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March 29, 2024

Giuliani, Sanders help with final push for swing-state votes in Las Vegas

Rudy Giuliani Rallies Supporters at Trump HQ

Steve Marcus

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani speaks to supporters of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at Trump/Pence headquarters in Las Vegas Sunday, Nov. 6, 2016.

Updated Sunday, Nov. 6, 2016 | 5:21 p.m.

Bernie Sanders at CSN

Nevada Senate candidate Catherine Cortez Masto is embraced by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders at a rally at the College of Southern Nevada, Cheyenne Campus Sunday, Nov. 5, 2016. Launch slideshow »

Rudy Giuliani Rallies Trump Supporters

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani arrives to speak to supporters of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at Trump/Pence headquarters in Las Vegas Sunday, Nov. 6, 2016. Launch slideshow »

Top-level campaign surrogates were dispatched to Las Vegas today while Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were busy campaigning in the Midwest and on the East Coast, shoring up swing-state votes two days before Election Day.

The visits by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, for Clinton and Trump, respectively, came in the wake of a strong early voting performance by Democrats in the Silver State that had pundits projecting a possible blue wave for the state. Even so, Republicans have far from given up the fight, pumping up their get-out-the-vote efforts, gritting their teeth and insisting they still have a viable path to victory.

At the College of Southern Nevada’s Cheyenne campus, Sanders rallied the progressive troops for Clinton. He called the electoral system in the United States “weird,” since it allows a handful of states to exercise outsize influence in the election, noting that Nevada is one of those states.

He thanked the Culinary Union and other progressive groups for working so diligently during Nevada’s early-voting period to turn people out to vote. He also praised the union for fighting to give its workers a living wage and quality health care.

“What people here don’t realize is what the union has done,” Sanders said. “What the union has shown America is that you can make beds, you can clean floors, but you can earn a middle-class income with good health care.”

Sanders laid out his vision for a progressive future for America and contrasted that with Trump’s plan for the country, while lambasting Trump’s rhetoric, policies and past business practices.

“If you are so terribly concerned about outsourcing, why do you have factories in Bangladesh paying people 30 cents an hour? Why are you making your clothing line in China and Mexico? Why are you manufacturing your furniture in Turkey?” Sanders said. “Bring those jobs back to America.”

Despite all the rhetoric of the campaign cycle, Sanders told the crowd that the election isn’t a “personality contest” and urged those thinking about voting for Trump to take a “hard look at the issues.”

“You will find without a doubt in every area that Secretary Clinton’s positions are far, far, far superior to Mr. Trump’s,” Sanders said.

Democrats came out of early voting with a 56,000-person advantage statewide. The task now is for Democrats to try and hold onto as much margin as possible on Election Day, while Republicans attempt to play a game of catch up.

To win Nevada, Trump needs to win Washoe County and Nevada’s deep red rural counties. That’s why Giuliani traveled to Elko and Reno yesterday, encouraging tried-and-true Republicans to turn out to vote for the New York businessman.

In an interview, Giuliani said he made the voters in Elko promise that they’d have 100 percent turnout “because I think you can probably get 70 percent or 80 percent of the vote there."

But Giuliani’s trip to Las Vegas today proved that Trump’s campaign won’t be giving up urban, blue Clark County without a fight. He said that he’s found “tremendous enthusiasm” among the Trump volunteers in Las Vegas.

“These are the people you count on to get out the vote. These are the people who knock on the doors, make the telephone calls, make sure that the Trump vote gets out, and there’s no doubt there are enough voters in Nevada for him to win,” Giuliani said. “They just have to show up at the polls."

Though Democrats won early voting in Nevada by getting about 46,000 more of their voters to turn out than Republicans, Giuliani suggested that some of those Democratic voters may have cast ballots for Trump. He said he thinks Trump is performing well with blue-collar union workers by emphasizing how he plans to negotiate better trade deals for American workers.

“When you tell me they’re up by that number, it doesn’t worry me at all because I know a number of them are voting for Donald Trump,” Giuliani said.

He also slammed the Democratic turnout operation built by Sen. Harry Reid and the politically powerful Culinary Union as the “Harry Reid stink machine,” telling the crowd that he was suspicious of it.

“I’m just suspicious of Harry Reid,” Giuliani said in an interview when asked why he was suspicious of the Democratic operation in Nevada.

However, Giuliani said he is generally afraid that the Democrats will cheat in the election.

“Am I afraid that Democrats are going to cheat in certain places in America? If I wasn’t, I would be naive,” he said.

What Trump needs how, Giuliani said, is a “really good ground game," pointing to the 80 or so Trump supporters who had showed up to hear him speak at Trump’s Las Vegas campaign offices Sunday morning.

“It takes all these people you saw here — and that’s enough, that’s the kind of numbers you need,” Giuliani said. “There are more Trump voters than Hillary voters. We have to get them out."

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