With an ultra-competitive presidential election cycle nearing its home stretch, Vice President Kamala Harris continued her barnstorming of battleground states in Las Vegas on Sunday, rallying thousands of attendees on her economic and immigration policies and urging them to make a plan to vote and help take her “underdog” candidacy over the top.
In remarks lasting about 25 minutes, Harris did not announce any new policies but sought to generate support for her plans to lower the cost of living and address illegal border crossings, pitching herself as the only candidate in the race with proposals that will benefit Americans. The economy and immigration are consistently among the top issues among voters nationwide, and Harris has recently made up ground as being more trusted to address the issues, though lasting inflation in the wake of the pandemic has often harmed Democratic messaging on the economy.
The event was at the World Market Center in downtown Las Vegas — the same venue where former President Donald Trump rallied more than 6,000 supporters two weeks ago. Harris’ campaign opened up much more space for Sunday’s rally, and more than 7,500 people attended, the campaign said.
It marked Harris’ second stop in Las Vegas since President Joe Biden scrapped his re-election bid in July. She held a rally at the Thomas & Mack Center last month in front of more than 12,000 people, one of the largest Nevada rallies in modern political history. Harris also visited Nevada six times earlier this year, stumping for President Biden.
Nevada is squarely among the battleground states that could determine the winner of the presidential election, of which Harris has repeatedly described herself as the underdog. Polls consistently show a dead heat between Harris and Trump to secure the state’s six electoral votes — a reality that left some rally attendees dumbfounded.
“I am utterly flummoxed every morning when I wake up and I see polls where it’s a horse race,” said Jay Cloetens, a 55-year-old printer technician. “Is this parody or is this real? It’s so crazy, and yet it could go either way.”
Here are The Indy’s main takeaways from Sunday’s rally.
It’s the economy, stupid
Harris spent much of her speech outlining her already-announced plans to bolster the economy.
She touted proposals to provide $50,000 in tax breaks for people starting small businesses, increase the federal child tax credit from $2,000 to $6,000 for newborns and loosen college degree requirements for federal jobs.
The economy is top of mind for voters nationwide, but particularly in Las Vegas — a city dominated by the hospitality industry that was pummelled by the pandemic. Nevada’s job growth rate since the pandemic ranks first nationwide but the state’s unemployment rate is also near the top, while inflation (which is easing) has continued to outpace wage growth, according to data presented by state economists in June.
As child care costs have risen faster than wages, recent polling from the University of Maryland indicates more than 73 percent of Nevadans support raising the child tax credit to $3,600 and making it fully refundable (paid out even when a family doesn’t owe taxes), in line with pandemic-era child tax credits that expired in 2022.
Sin City is also the home of a rare source of agreement among both candidates: a proposal to end taxes on tipped wages, which Trump first proposed in June and Harris later backed in August.
Though Harris did not mention the policy at Sunday’s rally, Jasmin Newsom, a 19-year-old student at the College of Southern Nevada who attended the event, said she supported the policy — but found it irrelevant that Trump was first to propose it.
“I don’t feel like that means much though to us. She just cares about families in general,” Newsom said. “She didn’t grow up in a higher class like Donald Trump did, so she sees us lower class people more.”
Helen Coombs, a 68-year-old retiree who recently enrolled in Medicare along with her diabetic husband, said the Biden administration’s passage of the Inflation Reduction Act — which capped monthly insulin prices at $35 for Medicare recipients — was a lifeline for her family.
More housing — but what about on federally owned land?
Last month, Harris unveiled her plan to combat the nation’s affordable housing crisis — which she rehashed Sunday.
She championed her plan to build 3 million new housing units nationwide and provide $25,000 in down payment assistance for eligible first-time homebuyers.
“We must lower the cost of living because, while our economy is doing well by many measures, prices for everyday things like groceries are still too high,” Harris said.
However, absent from Harris’ remarks Sunday and her general housing plan is the topic of freeing up federally owned land for housing development. In Nevada, the federal government owns about 86 percent of the land, limiting its development and use, and the opening up of such lands has received bipartisan support from the state’s Republican governor, Joe Lombardo, and Democratic members of Congress.
In Las Vegas earlier this month, Trump vowed to free up federally owned land, stating that those areas would have “ultra low regulations” — a topic absent in Nevada lands bills stalled in Congress — and linked the opening of the lands to a pledge to grow the state’s film industry, though that policy is likely to be addressed on the state level, as has been proposed through tax credits.
Conservationists have argued that any lands bill should sufficiently protect the environment, and some critics of releasing federal lands for development have called for less urban sprawl and more upward development. The development of more land also requires potentially costly infrastructure and could strain or hinder public services in the case of wildfires or other natural disasters.
The immigration emphasis
Two days after visiting a stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona and adopting a stricter immigration policy, Harris largely stuck to her typical campaign rhetoric on immigration.
Harris’ new plan would go further than the Biden administration’s crackdown of illegal border crossings, increasing criminal charges for repeat offenders and requiring claims for asylum to be made at ports of entry.
She was a proponent of much leaner immigration enforcement policies — such as decriminalizing illegal border crossings — before becoming vice president, but polls have shown voters trust Trump more than her on immigration. If elected, Trump has vowed to conduct the largest mass deportation operation in American history.
At Sunday’s rally, Harris repeated policies meant to placate multiple wings of the Democratic Party, calling for a pathway to citizenship for people brought to the U.S. illegally as children, while also attacking Trump for torpedoing bipartisan legislation that would have given the Biden administration the authority to “close” the border — or cease processing most asylum claims — if the number of migrant encounters reaches a certain threshold.
Rally attendee Michelle Waters, 61, was particularly outspoken about Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, which has ramped up in recent weeks, punctuated by him echoing the baseless claim that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating people’s pets.
“We’re all immigrants, right? We all came from somewhere,” Waters said. “His wife is an immigrant. The whole United States is made up of immigrants.”
Appealing to Latinos
Harris called out Latinos specifically, saying that “Latina small-business owners are the fastest growing segment of our economy” and promising to tap into their “ambitious aspirations” and dreams through a $50,000 tax deduction for those starting new businesses.
It signified the campaign’s approach to winning over Latino voters, a crucial and growing voting bloc in Nevada. The Harris campaign’s appeals have featured ads targeting Spanish- and English-speaking Latino voters in swing states, including Nevada. The policy and community-focused ads touch on topics including public safety, the economy, immigration and health care without explicitly describing Latinos as a vital voting bloc.
A Telemundo poll released Sunday found Harris with a 14 percentage point lead among Latinos nationwide, a significant erosion in support from four years ago. A survey from UnidosUS found Harris with a 23 percent lead over Trump among Nevada Latinos, though that is still lower than Biden’s winning margin in 2020.
Noe Quintero, the son of Mexican immigrants and a Clark County fire captain, introduced Harris. Speaking at times in Spanish, he shared a story about himself as a father, husband and middle-class worker, highlighting his hopes for reproductive freedom and better health care for his daughter, who has a genetic disorder that affects her brain and development.
He made an economic case for supporting Harris.
“I want my children to live in a country [where] you don’t have to work multiple jobs to put food on the table,” Quintero said. “Vice President Harris is putting everyday, middle-class, working families first — families like mine, families like yours. She’s going to fight to cut costs and create union jobs that my community depends on.”
Reporter Tabitha Mueller contributed to this article.
