RALEIGH, N.C. — Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday helped pack diapers into packing containers of private care merchandise destined for North Carolina hurricane victims, agreeing with one helper who stated “it takes a village.”
“You are precisely proper,” Harris stated as she put two packages of diapers in every cardboard field that was positioned in entrance of her assembly-line type.
Harris met with Black leaders at The Pit Genuine Barbecue restaurant in Raleigh earlier than she joined volunteers who had been there to pack bandages, child system, child wipes, ache aid capsules and different gadgets for victims of Hurricane Helene, which tore by way of western North Carolina final month.
The vice chairman was overnighting within the state, which narrowly backed her rival, Republican Donald Trump, in 2020. Democrats are campaigning laborious to flip North Carolina into their column within the presidential election subsequent month. On Sunday, Harris was attending church in Greenville as a part of her marketing campaign’s “Souls to the Polls” effort to get out the vote and holding a rally.
The weekend journey was her second to the battleground state after it was struck by Hurricane Helene. The Democratic presidential nominee went to North Carolina final Saturday to survey the aftermath of Helene and pledged federal help for its victims.
Earlier than her aircraft left Washington, Harris informed reporters accompanying her that she regarded ahead to speaking with residents “at first to see how they’re doing within the wake of the hurricane.”
Democrats view North Carolina as swinging their approach this yr with its base of Black and college-educated voters, in addition to girls involved concerning the lack of abortion protections. However the aftermath of Hurricane Helene has change into a political flashpoint with former President Trump and his allies attacking the Biden administration’s response to the pure catastrophe.
At The Pit, Harris met with Black elected, religion and group leaders. Her marketing campaign didn’t launch an inventory of the individuals she met with.
After church on Sunday, Harris, a Baptist, was set to talk about her financial plans at a rally to generate help for early voting, which begins Thursday in North Carolina.
Making landfall on Sept. 26, Hurricane Helene resulted within the deaths of roughly 230 individuals and worn out roads, electrical energy and cellular phone service. Simply two weeks later, Hurricane Milton hit Florida this week and generated an estimated $50 billion price of injury and left a number of individuals lifeless.
Harris additionally visited Georgia after Helene struck there, too, along with just about attending briefings on the federal authorities’s response and rejiggering her marketing campaign schedule. She continued to journey for the presidential race with time spent this week in Nevada and Arizona.
Certainly one of her prime messages has been that there must be no value gouging by corporations in search of to make the most of shortages attributable to the hurricanes, a difficulty she has made central to her marketing campaign as a option to sort out inflation.
“To any firm or particular person that’s utilizing this disaster to jack up costs by way of unlawful fraud or value gouging, whether or not or not it’s on the gasoline pump, the airport or the lodge counter, we might be monitoring and there might be a consequence,” Harris stated at Friday’s briefing.
However Trump and his allies have falsely steered that catastrophe aid from the Federal Emergency Administration Company went to immigrants as an alternative of hurricane victims, whereas additionally suggesting that persons are not getting the total monetary help to which they’re legally entitled.
At a latest rally in Studying, Pennsylvania, Trump stated the response has been worse than throughout 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, which left practically 1,400 individuals lifeless and induced $200 billion in damages.
“North Carolina’s been hit very laborious and this administration has not carried out a correct job in any respect. Horrible, horrible,” Trump stated on the rally, including that Harris was “on a fundraising comedy tour whereas persons are stranded and drowning throughout a few of our best states.”
President Joe Biden has referred to as Trump’s falsehoods concerning the authorities’s response “un-American” and informed his predecessor to “get a life, man.”
