VP hopeful Kamala Harris, in historic Fort Worth stop, calls on Black Texans to vote
Vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris made a historic campaign stop Friday in Fort Worth, speaking to a mostly Black crowd in a field outside a church about the importance of “honoring our ancestors” by voting in Tuesday’s election.
The Democratic senator from California, representing herself and presidential hopeful Joe Biden in a last-minute push to win Texas over the Republicans, arrived just before noon Friday at Meacham Airport in a twin-engine Bombardier business jet.
She then rode in a motorcade to First St. John Baptist Church in southeast Fort Worth, where an excited group of about 300 people waited to greet her, sitting in lawn chairs that were spread 8 to 12 feet apart for social distancing. The location of the gathering in the Mitchell Boulevard neighborhood had not been publicized prior to the event, to prevent overcrowding, and many of the attendees were quietly invited by the Democratic Party.
In a speech that lasted nearly 30 minutes under a warm autumn sun, Harris, wearing a blue blazer and athletic shoes, accused President Trump and other Republicans of trying to suppress the vote of people of color, using tactics such as questioning the credibility of voting by mail.
“Why do we think so many powerful people go out of their way to make it difficult and confusing for us to vote? I think the answer is, they know our power,” Harris told the crowd, speaking on a stage set up with the leafy Cobb Park as a backdrop. “They know that, when we vote, things change.”
Harris’ stop during the homestretch to election day shows just how much of a toss-up state Texas has become. In Tarrant County, several races for Congress and five state House seats — all firmly held by Republicans for years — are now believed to be up for grabs for Democratic candidates.
For Tarrant County, Harris’ visit was one of the most high-profile presidential campaign stops in decades.
Then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton visited Fort Worth on the eve of his election in 1992, and he returned to the city for an early campaign visit in 1996. But since then, the Fort Worth area has not been considered a competitive ground for Democrats in many statewide and federal races — until now.
Harris’ speech focused on several areas in which she accused the Trump administration of failure, including the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the lack of a comprehensive health care plan and an inability to deliver better-paying jobs for more Americans.
Among those attending was Marie Holliday, an Arlington resident and dentist with offices in Fort Worth.
“There’s no doubt we’re a swing state,” Holliday said.
Fort Worth businesswoman Rosa Navejar also attended, saying she hoped for new leadership at the federal level to get the spread of the virus under control.
“This has been handled so poorly,” said Navejar, who has had family members struck by coronavirus.
Before Harris was introduced, Bishop Kenneth Spears, pastor of First St. John Cathedral, led the crowd in a rendition of the gospel song “Never Would Have Made It.”
Spears was followed by Rebecca Acuna, Texas state director of the Biden-Harris campaign, who told the crowd she had arrived in the United States as an undocumented child, with her family. Acuna said she eventually gained citizenship through the federal immigration program that allows so-called “Dreamers” who arrived in the U.S. illegally to gain citizenship — and this week had cast her first-ever ballot for a president, for Biden and Harris.
“There could be no better first, because Kamala Harris embodies the hopes, the dreams and the aspirations of all of us,” Acuna told the crowd. “Her story says to the world that, in America, anything is possible, that is the place where the kid of an immigrant can rise to the U.S. Senate and to the White House in just one generation.”
Harris acknowledged several dignitaries in the crowd, including U.S. Reps. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, and Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Dallas. But she spent most of her 30 minutes on stage speaking directly to the crowd of everyday residents, many of them in their 50s and older.
She started by thanking Texans as a whole for “doing your thing” and turning out more than 9 million strong for early voting. She then reminded guests of the importance of getting as many people as possible to vote on election day Tuesday.
She pulled no punches on Trump, saying he should have been honest with Americans back in January when he was briefed on the seriousness of the coronavirus — only to withhold that information from the public. Trump later said he kept quiet because he didn’t want to panic the country.
“He sat on that information. He called it a hoax,” Harris said. “He suggested that on his ledger of who people are, you’re on one side of his ledger if you wear a mask, and you’re on other side of his ledger if you don’t. Can you imagine as parents, as teachers, as small business owners what you might have done if on Jan. 28 you had known what the president of the United States had known?”
She told the crowd that the virus has not only killed more than 220,000 people, but left potentially millions of others with long-term health care challenges. That includes many people who have recovered from COVID but now have chronically scarred lungs — which, she said, could qualify as a preexisting condition for those seeking a new health insurance policy.
This story was originally published October 30, 2020 at 12:27 PM.
