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Vice President Kamala Harris let her T-shirt do the talking in Detroit on Saturday.
The black shirt — which she wore under a gray blazer as she addressed several hundred campaign volunteers in a gym at Western International High School — bore the words “Detroit vs. Everybody.” The attire was a clear response to former President Donald J. Trump, who last week disparaged what is one of the nation’s largest majority-Black cities, portraying Detroit as a decaying harbinger of America’s future under Ms. Harris.
In brief remarks to the crowd on the inaugural day of early voting in the city, Ms. Harris urged her supporters to reject Mr. Trump’s division and insults.
“We stand for the idea that the true measure of the strength of a leader is not based on who you beat down, it’s on who you lift up,” she said, saying that her campaign was seeking the kind of “grit” and “excellence” possessed by “the people of Detroit.”
“He spends full time talking about himself and mythical characters, not talking about the working people, not talking about you, not talking about lifting you up,” Ms. Harris added.
Mr. Trump had attacked Detroit while giving remarks at an economic forum in the city on Oct. 10, earning widespread scorn from Democrats and offering fodder for a Harris campaign ad. “Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s your president,” he had warned of Ms. Harris.
Black voters, especially Black men, are supporting Ms. Harris with less enthusiasm than they had for the Democratic nominee in previous elections, and Mr. Trump has tried to take advantage. The Harris campaign has lately ramped up outreach efforts to Black voters, including by releasing an economic policy agenda designed for Black men. Turnout in Detroit could help decide the race in Michigan, one of the nation’s top battleground states, where polls show an even contest.
More than a million voters in Michigan have already returned their absentee ballots, according to state officials. Both candidates have been urging their supporters to vote early, and they are fighting over the sliver of undecided voters who remain.
Americans are increasingly casting their ballots before Election Day, allowing campaigns to focus more attention on turning out harder-to-reach voters. But Mr. Trump has falsely criticized mail voting as encouraging electoral fraud, complicating his party’s outreach efforts.
Mr. Trump spent Friday campaigning in the Detroit area, which is solidly Democratic, trying to peel away support from Ms. Harris among blue-collar workers worried about the economy and among Arab American and Muslim American voters, who have expressed anger over the Biden administration’s support for Israel in the war in Gaza.
In an apparent attempt to move past his criticisms of the city, Mr. Trump this time argued that his proposals would produce an economic boom there, suggesting that Ms. Harris’s tax proposals, in contrast, would result in “economic Armageddon.”
Mr. Trump also visited Hamtramck, Mich., a city just to the north of downtown Detroit, which has a significant Muslim and Arab American population and whose Democratic mayor endorsed him last month. Mr. Trump told supporters there that he urgently wanted to achieve peace in the Middle East. But he still offered praise for how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has handled the war in Gaza, saying that he was “doing a good job.”
On Saturday, he rallied with supporters in Pennsylvania, another battleground state that could decide the election. Both candidates and their allies are crisscrossing the battlegrounds in an effort to get out the vote with the election less than three weeks away.
Mr. Trump has reserved special criticism in his false claims about voter fraud for cities with large Black populations like Atlanta, Milwaukee and Philadelphia. In an interview with the pundit Roland Martin this week, Ms. Harris suggested that race was implicitly a factor in Mr. Trump’s choosing to talk about those cities.
“If you just look at where the stars are in the sky, don’t look at them as just random things,” Ms. Harris said. “Look at the constellation: What does it show you?”
On the campaign trail, she has begun deploying the power of celebrity to mobilize her supporters. In Detroit, she was joined by the popular singer Lizzo, a native of the city. On Saturday night, she will hold a rally in Atlanta with the R&B star Usher.
Speaking before Ms. Harris at the rally in Detroit, Lizzo also challenged Mr. Trump’s attacks on the city.
“They say if Kamala wins, this whole country will be like Detroit,” she said. “Well, I say proud like Detroit. I say resilient like Detroit. This is the same Detroit that innovated the auto industry and the music industry. So put some respect on Detroit’s name.”
Michael Gold contributed reporting from Detroit.
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