October 4, 2016 | No Comments
FARMVILLE, Virginia — Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are ceding the spotlight on Tuesday night to their running mates, with particular pressure on Mike Pence to stabilize and defend a struggling campaign.
The faceoff between the two normcore vice presidential nominees comes as Clinton shows signs of starting to break away in both national polls and a handful of crucial swing states after Trump suffered a widely panned debate performance last week and a series of wounding headlines, many self-inflected.
Tim Kaine’s challenge is to nudge the presidency further out of reach for Trump, while deflecting attacks about Clinton’s penchant for secrecy and accusations of favor-peddling, as well as her use of a private email server at State Department and the Clinton Foundation’s practices.
Pence, on the other hand, has to turn the page on a week of controversy — from the leak of Trump’s 1995 tax documents to his feud with a former Miss Universe — and attempt to reframe the contest on more favorable terms before Trump and Clinton meet again Sunday. A Pence aide said a successful debate could provide a template for Trump in his coming debates.
For both, though, there are two overriding directives: don’t screw up, and look prepared to be president.
Pence, in particular, is shouldering a heavy burden. Poll after poll has shown voters skittish about whether Trump can be trusted in the Oval Offfice — recent polls suggest he’s viewed as temperamentally unfit by a two-to-one margin. Pence, a longtime congressman and second-term Indiana governor, has been Trump’s envoy to the Republican establishment and skeptical conservatives. He’s also been Trump’s unofficial translator, reframing his running mate’s routine rhetorical snafus as refreshing candor from a non-politician. The debate is the largest audience Pence will get to make that case more broadly.
Kaine’s camp says he’s girding for an aggressive Pence, who knows the GOP campaign is in need of a jolt.
“We expect Mr. Pence to come ready to attack because, they’ve admitted they’ve got to change the narrative tonight. That’s what we think Mike Pence is going to try to do,” said Karen Finney, Kaine’s communications director. “Sen. Kaine has a much easier task in that he doesn’t come in with that kind of cloud.”
Kaine will try to keep the Clinton campaign on offense over the Trump tax leak. The Democrats have attempted to paint Trump as a business failure who refused to pay his fair share following the revelation, leaked to the New York Times, that he reported a $916 million loss in his 1995 tax filing.
The Virginia senator (and former governor) will have home-court advantage too on the Farmville, Virginia, stage.
“Gov. Pence should expect that Sen. Kaine will push him on some comments the Trump campaign has made. And that may result in fireworks,” said Jen Palmieri, Clinton’s communications director. “What’s going to be on trial tonight is Donald Trump at the top of the ticket.”
Kaine holed up in Raleigh, N.C., and then his hometown of Richmond, Virginia, to prepare for the debate, using Farmville’s proximity to his home as an advantage. He picked up his parents from the airport on Sunday night and they went out to dinner, aides said. He also had barbeque with his campaign team on Monday night.
On Tuesday, he and his wife visited the Moton Museum in Farmville, which commemorates the town’s location as a student birthplace for the civil rights movement. And after days of cramming for the debate and weeks of campaigning across the country, Kaine took some down-time on Tuesday afternoon before the big showdown, aides said.
Clinton campaign aides said they wouldn’t be surprised if Kaine spoke Spanish at the debate. He often flips between English and Spanish on the trail.
“I suspect wherever he is you’ll see him go back and forth quite a bit. I can imagine he will,” said Amanda Renteria, Clinton’s national political director.
Renteria, Finney and Palmieri were part of an intense Clinton campaign presence in the venue to do pre-debate spin. There was a much smaller cadre of Trump surrogates on site, though Trump himself announced he planned to live tweet the proceedings. (“Oh good,” Palmieri said when told that Trump would be active on Twitter.) Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling told POLITICO he expected Pence to be on display as “the happy warrior for this ticket” and for “the conservative cause.”
Trump had difficulty holding a sustained line of attack against Clinton last week, but Hensarling doesn’t see Pence having the same problem.
“Governor Pence will make that more effectively and get this thing back on track,” he said. “She’s a career politician. She did well in the debate. Donald Trump could have done better in the debate. Mike Pence is experienced at debate and, listen, so is Tim Kaine.”
“It’s going to be worthy television tonight,” he added.
In a sign that Pence is planning to go after Clinton on Benghazi, Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kansas) is slated to be in the post-debate spin room. Pompeo, with Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, released their own supplement to the House Benghazi Committee report that hit Clinton hard. Sen Jeff Sessions is also on hand for post-debate spin, as is Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway. Eric Trump is also expected to be on site.
Campaigning in Arizona on Tuesday afternoon, Trump offered his “best wishes” to Pence, who he called a “great guy.” “The debate will be a contrast between our campaign of big ideas and bold solutions for tomorrow first is the small and petty Clinton campaign that is stuck in the past,” the Republican nominee predicted.
Each vice presidential nominee will work to keep the other off balance. Republicans have already foreshadowed attacks on Kaine’s record as a defense attorney for murderers and other violent felons.
“I mean, there are rapists and murderers that he defended to keep out of prison that have done horrible things,” Republican National Committee strategist Sean Spicer said on CNN’s “New Day” on Tuesday. “I think Part of this is Tim Kaine had previously said that someone should be judged by the totality of their record. This is the part of Tim Kaine’s record that they don’t want to discuss: His defense of people who went out and murdered and raped people in the commonwealth of Virginia and elsewhere.”
Conway also hit Kaine for his stance on Monica Lewinsky: “Another flipflop for @TimKaine in 2002: Clinton should have resigned over Lewinsky scandal,” she tweeted.
Kaine, on the other hand, is expected to hammer Pence for signing an Indiana religious freedom law that critics say is just a cover to permit businesses to discriminate against LGBT residents. He’s also likely to bring up Trump’s spat with the judge in his Trump University lawsuit, Gonzalo Curiel, an Indiana native who Trump said wouldn’t be fair to him because of his Mexican heritage.
Obamacare may turn out to be a wildcard in the contest. Bill Clinton surprised Democrats on Monday night with a sharp critique of the law, which he said placed too heavy a burden on middle-class workers and taxpayers, despite gains in insurance coverage for lower-income residents. And Pence, for his part, actually embraced an element of Obamacare – the law’s huge expansion of Medicaid – in exchange for a few policy concessions from the Obama administration. The decision earned him praise as a bridge-builder but scorn from some conservative policy groups.
Trump took a shot at Clinton’s Obamacare comments ahead of the debate, telling an Arizona crowd that the former president probably “went through hell last night.”
“President Bill Clinton came out and told the truth about Obamacare,” Trump said. “This was yesterday. He’s absolutely trashed President Obama’s signature legislation. Remember, Hillary Clinton called Obamacare one of the greatest accomplishments of President Obama, of the Democratic Party and of our country. Give me a break.”
In all, the contest appears to be more about clawing for inches rather than yards. And the two vanilla running mates seem poised to play it safe. In fact, Trump’s promise to live-tweet the debate may turn out to be more consequential than anything either of the two VP nominees do.
“It’s going to be quite entertaining,” Finney said.
Shane Goldmacher and Katie Glueck contributed reporting from Farmville, Va.