Sept. 1 (UPI) — On Labor Day, both presidential campaigns are focusing on workers with the election just 65 days away.
Neither candidate has been on the campaign trail since Thursday with former President Trump in Pottersville, Mich. and Vice President Kamala Harris in Savannah, Ga.
Harris will travel to Detroit on Monday before being joined by President Joe Biden in Pittsburgh as part of the Democrat’s campaign’s targeting working-class voters across battleground states. She last had a campaign event in Michigan on July 17 in Portage during the GOP Convention in Milwaukee.
Trump won’t be on the road but there will be a video call with current and retired members of the United Auto Workers. The union, which has endorsed Harris, has nearly a million active and retired members, including about 134,000 in Michigan.
The Teamsters Union has said it is waiting for a private meeting with Harris before deciding which candidate to endorse in a race that polls show is extremely tight. There are 1.4 million Teamsters.
Trump last spoke at a private event at a manufacturing plant, Alro Steel, in Pottersville, Mich., near the state capital Lansing. This was his eighth campaign stop in Michigan this year.
Memorial Day typically signals the end of summer and the earnest beginning of the brass-tacks campaign season during presidential election years, and 2024 is likely to be even more intense given Biden’s withdrawal from the race and Harris assuming the Democratic mantle.
As it did in 2020, this year’s race could boil down to a handful of swing states. Trump has been visiting the upper Midwest states that carried him to victory in 2016, but then cost him the election four years later in a loss to Biden.
On Saturday, Trump has a rally planned in Mosinee, a small city in central Wisconsin.
The first ballots will be mailed out this Friday in North Carolina, where Harris’ running mate Tim Walz spent time on the campaign trail last week. On Sunday, the Minnesota governor was at the State Fair in Falcon Heights, a suburb of St. Paul.
“I think we know: Very difficult for a Republican presidential candidate to win the White House if they can’t win North Carolina,” Walz said Thursday during a stop at a campaign field office in Raleigh, according to CNN. In-person voting starts in Minnesota, South Dakota and Virginia two weeks later.
The Harris campaign also is investing time and money in Georgia and has spent more than $1.7 million in advertising money in the Savannah media market, according to data from the research company AdImpact.
Her advisers have reported that Harris remains an underdog in the race despite holding a slight edge in some polls.
The upcoming week will be critical to both camps as they intersperse time on the trail with preparing for the Sept. 10 debate in Philadelphia.
With abortion a key issue in the race, Harris’ “Fighting for Reproductive Freedom” bus tour will roll out Tuesday in Palm Beach, Fla., where Trump lives.
