Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance has scheduled a rally at Raleigh's Union Station on Thursday morning, hours before Democrat Kamala Harris and her running mate planned to speak in the area.
Vance, a first-term U.S. senator from Ohio and Donald Trump's running mate, is expected to speak at 9 a.m. Doors open at 7 a.m. Vance also scheduled a press event at the Charlotte Pipe and Foundry Co. in Oakboro later on Thursday, the Trump campaign announced Monday.
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Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, was scheduled to be in Raleigh on Thursday as part of a tour with her vice presidential pick. But Harris canceled the stop late Monday due to potential weather issues from the remnants of Hurricane Debby.
The visits to North Carolina come as polls have tightened between Trump and Harris. Harris became the presumptive nominee after President Joe Biden announced on July 21 that he wouldn't run for reelection.
A Morning Consult poll conducted in late July showed Trump with a 45%-to-44% edge over Harris with other presidential candidates on the ballot. Axios reported that the Trump campaign has begun significant spending on television advertising in North Carolina, which has been considered a notch below the top swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.
It will be Harris' eighth visit to the state in 2024. Vance hasn't visited North Carolina since becoming Trump's vice presidential pick. Trump held a rally in Charlotte on July 24, his first rally after Biden's announcement.
Trump carried North Carolina in 2016 and 2020, though his margin in 2020 was less than 1.5%, the tightest of any state that Trump carried in his losing reelection bid.
North Carolina's 16 electoral votes are considered crucial to Trump's election effort. The last Democrat to carry the state in a presidential campaign was Barack Obama in 2008. Biden in 2020 and Obama in 2012 were able to win the White House without carrying the state.
Vance, 40, rose to prominence after publication of his 2016 family memoir "Hillbilly Elegy," which later was turned into a movie. Vance, once a vocal critic of Trump, won his Senate seat in 2022 with Trump's endorsement.
In announcing Vance's visit, the Trump campaign attacked Harris for the current administration's "weak, woke and dangerously liberal policies," highlighting Monday's downturn in the stock market, inflation, illegal immigration and conflicts in the Middle East.