LAS VEGAS — Kamala Harris brought her “greatest hits” stump speech into Las Vegas Sunday night, aiming to capture swing state voters in an inflation-ravaged Nevada that hasn’t fully recovered from the COVID-era recession.
“I pledge to you as president, I will fight for all Americans and we will build a better future together,” she told the crowd, repeating her litany of accomplishments as California attorney general in securing settlements from banks and for-profit colleges.
Wearing a brown pantsuit, a chocolate colored blazer and a gold necklace, Harris pledged a $50,000 tax cut for small businesses, stating that “Latina small businesses” are the backbone of the area’s economy.
To a massive chorus of cheers, Harris promised a $25,000 grant to first time home buyers and to construct 3 million new homes and a $6,000 tax credit for a child’s first year of life.
In what could become a first, Harris said she would drop a college-degree requirement for many federal jobs, “and I challenge you in the private sector to do the same.”
She blasted what she described as a Trump plan to cut Social Security and Medicare, leading the audience in a chant of “Not Going Back.”
Harris has one of her slimmest leads in Nevada, a mere 1.5% over former President Donald Trump, 48% versus 46.5%. That tight margin may alarm Democrats, whose candidates won the state’s six Electoral College votes in the last four Presidential contests.
“We have reason for hope,” Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) told a crowd of what a Democratic Party spokesman said was “more than 7,500” packed into several sections of the World Expo Center here. “But we have to be a little afraid,” she added, given the closeness of this year’s contest.
That turnout might also be a signal of why Titus spoke of being “a little afraid.” Almost exactly two weeks ago, ex-Prez Trump drew more than 6,000 to this same venue, and the crowd waited patiently to hear the Republican nominee speak even as he arrived more than an hour late due to delays at a previous stop.
Economic issues dominate the election-year discussions in the Silver State. Thousands of hospitality workers lost jobs during the pandemic. While the famed Los Vegas Strip is once again bustling, working families are struggling. In August, the Congressional Joint Economic Committee said Nevada families are paying close to $1,200 a month or more to live under Biden-era inflation, nearly $100 above the national inflation-cost average.
Harris’s surrogates offered little in their warm-up speeches to address the economic situation: Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) said the veep would “create prosperity,” but gave no specifics.
Instead, Horsford and fellow Democrat Rep. Susie Lee harped on the “Project 2025” document — produced by the private Heritage Foundation and not a part of the GOP platform. Lee slammed her GOP opponent, Drew Johnson, as a 25-year Heritage Foundation veteran, eliciting boos from the crowd.
Sen. Jacky Rosen, as part of the warm-up for Harris, said Trump, VP nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) and her 2024 opponent Sam Brown “just don’t understand us.” She also hammered Brown for opposing “Question 6,” which would embed abortion rights in the state constitution.
Local Republicans seemed unfazed by Harris’s visit.
“A stop in Nevada does not change the fact that Nevadans feel they are worse off today than they were four years ago and are eager to return to President Trump’s policies and his track record of prosperity,” GOP spokeswoman Halee Dobbins said in a statement.
