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HOUSTON — Hoping to tip the scales in the final days of a deadlocked race, Beyoncé threw her support behind Vice President Kamala Harris at a massive and star-studded rally here Friday night, telling the crowd that America is “at the precipice of an incredible shift, the brink of history” as she stressed the chance to elect the country’s first female president.

The influential recording artist and Houston native made her entrance to the 2024 campaign before a full house at Shell Energy Stadium, a venue in East Downtown with a capacity just north of 20,000. Before the backdrop of an enormous bright blue screen emblazoned with the message, “Vote for Reproductive Freedom,” Beyoncé embraced the rally’s main theme: drawing a contrast between Harris and former President Donald Trump on abortion.

“I’m not here as a celebrity. I’m not here as a politician,” Beyoncé said. “I’m here as a mother — a mother who cares deeply about the world my children and all of our children live in. A world where we have the freedom to control our bodies.”

The rally, which closed with an abortion-centric speech from Harris, came several hours after Trump, the Republican nominee, stumped to supporters and reporters about border security at a private jet terminal in Austin — a destination chosen because he'd come to town to appear on Joe Rogan’s popular podcast show.

Harris alluded to Trump’s event when her speech was interrupted by a protester, quipping, “Just send him to that small rally down the street.”

The convergence of both presidential nominees in Texas with less than two weeks until Election Day was an unexpected turn for a state that both campaigns have all but ignored for the entire campaign. Harris has trailed Trump by several percentage points in most statewide polls, and her campaign has long made clear they viewed the state as prohibitively expensive and too big of a reach to contest.

But for both candidates, the state offered a symbolic backdrop to spotlight two of the campaign’s biggest issues: abortion and, for Trump, the border. Speaking for about 45 minutes, Trump stumped on border security and immigration, saying that, as vice president, Harris had allowed “the greatest invasion in the world” and left a “trail of bloodshed and suffering” across the country. Harris, meanwhile, sought to emphasize Trump’s role in appointing conservative Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional protection for abortion.

It was also a chance for both presidential candidates to promote their respective party’s nominee in an unexpectedly tight Senate race between incumbent GOP Sen. Ted Cruz and his Democratic challenger, U.S. Rep. Colin Allred of Dallas. National Democrats increasingly see Texas as their most realistic chance to pick up a Senate seat across an unfavorable map — meaning that if Harris wins in November, her hopes of working with a Democrat-controlled Congress could hinge on the Allred-Cruz outcome.

Cruz, who has spent considerable energy tying Allred to Harris, told reporters he was delighted to see the news of Harris' visit to Houston because it made the point that his campaign has been pushing all along: “Colin Allred is Kamala Harris.”

He said the two candidates were embracing and running as a single ticket for open borders, inflation and “letting criminals out of jail."

“I couldn’t ask for a better summation of this campaign then Allred and Harris arm-in-arm at the same time that President Trump and I are standing together,” he said. “That’s the clear choice Texans have, that’s the clear choice Americans have.”

Harris, meanwhile, told the crowd in Houston she was counting on them to elect Allred “so we can get right to work.”

“With Colin Allred in the United States Senate, when Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive freedom, I will proudly sign it into law as president of the United States,” Harris said.

Allred, addressing by far his biggest Texas audience of the campaign, was repeatedly interrupted by an invigorated crowd as he accused Cruz of summoning the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — an allusion to Cruz’s attempt to delay certification of the 2020 results in some states and probe unsubstantiated voter fraud claims.

Calling Cruz “too small for Texas” — and lowering his hand toward the ground for emphasis — Allred tried to contrast himself with the GOP senator by recalling how, during the Jan. 6 attack, he had steeled himself to defend the House floor if it came to it, while Cruz “hid in a broom closet.” He also blasted Cruz’s ill-fated trip to Cancún in 2021 as Texas was beset by a historic winter storm, which Cruz later admitted was a mistake.

Allred closed by attacking Cruz’s anti-abortion stance, a topic he has emphasized above all else in the final days of the campaign.

“In 10 days, we’re gonna beat Ted Cruz,” Allred said. “And when we do, we’re gonna make Roe v. Wade the law of the land again.”

During his speech, Trump briefly highlighted Cruz who he said "is always fighting" for the state and country.

"He’s got my complete and total endorsement," Trump said.

Trump was joined at his rally by several of Texas' top elected officials, including Cruz, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Attorney General Ken Paxton, Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller and Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham. Texas GOP Chairman George Abraham was also in attendance.

Also in attendance was the family of Vanessa Guillen, an Army private from Houston who was killed by a fellow Fort Hood service member.

Earlier this week, The Atlantic reported that Trump had promised the family to pay for her funeral. Later, the magazine reported he was enraged when the family sent a bill and said, “It doesn’t cost $60,000 to bury a fucking Mexican!”

Guillen’s sister and a family lawyer have panned the story and expressed support for Trump. “The magazine totally lied and misrepresented,” Trump said from the stage as he greeted the family and said he loved them.

Issues backdrop

Trump was also joined by the family of Jocelyn Nungaray, a 12-year-old Houston girl, who police say was killed by two Venezuelan men who were in the country illegally.

He pledged tougher policies to crack down on illegal immigration.

“Immediately upon taking office, I will launch the largest deportation program in history,” he said. He also called for giving the death penalty to “any migrant who kills an American citizen.”

Texas has been a key battleground in Republican resistance to the Biden administration’s handling of the southern border. Gov. Greg Abbott has gone head to head with the administration and other Democratic leaders with Operation Lone Star, which used state resources to implement physical barriers along the border and bused migrants to liberal cities farther north.

Trump on Rogan

Brian Smith, a political science professor at St. Edward’s University in Austin, said Trump’s motivation to come to Texas was simple.

“Donald Trump is here because Joe Rogan is in Texas, nothing really to do with how close [the presidential election] is or trying to help out Cruz,” he said of the comedian-turned-podcaster who made Austin his headquarters a few years ago.

Rogan’s podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, was followed by 14.5 million people on Spotify earlier this year. That audience is national and is largely made up of men – a favorable demographic for Trump, particularly those without a college education.

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller told reporters in Austin ahead of the Trump appearance that he thought Trump’s move to go on Rogan’s podcast was “brilliant” because it appealed to men under 45, a crucial demographic.

“That particular demographic doesn’t vote in high numbers, it’s one of the lowest numbers that turnout to vote,” Miller said. “So if he can make a move there of any percentage it’s a positive.”

Harris made an appearance earlier this month on Alex Cooper’s podcast “Call Her Daddy.” The podcast is the second most popular on Spotify, behind “The Joe Rogan Experience.”

Allred embraces Harris

Harris, meanwhile, made her first visit to Texas since she formally secured the Democratic presidential nomination in early August. Her team has long made clear they did not intend to make a play for Texas, citing the prohibitive cost of advertising across the state’s many large media markets and the need to focus on more closely contested states.

But while Harris has trailed Trump by several percentage points in most statewide polls, Allred has narrowed the gap in the Senate contest, running between 3 and 4 percentage points behind Cruz, according to FiveThirtyEight’s rolling average of recent polls

Allred has tapped out all the moderate Republican and independent voters he can get at this point, Smith said. So he’s now trying to mobilize the Democratic base, a large chunk of which is in Harris County, a Democratic stronghold.

Allred’s hopes of an upset depend in part on how he performs in Texas’ largest county, where the electorate has grown increasingly young, diverse and educated — trends that helped Democrats win control of county government in 2018 as Democrat Beto O’Rourke carried the county over Cruz by 17 percentage points.

Since then, Harris County’s voter rolls have swelled to nearly 2.7 million, making it home to about 1 in 7 of all registered voters in Texas.

In a countywide poll published last week by the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs, Allred led with 52% to Cruz’s 39%, with 7% undecided. Allred’s 13-point margin suggests he would need to win over a large share of the undecided bloc to match O’Rourke’s 2018 margin in Harris County.

“For him to get close, he needs Harris County,” Smith said. “He needs the bluest of bluest areas” to turn out big for him.

Allred has also increasingly leaned into the fact that he would be Texas’ first Black senator, along with his background as a civil rights lawyer. In a text to supporters this week seeking last-minute donations, Allred’s team wrote, “Black Americans have long faced far too many obstacles like discrimination and the racist voter suppression laws that Texas Republicans like Ted Cruz have championed.”

Additionally, Allred is set to appear Sunday at the 10,000 Black Men of Greater Houston Rally outside Houston City Hall. On Tuesday, he has scheduled a rally at Texas Southern University, one of the nation’s largest historically Black colleges and universities, with Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, his own state’s first Black senator and the senior pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. preached.

Carlos Nogueras Ramos contributed to this report.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/10/25/kamala-harris-trump-ted-cruz-allred-texas-beyonce-joe-rogan/.

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