Harris campaign pounces on Trump rally

Going into the final weekend before Election Day, the Harris campaign is continuing to remind voters of comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s joke at a Trump rally last Sunday that referred to Puerto Rico as an “island of garbage.” 

A senior Harris campaign official says internal data shows the vice president is winning over battleground voters “who have made up their minds in the last week” — and by a double-digit margin. The campaign, in a phone briefing with reporters, attributed voters’ late break to Harris to the negative response to that joke, as well as to former President Donald Trump’s violent rhetoric in the closing days of the campaign, including his recent remark using violent imagery to disparage former Wyoming GOP Rep. Liz Cheney.

“All of these things are breaking through to the American people and in the closing days of his campaign, [Trump] is clearly focused, as the vice president has said, on his ‘enemies list,’ which is getting longer,” the campaign official said.

What was intended to be a joke about Puerto Rico spawned widespread anger among Latinos, a critical voting bloc. Across battleground states, hundreds have signed up to volunteer for the campaign since Sunday. Celebrities with millions of followers, like Bad Bunny and Jennifer Lopez, publicly announced their support for Harris this past week. Spanish-language newspapers have also endorsed the vice president. Latino organizations have also stepped in to help with field operations to mobilize the undecided voters. 

According to Harris campaign officials, part of the recent growth across the battleground states stems from Puerto Rican voters, many of whom live in Pennsylvania. 

Pennsylvania, with its 19 electoral votes, is home to over 1 million Latinos and more than 472,000 are of Puerto Rican descent. In a tied race that will be determined by the slimmest of margins, the Latino vote is highly coveted.

Sarah Michitsch, a Puerto Rican voter living in Pennsylvania, told CBS News she initially had not planned to attend the Harris campaign rally in Harrisburg Wednesday, but was motivated after the incendiary remarks at the Trump rally. 

“I’ve always voted Democrat,” she said. “I was gonna vote Democrat, regardless, but it motivated me to get up, put my flag on, and come here today.” 

Puerto Rican flags were scattered across the crowd at the Harris rally. Many of her supporters expressed passion for their roots and disdain for the jokes directed toward the island. 

“You just gave us more Latino power, more Hispanic power,” Natalie Dozier, who is of Puerto Rican descent, told CBS News. She described the Trump rally rhetoric as “disturbing” and “devastating.” 

“And to talk about trash, we’re gonna take out the trash on Election Day,” Dozier said.

In the aftermath of the controversy over the joke, a Trump senior adviser was quick to clarify that the jokes had not been vetted or approved in advance and said they were not a reflection of Trump or his campaign.

The former president has been trying to defend his position among Puerto Ricans. At a roundtable Tuesday in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, Trump claimed “no president has done more for Puerto Rico than I have” while he recounted helping the island in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017. “I got in there and took care of a lot of people.”

As president, Trump’s visit to the island after the hurricane is perhaps remembered most for his stop at a church, where he tossed paper towels to victims of the hurricane. At the time, two weeks after the storm, 90% of the island had no power, and many had no water. Trump also withheld $20 billion in hurricane aid for three years, arguing the money would just be funneled into paying off the island’s debt. In 2020, six weeks before the election, Trump released the aid.

The political arm of one of the largest Latino civil rights organizations, UnidosUS Action Fund, is working across Pennsylvania, Nevada and Arizona to help mobilize Latino voters for Harris. Though the group’s executive director, Rafael Collazo, believes the Sunday remarks are helping the vice president, he stresses that the group will keep ratcheting up its “aggressive field operations” in the final days to drive turnout among Latinos. 

“The challenge we will have is that a number of undecided Latino voters are very hard to reach through usual channels,” Collazo told CBS News, adding that campaigns must invest heavily in outreach including word of mouth, phone banking and door knocking. Since launching her presidential campaign, Harris has released 15 ads targeting Latino voters. The latest, an appeal to Puerto Rican voters, was released on Thursday and responds to the “garbage” Trump rally comment. The narrator says, “We are not trash” and goes on to say people in Puerto Rico are scientists, poets, educators, stars, heroes. 

Over 500,000 bilingual phone calls to Latinos have been made since August, according to a Harris campaign official, with the help of grassroots groups that have hosted phone banks across battleground states. These calls will continue up until Tuesday.

Both Harris and Trump are spending the last days of the campaign targeting Latino voters in Pennsylvania, among other stops. The two candidates will both stop in Reading, a city with a population that is over 69% Latino. On Monday, Harris will also rally in Allentown with Latinos, who make up over 54% of the population. 

contributed to this report.