As Vice President Kamala Harris took the stage at the PNC Music Pavilion in Charlotte, North Carolina, women in line lamented that they had missed her speech starting. Just hours ago, just a few miles away, supporters began leaving the Gastonia Municipal Airport minutes after former president Donald Trump began to speak.
Harris elected to make one final stop in North Carolina as her opponent, former president Donald Trump, decided to do four stops in the state for the final weekend of campaigning.
Women filed into the pavilion with “Childless Cat Lady” shirts, a dig at Trump’s Senator JD Vance famously deriding women without children, and some Puerto Ricans wore shirts expressing pride in their heritage after comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” during Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden.
But Harris knew that North Carolina was still an uphill climb for her, first asking who in the audience had already voted and then petitioning them to get their friends to vote.
“For anyone who hasn’t voted yet, first of all, no judgment, but please do get to it,” she said, laughing. “And please take a moment to think about your plan for voting about when and where you will vote.”
Just earlier in the day, Representative Dan Bishop, the Republican nominee for attorney general in the state, bragged that the GOP had led early voting for the first time, which caused applause.
Harris’s words acknowledged that even though she has gained ground in the polls–particularly in states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan–she and the Democratic Party still have not figured out how to win North Carolina.
This isn’t to say Harris has entirely abandoned the other swing states. Earlier in the day, she campaigned in Atlanta and she plans to close out the campaign in must-win Pennsylvania. But Democrats want to keep the Tar Heel State back in their grasp.
“We had the best organization on the ground that we’ve had here since 2008,” Jaime Harrison, the Democratic National Committee Chairman, told The Independent. That year holds a special spot in Democrats’ hearts because Barack Obama became the first Democratic presidential nominee to win the state since Jimmy Carter did in 1976.
Obama would go on to lose the state to Mitt Romney in 2012 and Trump would keep it in the GOP in 2016. Trump would win it again in 2020, albeit by a smaller margin.
“We win this state, we’re going to win the whole ball game,” Trump said while speaking in Gastonia. “And we’ve won it twice before, and we won it quite easily.”
Trump commented that the crowd size was about 20,000 people. Trump flipped several rural counties that historically voted for Democrats when first picked up the state and kept them in his column.
But Harrison said that the turnout in Charlotte, which the Harris campaign later said was around 10,000 people, symbolized the energy.
“Just look at this rally in North Carolina on a Saturday, football day,” he said, noting how college football was on. “And everybody’s on their feet because they understand the energy and the unity that Kamala Harris just brings.”
Trump has tried to create distance between himself and the down ballot in North Carolina, particularly Mark Robinson, the candidate for governor. And indeed, while Bishop showed up at the rally, Robinson was not at the rally in Gastonia.
“Both have odd trends that we haven’t seen before on their behalf,” Michael Bitzer, a politics professor at Catawba College, told The Independent over text message. “Tell me how many Republicans defect from both Trump & Robinson (and maybe down the ballot)—the Nikki Haley GOPers. Would not try and predict in this environment.”
But many people at the rally said they felt hopeful that Harris could pull off a victory.
“When I come to these type events, it gives me hope and it keeps me, gives me the motivation to keep going,” Janice Lewis from Davidson told The Independent.
Lewis said this time would be different for the Democrats.
“I think people have had four years of Donald Trump, they know how horrible it was and they really don’t want to do it again,” she said.
Ina Campbell from Charlotte said she had not seen the vice president speak and said she was more slightly excited to become the first female president.
“just because she has the potential of becoming the first female president of this country,” Campbell told The Independent. Campbell said she also was canvassing her apartment complex as well.
But even as early voting closed on Saturday, too much remained unclear.
“Hardest year to read I can remember,” Bitzer said. “Think there will be a clear sense of something we haven’t thought about that will be evident late Tuesday night.”
All the while, Trump was preparing to hold another rally in Greensboro on Saturday before he held another rally in Kinston on Sunday