By Steve Holland, Jeff Mason and James Oliphant
NEW YORK/PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) -Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump will headline a rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday, a high-profile event in a state that last backed a Republican president in 1984.
Opponent Vice President Kamala Harris is traversing Philadelphia, the largest city and a Democratic stronghold in must-win Pennsylvania, and plans stops in a Black barbershop and a Puerto Rican restaurant to encourage people to vote.
Speaking at the Church of Christian Compassion on Sunday morning, Harris didn’t mention Trump by name. “In this moment we do face a real question: what kind of country do we want to live in?” she said.
Trump’s rally in Manhattan, like Harris’ event in Houston on Friday with Beyonce, hopes to lean on star power to support local congressional candidates ahead of the Nov. 5 election.
U.S. billionaire Elon Musk, who is supporting Trump’s reelection bid with his X social media platform, enormous wealth and cash giveaways that have raised legal questions will be among the featured speakers, the Trump campaign announced.
Trump, a New York celebrity for decades, will use the event at the iconic venue known for Knicks basketball games and Billy Joel concerts to deliver his closing argument against Harris.
“We want to close it out with a beautiful bang,” he said last week.
Polls show the rival candidates are neck and neck in the battleground states that will decide the next president with just over a week until Election Day. More than 38 million votes have already been cast.
Trump has been seeking to tie Harris to the Biden administration’s handling of immigration and the economy. Last week, Trump debuted a new attack line: “She broke it, and I promise you I will fix it.”
The U.S. economy has outperformed the rest of the developed world since the COVID crisis, and stock markets hit record highs this year. But high prices of food, utilities and housing have roiled voters, who believe the economy is headed in the wrong direction.
Harris, who held a rally with Bruce Springsteen in Atlanta on Thursday, will hold another high-profile event with a speech on Tuesday on the National Mall in Washington, where she will highlight contrasts between herself and Trump.
“He is full of grievance. He is full of dark language that is about retribution and revenge,” Harris said of Trump in response to questions from reporters on Sunday in Philadelphia.
Trump, who held a rally in Long Island, New York, in September, has said he is making a play for the state. Ronald Reagan’s reelection was the last time New York backed a Republican for president; Democrat Joe Biden won the state in 2020 by 23 percentage points.
‘SHOW OF STRENGTH’
By staging the attention-grabbing event in the world’s biggest media market, Trump could help boost Republican candidates in New York congressional races. The state has seven competitive seats that could help determine whether the party holds onto the U.S. House of Representatives next year.
It could also give Trump a boost in nearby northeastern Pennsylvania, a battleground state that has increasingly become home for New York commuters.
Trump’s campaign said the event at the 19,500-seat arena, which can cost upwards of $1 million to rent, was sold out. Tickets are free and on a first-come-first-served basis, as was the case with Harris’ Houston rally.
A crowd of some 30,000 people attended Harris’ rally with superstar singer Beyonce on Friday night in Houston, and about 20,000 attended the Atlanta rally.
“My internal polling is my instinct,” Harris said to reporters in Philadelphia when asked how the campaign is faring in its internal election projections.
“The momentum is with us,” she said.
After Sunday’s neighborhood Philadelphia stops, Harris plans to visit every battleground state in coming days, including a Madison, Wisconsin, rally and concert with folk rock band Mumford & Sons and a Las Vegas event with Mexican pop band Mana.
Trump’s 2016 presidential opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, has accused him of “re-enacting” a pro-Nazi rally that was held at Madison Square Garden in 1939 on the eve of World War Two. Trump’s critics have long accused him of empowering white supremacists through his dehumanizing and racist rhetoric.
Her comments drew a rebuke from Trump and Republican leaders.
“She said it’s just like the 1930s. No, it’s not,” Trump said at a rally in Michigan on Friday. “This is called Make America Great Again, that’s all this is.”
Other speakers at Trump’s Sunday event include Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the former independent presidential candidate who dropped out of the race and backed Trump; conservative commentator Tucker Carlson; and Howard Lutnick, who is chair and CEO of the financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald and co-chair of the Trump White House transition team.
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and owner of X, has traveled across Pennsylvania on Trump’s behalf and has given $119 million to his pro-Trump spending group that is helping turn out voters in the most closely contested states.
(Reporting by Steve Holland and James Oliphant in New York and Jeff Mason in Philadelphia; Editing by Colleen Jenkins, Heather Timmons, Andrea Ricci, Lisa Shumaker and Bill Berkrot)
