The Latest: Harris and Walz hold rally in Arizona, while Trump visits Montana
Vice President Kamala Harris and her new running mate held a rally in Arizona as part of their tour of electoral battlegrounds, visiting a state where Harris passed over a prominent Democrat in favor of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and gun control advocate, had been a top contender for running mate.
Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump is visiting Montana for a rally in support of Republican Senate candidate Tim Sheehy. The former president hopes to remedy some unfinished business from 2018, when he campaigned repeatedly in Big Sky Country in a failed bid to oust incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester.
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Here’s the Latest:
Harris tells Gaza protesters ‘now is the time to get a cease-fire deal’
Vice President Kamala Harris paused during a campaign rally in Arizona to directly address Gaza protesters who interrupted her remarks.
“Hold on a second,” she said Friday at Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale.
Harris said she has been clear that “now is the time to get a cease-fire deal” to end fighting between Israel and Hamas that has caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people in Gaza. The Democratic presidential nominee said she and President Joe Biden “are working around the clock every day to get that cease-fire deal done and bring the hostages home.”
Harris added that, “I respect your voices, but we are here to now talk about this race in 2024.”
She responded differently earlier this week when Gaza protesters interrupted her during a Detroit-area rally. She talked over the protesters.
Trump plane heading to Montana rally was diverted
Donald Trump’s plane was diverted on its way to Bozeman, Montana, due to a mechanical issue but landed safely in nearby Billings, according to a staff member at the Billings airport.
The former president was heading to Bozeman for a Friday night rally in support of Republican Senate candidate Tim Sheehy, who is challenging Democratic Sen. Jon Tester.
Trump’s campaign posted a video of him upon landing in which he said he was glad to be in Montana but did not mention anything about the landing.
Republicans ask Supreme Court to allow Arizona voter-registration restrictions to be enforced during legal fight
National and state Republicans are trying to get the Supreme Court involved in a fight over voter registration restrictions that Republicans enacted in Arizona in 2022 following President Biden’s narrow 2020 victory in the battleground state. In an emergency appeal filed Thursday, the Republicans want the justices to allow provisions to take effect requiring the rejection of some voter registration forms that don’t have proof of citizenship, while a lawsuit plays out.
The move came after a lower court blocked a requirement that called for state voter registration forms to be rejected if they are not accompanied by documents proving U.S. citizenship. A second measure, also not in effect, would prohibit voting in presidential elections or by mail if registrants don’t prove they are U.S. citizens. Federal law does not require proof of citizenship either to vote in federal elections or cast ballots by mail, though voters have to attest that they are U.S. citizens.
The high court is not expected to act before late August.
A confident Mitch McConnell says Republicans have avoided bad Senate nominees this cycle
Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell is expressing confidence that the GOP will be able to win a majority in the November elections because the party has avoided nominating the kinds of weak candidates that have lost tough races in the past.
“What is the key in winning a Senate election in a competitive state? Candidate quality,” McConnell told conservative voters Friday at “The Gathering,” an annual convocation hosted by influential radio host Erick Erickson. “I’m not going to mention names,” McConnell said, “but over the course of 10 or 15 years, in four or five instances, we have not had candidates that appeal to a competitive state.”
The Kentucky Republican was alluding to candidates like Herschel Walker, the controversial 2022 nominee who lost to Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in a year where Republicans swept all other statewide elections in the state.
Republicans need to net just two additional seats to command a majority in January, and it’s widely presumed that they already will pick up West Virginia, where Democratic-turned-independent Joe Manchin is retiring. Democratic Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Jon Tester of Montana are running in states former President Trump won twice and is expected to win again.
“We need to take the Senate as an insurance policy against what these people will do to the country,” McConnell said. The longest-serving Senate leader in history, McConnell is stepping down from his leadership post in the new Congress that will convene in January.
Mike Pence won’t vote for Trump — or Harris — and says GOP in 2024 is ‘unmoored’
Vice President Mike Pence confirmed Friday that he’s sitting out the presidential race this November. But he explained his decision with a complex mix of praise and criticism for Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump – and made clear he is not remotely interested in supporting Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
“I cannot endorse President Trump’s continuing assertion that I should have put aside my oath to support the Constitution, and act in a way that would have overturned the election,” Pence told an assembly of conservative activists hosted by radio personality Erick Erickson.
Trump has argued that Pence should have used his power presiding over the Electoral College to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
“President Donald Trump was not only my president, he was my friend,” Pence said, adding that is “part of what made the way our administration ended much more difficult.”
Pence said multiple times that he was proud of the Trump administration’s accomplishments, and he lauded Trump for his reaction to being nearly assassinated.
But the former vice president was critical of the direction the Republican Party has taken under the former president in his comeback bid. He was especially critical of GOP support for tariffs, a more isolationist U.S. role on the world stage and the move away from calling for a national ban on abortions.
“The fact that we have a platform that made no mention of the national debt, advocated massive taxes at our borders, and abandoning commitments we have to our allies around the world is troubling,” Pence said, explaining the current GOP identity as “a populism unmoored to conservative principle.”
Former GOP candidate Ron DeSantis says Harris-Walz candidacy ‘manufactured’ by a biased media
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, once viewed as Donald Trump’s most threatening GOP presidential primary rival, says Democrats are manufacturing Vice President Kamala Harris’ and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s candidacy “out of whole cloth.”
“This is all manufactured,” DeSantis said at radio host Erick Erickson’s annual conservative assembly, “The Gathering.”
DeSantis, who regularly complained about the national political media during his failed White House bid, reprised the approach Friday, arguing that “corporate media” are exaggerating Democratic enthusiasm since President Joe Biden ended his campaign and endorsed Harris.
“They’re trying to create a cultural phenomenon around this candidate and for her running mate,” DeSantis said.
He offered an especially harsh assessment of Walz, panning his fellow governor as a leftist who is posing as a man with Midwestern, heartland values.
DeSantis mocked Walz’s quip about conservative opposition to abortion rights and LBGTQ civil rights. “This from the guy who set up a COVID snitch line encouraging Minnesotans to tattletale on their neighbors.”
Republican elected officials and conservative commentators have in recent days hammered Walz for how he governed during the coronavirus pandemic.
For all his criticisms, though, DeSantis does not think running mate choices – Walz or Sen. JD Vance for Republicans – will affect the outcome in November.
Georgia Gov. Kemp calls Trump attacks ‘noise’ and says he’s still focused on winning
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp insists he’s not getting bogged down by Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump’s intraparty attacks over Kemp’s refusal to help overturn the 2020 presidential election.
The Republican governor called Trump’s recent broadsides at an Atlanta campaign rally and on the Truth Social platform “a lot of noise” and jokingly compared Trump to a tropical storm.
“This big storm came through the state this week – and now we’re dealing with Tropical Storm Debby,” Kemp said at conservative radio host Erick Erickson’s annual conference, “The Gathering,” in the Buckhead section of Atlanta.
Kemp repeated his pledge to support the GOP nominee and renewed his warnings that Republicans should stop focusing on the 2020 election and false assertions that Biden won Georgia and nationally because of fraud.
“We’re going to use our political operation to win Georgia despite past grievances,” Kemp told Erickson, adding that the efforts would “help Republicans up and down the ticket.”
Of course, Kemp’s political operation is focusing on competitive Georgia legislative districts that are key to maintaining GOP majorities at the statehouse, meaning potential Republican voters in other swaths of the hotly contested state may not be reached by the Kemp organization before November.
Throughout the discussion with Erickson, Kemp did not say Trump’s name.
Democrats and Republicans descend on western Wisconsin with high stakes up and down the ballot
For a brief moment this week, the fierce competition for swing voters in swing-state Wisconsin converged on the tarmac of the tiny Chippewa Valley Regional Airport.
Minutes after Vice President Kamala Harris landed with her new running mate Tim Walz for their first campaign stop in the state, Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance arrived. He walked across the tarmac to check out Air Force Two, just missing Harris.
The close encounter of the political kind could be written off as a coincidence if it happened anywhere other than Wisconsin, one of a small number of states that will not only determine the winner of the presidential race but could also shape the balance of power in Congress. But it sent a much louder signal that both parties understand the importance of a region that could tip the balance of power in more ways than one.
Harris and Walz head to Arizona, where a VP runner-up could still make a difference
Vice President Kamala Harris and her new running mate will hold a rally in Arizona on Friday as part of their tour of electoral battlegrounds, visiting a state where Harris passed over a prominent Democrat in favor of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and gun control advocate, had been a top contender for running mate. He’s won two tough races in politically divided Arizona.
In passing over Kelly, Harris may have also lost the chance to win over people like Gonzalo Leyva, a 49-year-old landscaper in Phoenix. Leyva plans to vote for former President Donald Trump, a Republican, but says he would have backed a Harris-Kelly ticket.
“I prefer Kelly like 100 times,” said Leyva, a lifelong Democrat who became an independent at the beginning of Trump’s term in office. “I don’t think he’s that extreme like the other guys.”
Trump heads to Montana in a bid to oust Sen. Tester after failing to topple the Democrat in 2018
With control of the Senate potentially at stake, Donald Trump is visiting Montana on Friday hoping to remedy some unfinished business from 2018, when he campaigned repeatedly in Big Sky Country in a failed bid to oust incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester.
Tester has tried to convince voters he’s aligned with Trump on many issues, mirroring his successful strategy from six years ago. While that worked in a non-presidential election year, it faces a more critical test this fall with Tester’s opponent, former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy, trying to link the three-term incumbent to Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
A win for the Harris-Walz ticket would also mean the country’s first Native American female governor
If Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are elected this fall, not only would a woman of color lead the country for the first time, but a Native woman also would govern a state for the first time in U.S. history.
Peggy Flanagan, the lieutenant governor of Minnesota and a citizen of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, is poised to serve as the state’s next governor should Walz step down to accept the role of U.S. vice president. Her rise to power has been watched closely by Indigenous peoples in Minnesota and across the country who see her as a champion of policies that positively affect Native Americans.