Donald Trump’s weird move days before US presidential election
With both US presidential candidates running out of time to win over voters, Donald Trump has made a curious decision.
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Donald Trump has made an intriguing move days before the American presidential election, focusing his energy on a state that’s on practically no one else’s radar.
Today the Republican nominee held a rally in Albuquerque, the largest city in New Mexico – a state he lost by a significant margin in both 2016, by 8 per cent, and 2020, by 11 per cent.
New Mexico last voted for a Republican candidate when George W. Bush was re-elected in 2004, thanks in large part to his unusual popularity among Hispanic voters, and it has gone to the Democrats in seven of the last eight contests.
Usually, American presidential candidates spend the dying days of the campaign in the most important swing states. In this case, that would mean a lot of time in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona. But both Mr Trump and his opponent, Kamala Harris, have been popping up in surprising places.
A week ago Ms Harris held a rally in Houston, Texas, where she delivered remarks focused on abortion. The Republican-dominated state has one of the nation’s more restrictive bans on abortion, which came into effect after the US Supreme Court’s decision, in 2022, to overturn its landmark 1973 ruling in Roe vs Wade.
But Texas has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1976. Its huge haul of electoral votes, as the country’s second-most populous state, makes it an alluring target for the Democrats, but one that’s always just a little too far out of reach. It’s something of a white whale, you might say.
Meanwhile Mr Trump, on Sunday, held a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York, his home state for most of his life (after becoming president he switched his official residence to Florida, where his Mar-a-Lago resort is located).
New York last voted for a Republican when Ronald Reagan was re-elected in 1984. In each of the last four elections, it has chosen the Democrat by a margin of more than 20 per cent.
Mr Trump insists he might win the state, but this is something he also said in both 2016 and 2020, so take it with an Everest-high mountain of salt. Nothing in the public polling suggests New York is even remotely competitive.
(Ms Harris does appear to be underperforming Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, for what it’s worth, with an average lead of 17 per cent. Still, hardly a nerve-shredder.)
So, why hold rallies in states you can’t seriously hope to win?
Both Ms Harris’s Houston event and Mr Trump’s one in New York were presumably designed to draw more media attention than usual. A presidential candidate travelling to Pennsylvania is hardly noteworthy. A Democrat campaigning in Texas? That’s surprising enough to grab a headline or two.
And in both cases, it worked, though not all the attention garnered was positive.
‘I’m here for one reason’
Which brings us, perhaps, to one explanation for Mr Trump’s foray into New Mexico.
The event at Madison Square Garden turned into a bit of a PR disaster for him, due to a poorly received joke from one of his warm-up speakers, the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe. Mr Hinchcliffe labelled Puerto Rico, an American territory home to about three million US citizens, a “floating island of garbage”.
The remark has spread widely through the Puerto Rican community, and that has real ramifications for the election. There are about half a million Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania, for example, and more than a million in Florida – enough voters, in other words, to potentially play a decisive role.
By travelling to New Mexico, Mr Trump hoped to shore up his support among Hispanics. We can offer this analysis with confidence, because he said as much during his speech.
“New Mexico, look, don’t make me waste a whole damn half a day here, OK?” Mr Trump quipped to the crowd in an airport hangar.
“First of all, Hispanics love Trump. They do. True. I like them. They’re smart. They’re a lot smarter than the person running for president on the Democratic side.
“So I’m here for one simple reason. I like you very much, and it’s very good for my credentials with the Hispanic or Latino community.
“You know, on the east coast they like being called Hispanics. You know this? On the west coast they like being called Latinos.”
He proceeded to poll the crowd on which term it preferred (“Hispanics” got more cheers, if you’re interested).
Mr Trump went on to say that his advisers had told him not to visit New Mexico.
“Look, I’m only here for one reason. They all said, ‘Don’t come.’ I said, ‘Why?’ ‘You can’t win New Mexico,’” he said.
“I said, ‘Look, your votes are rigged. We can win New Mexico. We can win New Mexico.’”
He also claimed to have already won the state twice. To be clear: Mr Trump received 65,000 fewer votes than Ms Clinton in New Mexico, and 100,000 fewer than Mr Biden.
The Trump campaign would argue, of course, that his focus on New Mexico is a sign of strength; a sign that he is expanding the electoral map and competing in states that would normally be out of reach for a Republican (that is certainly the interpretation of his more vocal supporters online).
We will see whether that competitiveness is real, or a pipe dream, soon enough.
‘Political game’: Row erupts over rally’s location
There was a tinge of controversy around the rally. According to The Albuquerque Journal, New Mexico’s largest newspaper, Mr Trump’s campaign team actually wanted to hold it at the Albuquerque Convention Centre, in the city’s downtown area, but was rebuffed.
Instead, Mr Trump spoke in a private hangar at the airport, owned by CSI Aviation.
The convention centre’s manager, Ray Roa, told the newspaper this was due to previously scheduled remediation work on the city’s main water line, which runs through the building. That work, he said, had been on the calendar since late September.
However Dan Lewis, president of the local council, has alleged the Trump campaign was denied because of political bias.
“Just think about it. They just did Madison Square Garden in downtown Manhattan, right in the heart of the city of New York. There’s no reason why we couldn’t,” said Mr Lewis.
“Unfortunately, the city of Albuquerque has an extremely partisan mayor, a pawn to the Democrat Party, playing a political game with a presidential candidate.”
Mr Roa clarified, to The Journal, that neither the mayor nor any other elected official had pressured him to deny the Trump campaign’s request.
There is also no truth to suggestions by Mr Trump’s critics, online, that he was forced to use the airport hangar because of a whopping payment he still owes the city after a visit in 2019.
In September of that year, when he was president, Mr Trump held an event in Rio Rancho, a northern suburb of Albuquerque, and spent the night in the city. He was given a bill of about $US211,000, some it for police services, some for the use of barricades, and a $US133,000 chunk for the wages of government employees who had been unable to work due to the disruption, but were still paid their salaries.
Mr Trump didn’t pay, and accrued interest on the bill has since seen it more than double, ballooning to about $US450,000.
“Trump still owes Albuquerque half a million dollars and collections will keep reminding him about it until he pays,” the aforementioned mayor, Tim Keller, said in a statement.
However Mr Roa made it clear, in his own statement, that Mr Trump was unable to use the convention centre on this occasion due to the remediation works. The unpaid bill had nothing to do with the decision.
Originally published as Donald Trump’s weird move days before US presidential election
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