.
MARK CUBAN TRIES TO ‘CLARIFY’ AFTER COMMENT ON ‘THE VIEW’ WIDELY SEEN AS INSULT TOWARD PRO-TRUMP WOMEN
Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally on October 28, 2024 (Brandon Bell/Getty Images))
“Kamala spirals after ANOTHER speech is interrupted by protesters,” an account run by the Trump campaign posted on X.
“CRACKS UNDER PRESSURE,” Trump adviser Stephen Miller posted on X. “CHOKES EVERY TIME. Not a quality you want in the commander-in-chief.”
“She is the word salad Queen!” Author Tom Young posted on X.
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at the Resch Center, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
“The gibberish never ends,” Fox News contributor Tammy Bruce posted on X.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Harris campaign for comment but did not immediately receive a response. “
“Nevada, I am here asking for your vote,” Harris told the crowd. “I am asking for your vote. And here is my pledge to you, and I got your back, as president, I pledge to you to seek common ground and common sense solutions to the challenges you face. I am not looking to score political points.”
“I am looking to make progress. And I pledge to listen to experts, to listen to those who will be impacted by the decisions I make and to listen to people who disagree with me. Because that’s what real leaders do.”
Politics
In scramble to flip another district blue, Democrats hope Rep. Kiley is too MAGA for Sacramento suburbs
ROCKLIN, Calif. — Riling up voters to support Democratic congressional candidate Jessica Morse a few weeks ahead of election day, Robert Sherriff, a retired science teacher, wore a hat he designed himself that read, “Make America Think Again.”
The silver-mustached 63-year-old, who also wore a shirt that read “Save Democracy, vote nonfiction,” has lived in Placer County for more than 20 years. Once a more moderate, no party preference voter, Sherriff is now a registered Democrat and fed up with Donald Trump supporters like his congressman, Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin.)
He thinks his conservative neighbors here in the Sierra foothills where old gold country merges with swanky Sacramento suburbia are, too.
“[Kiley] has tied himself to many of the MAGA policies, but a lot of Republicans here have become disenfranchised with all that,” Sherriff said at a Greek restaurant in a Rocklin strip mall this month where Morse held a campaign event.
Robert Sherriff, 63, hands out donation envelopes for congressional candidate Jessica Morse at a campaign event at 4 Heroes Grill in Rocklin, Calif., on Oct. 22, 2024.
(Mackenzie Mays / Los Angeles Times)
Placer County is home to more than half of voters in California’s sprawling 3rd Congressional District, a 450-mile swath of the state that spans the Nevada border from Lake Tahoe to Death Valley. About 39% of voters in the district are Republicans, but it’s bluer than it was years ago — probably in part due to a migration of residents from the liberal Bay Area to more affordable inland cities such as Rocklin and Roseville during the pandemic.
Trump beat Joe Biden here by just 1.78% in 2020.
Democrats scrambling to flip some of California’s red districts in an effort to win control of the House hope enough Republicans and independent voters will be turned off by Kiley’s Trumpisms and instead vote for Morse, a former national security expert for the U.S. Defense Department who has campaigned on popular issues such as abortion access.
Morse, 42, of Roseville, is a wildfire resilience specialist for the state who spent time in Iraq working for the federal government after studying international relations at Princeton. In 2018, she lost a bid against Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Elk Grove) in another attempt to turn a red district blue.
Kiley, a Harvard- and Yale-educated attorney who grew up in Granite Bay, a wealthy Placer County suburb, was considered a moderate Republican when he was elected to the California Assembly in 2016, supporting former Ohio Gov. John Kasich for president over Trump. But he has since marched further right, championing opposition to California’s vaccine and mask mandates during the worst of COVID-19.
The 39-year-old freshman congressman has emerged as a relentless critic of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, a fact that helped him receive Trump’s endorsement for Congress in 2022. As some Republicans have distanced themselves from the controversial presidential nominee, Kiley has remained in lockstep with Trump on issues such as immigration and gender identity; shared stages with top MAGA activists such as Charlie Kirk and frequented right-wing media.
“Kevin Kiley represents the next generation of the MAGA movement,” Morse said. “He and JD Vance are trying to normalize this, which is why we have to flip this seat.”
Jessica Morse holds a “Morse for Congress” sign alongside supporters near her campaign headquarters in Rocklin, Calif.
(Mackenzie Mays / Los Angeles Times)
Kiley’s brand is centered on a constant churn of blog posts and dissenting speeches in Congress railing against Democrats and how their policies have hurt California. In news releases promoting Morse, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has said Kiley embodies “the worst kind of hyper-partisan, power-craven politics.”
But on the ground campaigning for reelection, Kiley said that he is focused on issues such as crime and the cost of living and that politics comes up “hardly ever.” He pointed to his recent support for the Lake Tahoe Restoration Re-authorization Act alongside Democrats in Congress as a proud — and bipartisan — accomplishment.
“I get the need to try to create sort of a partisan angle on everything, it’s the nature of our current political climate. But that’s just not the way that I approach my job. And it’s frankly not the sort of feedback I get from voters,” said Kiley, who unsuccessfully ran for governor in the 2021 Newsom recall election.
Just as Morse ties Kiley to Trump and Vance, Kiley ties her to Newsom. Morse was appointed by Newsom as deputy secretary of forest resources management for the California Natural Resources Agency in 2019.
His unrelenting focus on Newsom could work: More than 56% of voters in District 3 voted for Republican state Sen. Brian Dahle (R-Bieber) for governor over the Democratic incumbent in 2022.
“In this area, we have maintained a quality of life that doesn’t exist in other parts of California. We don’t have the level of waste and crime and homelessness that you have in places like L.A. and San Francisco and even Sacramento,” Kiley said during a TV debate with Morse hosted by KCRA this month. “But that could change if we don’t have the right representation.”
Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin) campaigns for governor in Clovis, Calif., in the 2021 recall election against Gov. Gavin Newsom.
(Craig Kohlruss / Fresno Bee)
Kiley and his supporters have thrown water on Democrats’ attempts to make the district seem competitive in the final weeks leading up to election day, saying the support for Morse is because of her association with Newsom and not because they think they can actually flip the district.
Newsom’s Campaign for Democracy PAC recently sent supporters an email naming Morse among four candidates who could help Democrats win control of the House, painting it as a way to ensure “Trump Protection.” But the California Democratic Party has not prioritized her campaign or financed it in the way that it has done in the most competitive congressional races.
The nonpartisan Cook Political Report has labeled several California districts as competitive toss-ups but rated District 3 as “likely Republican.”
Trump is embraced by some constituents in the massive district, which includes conservative rural counties such as Plumas, Sierra and Inyo. Just last month, the Nevada County GOP hosted an event in Kiley’s district featuring Laura Loomer, a far-right activist and Trump ally who even Republicans have condemned for her spread of conspiracy theories.
Despite Trump’s pattern of lies, Betsy Mahan, chair of the Sacramento County Republican Party, praised the presidential nominee as “authentic” and said California voters view him as someone who keeps his word and disrupts the status quo.
“I don’t think [Kiley] is in any danger at all, to be honest,” Mahan said. “This is just gaslighting by the Democrats.”
Kiley, though, seems less sure. In a text message sent to voters by his campaign on Wednesday, Kiley said the success of his race “will come down to getting out the vote this last week” and “we need all the help we can get.”
When asked by The Times if he is worried about his district going Democrat, he said, “Every district in the country — all 435 — are competitive.”
Morse, who was beaten by Kiley in the primary by more than 13 percentage points, is optimistic.
Jessica Morse gives a speech to supporters at 4 Heroes Grill in Rocklin, Calif.
(Mackenzie Mays / Los Angeles Times)
After a debate watch party at a gyro and kebab shop in Rocklin — a suburb at the center of her district that is both whiter and more conservative than most of California — she warned that the state and nation are at a crossroads.
Supporters cheered as she told them that “the swingiest” voters can be convinced in the final days leading up to the election.
“We are going to go find them. We are going to get them,” she said. “We are going to flip the seat because the issues we face are real. They are serious. We can actually shape the future that we want and that we deserve.”
In a tight presidential race, Pennsylvania, with its 19 electoral votes, will very likely decide the winner. And the state, which Donald J. Trump won in 2016 and President Biden won in 2020 by narrow margins, is up for grabs.
That’s clear in Berks County, which lies about 60 miles northwest of Philadelphia where flourishing Democratic suburbs melt into conservative, rural Pennsylvania.
The mountains and low hills that make up most of the county are sprinkled with small towns and farms, while the county seat, Reading, is Pennsylvania’s fourth-largest city, with a substantial Latino majority. In 2020, Mr. Trump won the county by around 8 percentage points, the narrowest margin of the 54 counties that he won across the state.
Berks is “a big bag of marbles,” said Matthew Orifice, a longtime resident of Boyertown, Pa., “half of which are blue, half of which are red.”
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Mr. Orifice, 56, says that people in the area with very different politics have come together on practical matters, like lobbying for school programs threatened by budget cuts.
He and more than two dozen Berks County residents interviewed this month described the county as a place that was mostly neighborly despite deep political disagreements. But nearly all of them worried that the growing toxicity of national politics had endangered that sense of community.
Frustrations Over Cultural Division
People’s views are much more polarized on issues like abortion, L.G.B.T.Q. rights and immigration. And each side blames the other side’s party leaders for the rise in political tensions.
In a mostly white county that is also home to a large and growing Latino population, opinions on race and immigration can be complex. Trump supporters outside the city often described Reading in grim terms, but some said they liked the city’s current mayor, a Democrat and the first Latino to hold the office. Inside the city, some Latino residents felt strongly that too many people were coming into the United States and relying on government services.
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The people who were really sowing discord, many Trump supporters insisted, were the Democrats with their emphasis on race and gender, particularly in schools.
“The people in power are splitting people into all these special groups,” said Randy Bleyer, 68, a retired machinist at a local polymer plant. “They’re pushing division.”
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Shavona Johnson, 37, who works for the state’s Department of Corrections, said she believed that the Democrats were trying to foster racial conflict to get votes and that the contentious debates about accepting refugees were just another part of that strategy.
She said she fully supported Mr. Trump’s proposal to round up and deport everyone who was in the country illegally. “There’s some countries that won’t even allow Americans to get citizenship,” she said. “Why do we have to be the one that’s open?”
Supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris said there were other issues more important to them, including abortion rights and reducing healthcare costs.
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Many said they were also deeply uneasy about the condition of the social fabric in Berks County. Several said that Mr. Trump had stirred up a small but belligerent subset of supporters who seemed to have become more hostile as the election approached.
“It’s a daily bombardment of hatred,” said Liz Groh, 62, who works at a restaurant in a suburb of Reading.
Who Can Bridge the Divide?
When Gary Simmons and Luther Crosby sat and joked at Mr. Simmons’s house in the countryside, it was easy to see the neighborly Berks County that many spoke about.
Mr. Crosby, 73, is a white Vietnam War veteran who helps Mr. Simmons tinker with old cars, and he is a staunch Trump supporter, proudly advertising his sardonic right-wing politics in a mosaic of bumper stickers. Mr. Simmons, 65, a Black man who served as a Marine and worked in a steel mill, is not as outspoken about his support for Ms. Harris, but he gets a kick out of his friend’s brashness.
Both men are worried about the vitriol in the country. But even as they echo one another in lamenting the political division these days, they have fundamental disagreements on which candidate would best bridge those divides. And they’re not alone.
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Mr. Crosby insisted that giving away too much money in foreign aid, while not being strict enough with border enforcement, had left the country a mess. But he thought it had become harder to fix because of unbending partisanship. “When did that ever start?” he asked. “I thought we were one country.”
Gary Simmons and Luther Crosby
Mr. Simmons agreed with some of this, though he was not as nostalgic as his friend. When he moved from Reading to rural Berks County around 50 years ago, he said in an interview before Mr. Crosby’s visit, he had a “hell of a time” as one of the few Black students in his school. He believed things had changed for the better since then.
But then came 2016 and Mr. Trump’s arrival onto the political scene. Mr. Simmons said some of those old, hateful sentiments returned.
“I don’t know how much longer the Lord is going to have me here to see all of this carrying on, but he cannot ever step foot in that office again,” Mr. Simmons said of Mr. Trump. “I think the man is just a ticking bomb.”
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