ALLENTOWN, Pa. – Vice President Kamala Harris and former president donald trump They made their final presentations to voters Monday in the same part of Pennsylvania at about the same time, spending the last full day of the presidential campaign in a state that could make or break their chances.

Focusing on the southeast corner of Pennsylvania, Trump took the stage in Reading, about 30 miles from Allentown, where Harris held her own event about a half hour later.

“If we win Pennsylvania, we win the entire ball of wax,” Trump said. “It’s over.”

In fact, a Trump victory in Pennsylvania, which would change the 19 Electoral College votes, would break the Democrats’ “blue wall” and make it more difficult for Harris to obtain the necessary 270 votes.

Harris, the Democratic nominee, spent all of Monday in Pennsylvania, the biggest prize among the states expected to determine the Electoral College outcome, and offered an equally blunt assessment.

“We need everyone in Pennsylvania to vote,” he said. “You are going to make a difference in these elections.”

In addition to Allentown, Harris visited Scranton, President Joe Biden’s birthplace, and Reading, and had a stop planned in Pittsburgh before finishing with an evening rally in Philadelphia that would include Lady Gaga and Oprah Winfrey.

“Are you ready to do this?” Harris shouted Monday in Scranton, with a large handmade sign reading “VOTE FOR FREEDOM” behind her and a similar banner reading “VOTE” next to her.

Trump went first to North Carolina before visiting Reading. He then headed to Pittsburgh, on the opposite end of the state, before concluding in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he will hold his final campaign rally in the same place where he concluded his 2016 and 2020 campaigns.

Southeastern Pennsylvania is home to thousands of Latinos, including a sizable Puerto Rican population. Harris and her allies have repeatedly criticized Trump for a comedian’s dig at Puerto Rico during the former president’s main event at Madison Square Garden. Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe He referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”

“It was absurd,” said German Vega, a Dominican American who lives in Reading and became a U.S. citizen in 2015. “It upset a lot of people, including a lot of Republicans. It was not right and I feel like Trump should have apologized to Latinos.”

But Emilio Feliciano, 43, waited outside Reading’s Santander Arena for a chance to take a photo of Trump’s motorcade. He dismissed the comments about Puerto Rico even though his family is Puerto Rican, saying he cares about the economy and that is why he will vote for Trump.

“Is the border going to be secure? Are you going to keep crime down? “That’s what matters to me,” he said.

Harris told the crowd: “I stand here proud of my long-standing commitment to Puerto Rico and its people.”

“And I will be a president for all Americans,” she said, adding that “the momentum is on our side. Can you feel it?

Meanwhile, Trump limited himself to talking about his proposed crackdown on immigration. He called to the stage Patty Morin, the mother of Rachel Morin, 37, a mother of five who was found dead on a Harford County trail a day after she disappeared during a hiking trip. Authorities say the suspect in her death, Víctor Antonio Martínez Hernández, entered the United States illegally after allegedly killing a woman in his home country of El Salvador.

About 77 million Americans have voted early. A victory for either side would be unprecedented.

Trump’s victory would make him the first incoming president to be charged and convicted of a serious crime, after his hush money trial in New York. He will gain the power to end other federal investigations pending against him. Trump would also become the second president in history to win non-consecutive terms in the White House, after Grover Cleveland. at the end of the 19th century.

Harris is vying to become the first woman, the first Black woman and the first person of South Asian descent to reach the Oval Office, four years after she broke the same barriers to national office by becoming the second to command of President Joe Biden.

The vice president rose to the top of the Democratic ticket after Biden’s disastrous debate performance in June launched his withdrawal from the race — one of a series of upheavals that affected this year’s campaign.

Trump survived an assassination attempt in a hospital by millimeters demonstration in Butler, Pennsylvania. Your Secret Service detail thwarted a second attempt in Septemberwhen a gunman planted a rifle while Trump was playing golf at one of his courses in Florida.

Harris, 60, has presented herself as a generational change from Biden, 81, and Trump, 78. She has emphasized her support for abortion rights after the 2022 Supreme Court decision that ended the right constitutional to abortion services, and has periodically highlighted the former president’s role in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

Assemble a coalition that includes progressives like the US representative. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York to the former Republican vice president Dick CheneyHarris has called Trump a threat to democracy and late in the campaign even embraced criticism that Trump is accurately described as a ” fascist.”

Heading into Monday, Harris all but stopped mentioning Trump by name and called him “the other one.” She promises to solve problems and seek consensus.

Harris campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a call with reporters that not saying Trump’s name was deliberate because voters “want to see in their leader an optimistic, hopeful and patriotic vision for the future.”

Harris also offered some insights into her personal background as a politician that she doesn’t typically divulge. In Scranton, he talked about how he was once a longshot while running for San Francisco district attorney in 2002 and how “I used to campaign with my ironing board.”

“I would walk to the front of the supermarket, outside, and pick up my ironing board because, you see, an ironing board makes a great standing desk,” the vice president said, recalling how she would tape her posters to the outside of the board, fill the top with brochures and “require people to talk to me as they enter and exit.”

In Allentown, Harris met with rapper Fat Joe. He then made his own visit to Reading after Trump’s rally concluded, visiting the Old San Juan Café, a Puerto Rican restaurant, with Ocasio-Cortez. Both Fat Joe, whose real name is Joseph Cartagena, and Ocasio-Cortez are of Puerto Rican descent.

His supporters chanted “Yes we can” and “Kamala” as the vice president’s motorcade stopped. Once inside, Harris chatted with some diners, even mixing in “Thank you” and a few words in Spanish. The vice president later ordered cassava, yellow rice and pork and said, “I’m very hungry,” while noting that she has been too busy campaigning to find time for many meals.

Harris later did part of her own canvassing campaign, stopping at two homes in Reading while flanked by campaign volunteers.

“It’s the day before the election and I just wanted to stop by and tell you that I hope I earn your vote,” he said at one house.

The woman responded, “You already got my vote,” and said her husband would cast his vote the next day.

While standing in line for Harris’ rally in Allentown, Ron Kessler, 54, an Air Force veteran and Republican-turned-Democrat, said he planned to vote for the second time in his life. Kessler said he didn’t vote for a long time because he thought the country would “vote for the right candidate.”

But “now that I’m older and much wiser, I think it’s important, it’s my civic duty. And it is important that I vote for myself and I vote for democracy and the country.”

As recently as Sunday, Trump renewed his false claims that the US elections are rigged against himreflected on violence against journalists and said that ” He should not have left” the White House in 2021. – dark twists that have overshadowed another anchor of her final argument: “Kamala broke it. “I’ll fix it.”

___

Superville reported from Scranton, Pennsylvania. Barrow reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Makiya Seminera in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Zeke Miller, Will Weissert and Michelle L. Price in Washington contributed to this report.