Harris to hold rally in Las Vegas as Nevada becomes crucial swing state in election | US elections 2024

Kamala Harris will hold a rally in Las Vegas on Sunday evening as the six-electoral vote state becomes increasingly important in a presidential race in which polls show little favoring either candidate.

Both the vice president and Donald Trump have traveled frequently to Nevada, but Harris' move comes two days after her visit to the U.S.-Mexico border, a sensitive issue for Democrats that Harris wants to defuse.

On Friday, Harris walked along a towering, rust-colored border wall lined with barbed wire in Douglas, Arizona, and met with federal authorities to discuss illegal border crossings and fentanyl smuggling.

At a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, on Sunday, the former president tried to blame Harris for the opioid epidemic. “She even wants to legalize fentanyl,” he said.

According to the Pew Research Center, six in 10 Americans rate immigration as “very important,” and other polls suggest voters trust Trump can tackle the issue more effectively than Harris.

In contrast, less than half of voters (40%) said abortion, Republicans' biggest vulnerability, was a very important issue for their vote.

Speaking in San Francisco on Saturday, Harris said the “race is as close as it could be” and described it as “a race with a margin of error.” The Democratic candidate added that she felt like she was running as an outsider.

Democrats have also begun testing a new strategy to appeal to younger voters, including visitors to Las Vegas, long known for drunkenness, with posts about what they say is the so-called “Trump tequila tax.” could come as a result of the proposed import tariffs.

Harris' campaign breakthrough in Las Vegas comes as both candidates have announced they want to eliminate taxes on tips. Trump presented his proposal in the city in June; Harris used her own rally in August to make the same promise.

The issue concerns Las Vegas, where around 60,000 hotel workers are employed. Nevada's Culinary Union has endorsed Harris.

Ted Pappageorge, the culinary union's secretary-treasurer, told the Associated Press that the union supports Harris' proposal because it is committed to addressing what his union calls “subminimum wage.”

“It shows us she’s serious,” Pappageorge said.

Trump was at the same Las Vegas venue where Harris spoke earlier this month. In this speech, he called his opponent the “invading president-to-be.”