This article was first published in the On the Trail 2024 newsletter. Sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox on Tuesday and Friday mornings here. To submit a question to next week’s Friday Mailbag, email onthetrail@deseretnews.com.
Hello, friends. 46 days until Election Day.
3 things to know
- The Latter-day Saint vote is suddenly a national story: in Arizona and Nevada, the Latter-day Saint population is big enough to swing the race. Both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are aware of this and are trying to sway Latter-day Saint voters to their side. On Saturday, Trump spoke about the importance of the Latter-day Saint vote while at a fundraiser in Salt Lake City. On Thursday, the Harris campaign rolled out a “Latter-day Saints for Harris-Walz” Arizona advisory committee. Read more here.
- Trump heads to North Carolina tomorrow, where he’ll attempt to clean up last night’s train wreck: the Republican gubernatorial candidate in that state, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, made dozens of problematic comments on a porn site’s message board, including calling himself a “Black Nazi,” CNN reported Thursday. Minutes later, Politico added that Robinson’s personal email address was registered on a website for married people seeking affairs. Robinson said he is staying in the race, which could weigh down Trump in the battleground state. Read more here.
- Both Harris and Trump are betting on their economic messages carrying them across the finish line with swing voters. Even as the immigration issue steals the spotlight (in Springfield and beyond), Harris and Trump are talking economy, economy, economy: in Flint, Michigan on Tuesday, Trump rallied up support from Black voters by pitching them on tax cuts; the next morning, Harris was in Washington, making her case to Latinos on building an “opportunity economy.” Read my coverage from the Trump event here, and the Harris speech here.
The big idea
Painting Kamala Harris as a centrist
A Harris-aligned super PAC is preparing an ad blitz with a tough mission: convincing conservative voters that Harris is a centrist.
PivotPAC, the super PAC behind the “Haley Voters for Harris” campaign, is prepping a $10 million ad buy that tries to present Harris as a moderate on key policy issues, like the economy and energy, in an effort to convince centrist and center-right voters to back her.
In a test ad obtained by the Deseret News, a series of voters — labeled as “lifelong conservatives” and “Trump voters” — push back against accusations that Harris is a far-left progressive.
“There’s nothing socialist about Kamala Harris,” one man says in the video ad.
The organization backing the ads debuted as “Primary Pivot PAC” during the Republican presidential primary, when it targeted Democrats in early voting states to get them to try to defeat Trump by voting in the GOP primary for Nikki Haley. After the primary, the PAC’s leading initiative rebranded as “Haley Voters for Biden,” an effort to push Haley’s thousands of Republican supporters to support the Democrat.
The group is not affiliated with Haley, who has endorsed Trump. Haley sent the group a cease-and-desist letter this summer.
“We’re interested in finding ways to reach the nearly 1 million Haley voters across the seven swing states with messages that we felt the Harris campaign and other organizations aren’t able or willing to say,” Schwartz said.
The group tested over a dozen different ads with thousands of voters. The most successful ad featured a two-time Trump voter in Alabama, who talked about Trump’s and Harris’ strategy on tariffs and the economy. At the end of the 30-second clip, he endorsed Harris’ plan.
Other ads reviewed by the Deseret News featured a series of conservative voters making arguments for supporting Harris, like an acknowledgement that electing her wouldn’t necessarily pave the way for a progressive agenda.
“Conservatives have a supermajority on the Supreme Court,” a voter in one ad says. “With a likely Republican Senate, those checks and balances will keep our country sane.”
PivotPAC hopes to roll out the ads on digital platforms in coming weeks.
The ads come as Harris faces criticism for flip-flopping on key issues, including her past opposition to fracking and constructing a border wall. Harris has repeatedly said her “values haven’t changed,” but many voters want to know what those values are: according to this month’s New York Times/Siena College poll, 28% of likely voters said they still need to know more about Harris, while only 9 percent said the same of Trump.
But moderating her positions on key issues may alienate her base, with less than 50 days until the election and polls at razor-thin margins. Harris is already facing backlash from progressives from her perceived rightward shift on immigration policy, a move her far-left supporters call “harmful,” Axios reports.
That’s where Schwartz’s group comes in: to make the argument Harris can’t, or won’t, make. The target audience is disaffected Haley voters, who know they don’t like Trump but don’t know Harris well. “He’s very well defined,” Schwartz said. “Defining Kamala is the more important part of what needs to be done right now.”
Poll pulse
- A majority of Americans say they support the mass deportation of unauthorized immigrants, according to a new Scripps News/Ipsos survey, including 86% of Republicans. Mass deportations are a major part of Trump’s policy platform, but he has offered little detail on how he would carry out the operation. A mark of how drastically U.S. public perception on immigration has shifted during the Trump era: only 25% of voters in the 2016 exit polls supported mass deportations.
- Harris’ favorability rating is above water for the first time since 2021, according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling average. In a matter of two months, since Biden exited the race, Harris dug out of a 17-point polling deficit (in July, 54% of Americans had unfavorable views of her, versus 36% favorable); now, an even share of Americans — 46.5% — view her positively or negatively. Meanwhile, Trump has enjoyed a small favorability jump in Gallup’s latest polling, up five points (from 41% to 46%) from the August survey.
Weekend reads
On Springfield: Backlash from Trump’s and Vance’s claims about Haitian migrants in Ohio continues. Springfield’s city manager told Vance’s office the rumors weren’t true a day before Trump spread them in the debate, The Wall Street Journal reports. The first Haitian-American member of Congress, former Utah Rep. Mia Love, told the New York Times she was “done giving Mr. Trump the benefit of the doubt,” after he has portrayed immigrants as “monsters.” And Vance’s intellectual roots get smart treatment in this Politico story.
Do Arizona and Nevada matter? If Trump wins Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, the West is obsolete, Jonathan Martin writes. “If Harris loses Pennsylvania, which her aides acknowledge is a highly challenging state, she’d still need to pick up one of the two Western states as well as one of the two Southern states to win — so long as she carries Michigan and Wisconsin.” Hence why Trump is pouring ad cash and attention into the eastern seaboard. The Actual Electoral Map Is Three States (Politico)
Harris has long faced criticism for not speaking to the press. This Axios report shows how little media she and Walz are really doing: since Harris became the Democratic presumptive nominee 60 days ago, Trump and Vance have done over 70 interviews and press conferences; Harris and Walz have done seven. The Harris-Walz media strategy: Hide from the press (Alex Thompson and Torey Van Oot, Axios)
See you on the trail.
Editor’s Note: The Deseret News is committed to covering issues of substance in the 2024 presidential race from its unique perspective and editorial values. Our team of political reporters will bring you in-depth coverage of the most relevant news and information to help you make an informed decision. Find our complete coverage of the election here.