SALT LAKE CITY _ Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris began their vice presidential debate Wednesday with a fiery exchange over the Trump administration's response to the pandemic, the key issue in an election only 27 days away.
"The American people have witnessed what is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country," Harris said of Trump's handling of the coronavirus. "They knew what was happening and they didn't tell you. They knew and they covered it up. The president said it was a hoax"
She said the "administration has forfeited their right to reelection based on this."
Pence accused the California senator of misleading voters about White House actions, arguing that President Donald Trump acted decisively when he blocked non-American arrivals from China in late January.
"That decision alone bought us valuable time to set up the greatest mobilization since World War II," Pence said.
The vice president said the Harris-Biden plan for confronting the pandemic is similar to the administration's effort, and remarked that it resembled plagiarism, alluding to an incident more than 30 years ago when Biden was accused of plagiarizing a speech.
The stakes of tonight's vice presidential debate are uncommonly high for a showdown between running mates.
Both Pence and Harris are auditioning not just for the No. 2 job in the White House, but as possible emergency replacements for the president as the nation struggles with the COVID-19 pandemic and an economic recession a month before election day.
Pence could assume the powers of the presidency any day, as President Trump, who is 74, battles COVID. White House physicians warn he has not yet beaten the disease and his condition could still deteriorate.
Harris was added to her party's ticket after 77-year-old nominee Joe Biden, responding to voter anxiety about his advanced age and the possibility that he might serve just one term, promised he would choose a running mate ready to be president on Day 1.
Susan Page, the Washington bureau chief at USA Today, is the moderator of the 90-minute debate at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
As a public health precaution, the candidates agreed to sit 12 feet apart, separated by plexiglass barriers.
The debate comes as the White House is reeling from a sudden outbreak of coronavirus infections, even as Trump and Pence continue to try to downplay the danger of a virus that has killed more than 211,000 Americans.
In addition to the president and first lady Melania Trump, more than a dozen senior aides, staffers, Republican lawmakers and others in contact with the president have tested positive for the coronavirus since Trump was airlifted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Friday for a three-day stay.
Harris intends to make White House management of the worst health crisis in a century and the Trump administration's failure to negotiate a new economic relief package with Congress a focal point of the clash.
"Mike Pence is the head of the White House coronavirus task force," Liz Allen, Harris' communications director, told reporters before the debate. "This is the record that they have to stand up and try to defend tonight. And Sen. Harris will make a forceful case that their failed leadership has in fact failed the American people."
"So we don't view this debate about being about Kamala Harris or Mike Pence," said Allen. "It's really not even about Joe Biden or Donald Trump. It's really about those families at home."
The Trump campaign signaled that Pence will target the California senator as a "radical liberal" and a "phony" for her shifting positions on healthcare during the Democratic primary. He will also seek to challenge her experience as a former prosecutor.
"Kamala Harris doesn't stand with the police," the campaign tweeted. "She stands with the criminals bringing violence and destruction to our communities."
Branding Harris a radical will likely prove challenging. The senator, whose politics largely align with those of the moderate Biden, has a reputation as one of the strongest and sharpest debaters in Congress.
The event is unlikely to resemble the chaotic free-for-all last week when Trump and Biden clashed in Cleveland in their first debate.
That meeting, defined by Trump's constant interruptions, personal insults and spouting of conspiracy theories, ultimately proved damaging to a Trump campaign already desperate to close a substantial gap in the polls. Biden's lead has widened since the debate.
An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released this week found Biden ahead nationwide by 14 points, and a CNN poll this week has Biden up by 16 points.
Shouting is not in character for Pence, a seasoned and calm orator who honed his debating skills as a conservative talk radio host in Indiana. The vice president's considerable talent on the debate stage often gets overshadowed by Trump's bluster.
By most accounts, Pence bested rival Tim Kaine at the 2016 vice presidential debate.
Yet, as nervous Republican Party leaders look to the vice president to reassure voters dismayed by the chaos Trump continues to stir in the White House and on the campaign trail _ even in convalescence _ it was difficult for Pence to separate himself from it in the hours leading up to the debate.
Trump has darkly suggested that Harris would pull the strings in a Biden administration.
"She is far further left than Crazy Bernie," he tweeted in a tirade that lasted much of the morning, a reference to democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. "Biden would not last a month!"
The debate is a debut of sorts for Harris, who has had few major public events since joining the ticket in August.
The former prosecutor and California attorney general distinguished herself on the debate stage during the Democratic primary, taking aim at then-rival Biden for working against busing mandates to integrate schools in the 1970s.
And her debating savvy has won her national attention in the Senate, where she has won plaudits from fellow Democrats for her tough questioning of Trump administration officials and judicial nominees.
But the Biden campaign is also cognizant that Harris, the first woman of color on a major party presidential ticket, will be confronting voter biases that Pence will not. Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, advised Harris to keep those in mind.
"She has to modulate her responses because we know there still is a double standard alive and well when it comes to women in politics," Clinton said at a fundraiser last month. "She's got to be firm and effective in rebutting any implication that comes from the other side _ but do it in a way that doesn't scare or alienate voters."
The Biden campaign suggested Wednesday morning that Harris will be less focused on going for the jugular than in sharing her biography and filling voters in on the Biden campaign's plan for confronting the pandemic.
"She's not there to eviscerate Mike Pence," said Symone Sanders, a Biden campaign advisor. "She is there to really talk to people at home and break through about what they're feeling, their lives and their families."
The debate Wednesday night is the only time the vice presidential candidates are scheduled to meet on stage.
There are two more debates planned between Trump and Biden, but it is unclear if they will happen because of Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis. Biden said Tuesday that he was prepared to debate the president in Miami next week, but only if Trump is free of the virus by then.
