By Andrea Shalal and Steve Holland
MALVERN, Pennsylvania/SWANNANOA, North Carolina (Reuters) – Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris campaigned with former Republican lawmaker Liz Cheney in Pennsylvania on Monday, as rival Donald Trump visited North Carolina amid worries storm damage will depress turnout among conservative voters in the state.
Painting Trump as a threat to democracy, Harris urged Republican voters in Pennsylvania to put the country’s interests over those of the party by voting for her. She will also campaign in Wisconsin and Michigan on Monday with Cheney, who told Republicans Trump was a “totally erratic, completely unstable” person who should not be reelected.
“In many, many ways Donald Trump is an unserious man, but the consequences of him being president of the United States are brutally serious,” Harris, the vice president, said at the event in Malvern, Pennsylvania, one of seven battleground states expected to decide the winner of the Nov. 5 election.
With polls showing the race is a dead heat, the two candidates are picking up the pace of campaigning with a little more than two weeks to go until Election Day.
Harris also sought to cast herself as a candidate representing “a new generation of leadership,” distancing herself from President Joe Biden.
Harris is turning to Cheney to try to enlist support from more Republican voters wary of handing the former president another four years in the White House after a tumultuous 2017-2021 term.
Cheney and her father Dick Cheney, who was vice president under George W. Bush and is still vilified by many Democrats for his bullish defense of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, are staunch conservatives and two of the most prominent Republicans to have endorsed Harris.
In a post on his Truth Social platform on Monday, Donald Trump called Cheney “dumb as a rock” and a “war hawk.” He accused her of wanting to go to war with “every Muslim country known to mankind”, just like her father, who he called “the man that ridiculously pushed Bush to go to war in the Middle East.”
‘A TRAGEDY’
Trump visited North Carolina on Monday amid concerns from his Republican allies that crippling damage from storm Helene will depress turnout in the battleground state’s conservative mountain regions.
“Obviously, we want them to vote but we want them to live and survive and be happy and healthy, because this is really a tragedy,” Trump said at a campaign stop in Swannanoa after touring areas destroyed by the storm.
He said many Americans felt left behind by their federal government and renewed unsubstantiated claims that the response from the Biden administration has been slow, accusations the White House has rejected as misinformation.
Trump also promised to rebuild every home destroyed by the hurricane and cut bureaucratic red tape, if elected.
Both Harris and Trump have a shot at winning North Carolina, and their campaigns are fighting hard for every vote. Polls show the two candidates running about even in North Carolina.
The area hit hardest by Helene is deeply Republican. Trump won about 62% of the vote in 2020 in the 25 counties declared to be a disaster area after Helene, while Biden won about 51% in the remainder of the state, according to a Reuters analysis.
North Carolina lawmakers passed legislation on Oct. 9 that included several measures aimed at making it easier for residents affected by Helene to vote.
But some Republicans are worried even a slight downturn in Republican turnout in the area could result in Harris winning the state and could be pivotal in a close election.
(Reporting By Steve Holland and Andrea Shalal, Writing by Nandita Bose, editing by Ross Colvin, Lincoln Feast and Deepa Babington)
