Under the Dome: Harris enlists Bill Clinton for campaign bus tour through Eastern NC
Good morning and welcome to the Under the Dome newsletter. I’m Avi Bajpai.
Vice President Kamala Harris is ramping up her outreach to rural voters, and is enlisting former President Bill Clinton in the effort.
After Harris holds a rally in Greenville on Sunday, Clinton is expected to hit the campaign trail with a bus tour across Eastern North Carolina beginning on Thursday, Oct. 17, the first day of early voting. The tour will run through Sunday, Oct. 20. In an announcement, the Harris campaign said it was deploying Clinton to specifically target “hard-to-reach” rural voters across the region.
Instead of campaigning for her at large rallies, Clinton will focus on “local fairs and porch rallies, talking to at most a few hundred people at a time” during his campaign appearances next week, CNN reported.
Before starting the bus tour in Eastern North Carolina, Clinton will make stops in Georgia on Sunday and Monday, according to CNN.
In the final stretch before the 2016 presidential election, when he was campaigning on behalf of his wife Hillary, Clinton held a two-day bus tour of the eastern part of the state that began in Rocky Mount and included rallies and events in Goldsboro, Greenville, Pembroke, Wilmington and Fayetteville.
During that campaign, Democrats were going up against Donald Trump for the first time.
Clinton told voters in Rocky Mount at the time that the former president’s foundational slogan “Make America Great Again” was familiar to him as a white southerner.
“I didn’t fall off this truck yesterday, I’ve heard this song a long time,” Clinton said. “It means first, I’ll give you the economy you had 50 years ago, and second, I’ll give you the society you had 50 years ago: I’ll move you up and move somebody else down.”
When he hits the trail next week, Clinton will focus on the economy, “convinced that this is the issue that the election will come down to for the voters on the fence,” CNN reported.
The frequency of visits by Harris, Trump, and their running mates and top campaign surrogates has picked up in recent weeks. Trump held a town hall with supporters in Fayetteville a week ago, and GOP vice-presidential nominee JD Vance held his own town hall in Greensboro last night.
Vance is also expected to appear at a NASCAR playoff race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway this Sunday, according to the Charlotte Business Journal.
EARLY VOTING SITES CLOSED BY HELENE DESTRUCTION
The State Board of Elections announced Thursday that Western North Carolina would have just five fewer early voting sites than originally planned due to destruction from Hurricane Helene.
“This is absolutely outstanding that our county boards of elections have pulled this off in Western North Carolina given the devastation and destruction left by Helene,” the board’s executive director, Karen Brinson Bell, told reporters.
The 25 counties included in the federal disaster area had originally planned on having a combined total of 80 early voting sites. Brinson Bell said that when early voting starts next week, 75 of those sites will open.
The state is still unsure of the scope of the damage to the 540 Election Day polling places in the 25-county disaster area.
“We will work with our state and federal partners to secure tents, trailers, portable bathrooms, generators and whatever else is needed to open as many polling places as possible on Election Day,” Brinson Bell said.
— Kyle Ingram
MORE HELENE-RELATED FACT CHECKS
▪ Danielle Battaglia looks into the claim made by the Harris campaign that U.S. Sen. Ted Budd and U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop joined other Republicans in voting “against FEMA funding” when they voted against a stopgap funding bill last month.
The bill contained a $20 billion replenishment of FEMA’s budget, but also included “a host of other provisions that have absolutely nothing to do with emergency management or disaster relief,” Western Carolina University political science professor Chris Cooper pointed out.
▪ Emily Vespa breaks down the facts behind a number of false claims that have been made by Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and others about FEMA’s funding and how it spends the money allocated to it by Congress.
▪ Mary Helen Moore speaks with climate and meteorology experts at UNC-Chapel Hill and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration about the false claim by U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene last week that weather could be controlled or artificially modified to create hurricanes.
These fact checks are the latest The News & Observer and Charlotte Observer have published since Helene barreled through the state. We’re also maintaining a comprehensive list of Helene-related rumors and myths that have been spreading across social media.
If you see a Helene or #ncpol rumor you’d like us to check out, email realitycheck@newsobserver.com.
VOTER GUIDE
In the latest candidate questionnaires from our 2024 NC Voter Guide, see what candidates for U.S. House District 2 have to say about the issues, and learn more about their biographies.
Two candidates answered our questions:
Green Party candidate Michael Dublin
Today’s newsletter was by Avi Bajpai with contributions from Kyle Ingram. Check your inbox Sunday for our special newsletter on the governor’s race.
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This story was originally published October 11, 2024 at 5:05 AM with the headline "Under the Dome: Harris enlists Bill Clinton for campaign bus tour through Eastern NC."
