Trump heads West for campaign events in Nevada, Arizona as he looks to expand electoral map
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump embarked Saturday on a three-day campaign swing through the West as he looks to expand the electoral map amid polls that show him trailing Democratic rival Joe Biden.
Trump opens the tour with a campaign rally Saturday night at Minden-Tahoe Airport about an hour south of Reno, Nevada. Another rally is planned Sunday in Las Vegas, and a roundtable discussion with supporters is scheduled for Monday in Phoenix.
Campaign aides scrambled to find venues for the events in Nevada after local officials blocked their initial plans because they would have violated coronavirus health safety guidelines. Gov. Steve Sisolak has limited in-person gatherings indoors and outdoors to 50 people since May, a recommendation based on White House reopening guidelines.
Trump’s campaign had originally planned to host airport rallies in Reno and Las Vegas. But the Reno-Tahoe Airport Authority informed rally organizers that the 5,000-person event could not proceed after airport attorneys determined it would violate state and local COVID-containment directives.
The decision prompted outrage from Trump supporters who accused officials of canceling the events for partisan political reasons. Reno airport authorities forcefully denied those claims.
Officials at McCarran International Airport near Las Vegas said they never received a request for a Trump campaign event.
After the local officials’ objections, the Saturday night rally was moved from Reno to the much-smaller airport in Minden. In Las Vegas, Trump will host a roundtable discussion with a group of Latino supporters on Sunday and then rally supporters at a construction-equipment manufacturing facility in Henderson later that evening.
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Nevada Democrats slammed Trump for going ahead with campaign events there and accused him of putting politics above public health.
“After intentionally misleading the American people for months on end about the threat of the coronavirus, Trump continued to endanger Americans’ health by holding multiple in-person campaign rallies across the country, ignoring the White House’s own public health recommendations,” said state Democratic Party Chair William McCurdy II.
“Trump is ignoring everyday Nevadans as we pay the price for Trump’s crisis with our lives and our livelihoods,” McCurdy said.
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With Trump trailing in a number of battleground states, his campaign sees Nevada as an opportunity to expand the electoral map in his quest for 270 electoral votes needed to win a second term.
No Republican presidential candidate has carried Nevada since George W. Bush won there in 2004. Trump lost the state to Democrat Hillary Clinton by just 2 percentage points in 2016, but his campaign believes the inroads he has made among Latinos – a key constituency in Nevada – make the state competitive this year.
Still, Trump trailed Biden by 4 percentage points in Nevada in a New York Times/Sienna College poll released Saturday.
Both candidates have spent about $4.5 million in Nevada, while Trump has made $5.5 million in future reservations in the state and Biden has allocated $2.5 million, according to the ad tracking firm Kantar/CMAG.
Polls also show Trump lagging behind Biden in the crucial battleground of Arizona, a state he won by nearly 4 percentage points in 2016. Biden holds an average lead of 4.8 percentage points in the Grand Canyon State, according to the political website RealClearPolitics.
Michael Collins covers the White House. Reach him on Twitter @mcollinsNEWS.
Contributing: The Associated Press and James DeHaven of the Reno Gazette Journal
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