Capping their first week together on the campaign trail, Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz led a packed rally in Las Vegas on Saturday, filling every seat at the Thomas and Mack Center.
According to coverage of the rally by local outlets such as the Nevada Current, over 12,000 people attended the event, and an estimated 4,000 people were turned away by local law enforcement "over concerns people were overheating while waiting to get through event security in triple-digit heat."
With only 87 days until the election at the time of the rally, both the excitement and the crowd size associated with the Harris-Walz campaign has put a hitch in Donald Trump and JD Vance's giddyup, with Trump bemoaning his relatively puny turnout at recent events of his own.
At the Vegas rally, both Harris and Walz continued their established trend of focusing on the positive — a sharp contrast to Trump's recent rally in Montana, where he steered away from any talk of policy to call opposers "freakish" and make fun of their weight — with Walz telling the crowd that Harris and the campaign's supporters have reminded him that politics “can be about goodness.”
“It can be about smiling,” Walz added. “It’s hard work but we can be happy doing it. Kamala Harris has done something we should be forever grateful for. She has brought out the joy in our politics.”
Humble in her address, Harris described herself and Walz as “two middle-class kids,” according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, sharing an anecdote about having a summer job at McDonald’s in her youth and Walz "being the son of the Nebraskan plains" who grew up working on a farm.
“Think about it,” she said. “Only in America is it possible that the two of them would be running together all the way to the White House.”
“It is my promise to everyone here that when I am president we will continue to fight for working families, including to raise the minimum wage and eliminate taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers,” Harris said.
On Sunday, Harris will attend a major fundraiser in San Francisco to "court West Coast donors," according to NBC News. The event will be attended by Nancy Pelosi, who has represented San Francisco for nearly four decades in Congress.
