Plus, Harris says Trump “devalues” women’s ability to make their own choices, and inside the final stretch of Ohio’s key Senate race.
Closing arguments in battle for Congress focus on abortion and immigration
Both parties are zeroing in on very different issues as they make their closing arguments to voters in the battles that will determine control of the closely divided House and Senate.
Abortion is the most-mentioned topic in Democratic closing ads, followed by immigration, health care, bipartisanship and taxation, according to an analysis of more than 300 TV ads from candidates and joint ads they ran with party committees. The analysis looked at ads, tracked by AdImpact, that aired Wednesday in competitive House and Senate races.
Meanwhile, immigration is the top topic in Republican ads, followed by Vice President Kamala Harris, taxation, President Joe Biden, and candidate character.
Democrats have gone all in on abortion: Every Democratic campaign in a competitive Senate race mentioned the issue in an ad on Wednesday, less than one week from Election Day.
That includes Democrats in red-state races like Montana and Ohio, where Democratic Sens. Jon Tester and Sherrod Brown are looking to win over voters who will likely be supporting former President Donald Trump.
Buckeye State battle: Speaking of Ohio’s Senate election, Henry J. Gomez and Ali Vitali were on the trail in the state this week as Brown, the only Democrat besides Barack Obama who has won more than one statewide election in Ohio in the last 30 years, fights for political survival against Republican Bernie Moreno.
The race, which polls show is deadlocked and could tip control of the Senate, has already drawn more ad spending than any other Senate contest in history, eclipsing the $412 million spent in Georgia’s 2020 race between Jon Ossoff and David Perdue. The Brown-Moreno battle is about to surpass the $500 million mark, according to AdImpact.
While Brown has focused on the abortion issue, he has avoided talking too much about national political figures from either party in his increasingly red-leaning state. Conversely, Moreno is spending the final week of his campaign rallying with a retinue of MAGA-world favorites like Donald Trump Jr. and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
Harris says Trump ‘devalues’ women’s ability to make their own choices
PHOENIX — Kamala Harris said Thursday that Donald Trump’s remarks this week about protecting women whether they “like it or not” is another sign of how he “devalues” women.
“His latest comment is just the most recent in a series of examples that we have seen from him in his words and deeds about how he devalues the ability of women to have the choice and the freedom to make decisions about their own body,” Harris told NBC News in an exclusive interview.
The vice president also argued that most Americans “believe that women are intelligent enough and should have and be respected for their agency to make decisions for themselves about what is in their best interest,” rather than the government or Trump “telling them what to do.”
Trump on Wednesday said that his “people” had instructed him not to say that he wanted to “protect the women.”
“I said, ‘Well, I’m going to do it, whether the women like it or not.’ I’m going to protect them,” Trump said during his rally Wednesday in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Trump is campaigning outside of battleground states. Is that confidence or hubris?
Donald Trump is swerving off the battleground map this week to host rallies in New Mexico and Virginia — states that haven’t voted for the GOP presidential nominee in two decades and where he lost by double digits in 2020 — and he is flirting with a trip to New Hampshire.
His campaign is newly confident that he is in such good shape to beat Kamala Harris that he can afford to divert his focus from the seven main battlegrounds the two sides have focused on for the entirety of the race.
The question is whether his campaign is high on its own supply or grounded in a reality that public polls have missed. In the vast majority of independent surveys in New Mexico, Virginia and New Hampshire in recent weeks, Trump has trailed by more than 5 points.
But Trump and his team are seeing indicators that suggest he could break into unexpected territory with a wind at his back over the closing week of the election.
Trump is focused on driving turnout in the countdown to Election Day, one campaign official said, and part of the strategy includes hammering away at drawing a contrast with Harris over the pillars of his closing argument: immigration, inflation and foreign wars.
There is no indication that Trump has all or any of the big seven swing states — Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina — in the bag already. Trump lost in 2020 by less than 44,000 votes spread across Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin. He will need to flip several of the battlegrounds to reach the 270-vote threshold in the Electoral College and win back the White House.
The decision to campaign outside of those venues — including a Madison Square Garden rally in deep-blue New York and a news conference in GOP-tilting Florida on Wednesday — has led some Republicans to infer that Trump is overruling the political pros on his team.
