RALEIGH, N.C. _ Vice President Mike Pence brought the Republican presidential ticket's message of law and order to Raleigh on Thursday, accepting an endorsement from a police association at a "Cops for Trump" event.
Republicans, from President Donald Trump down to the state party, believe they have found an issue to help win the 2020 elections _ painting Democratic mayors, governors and presidential nominee Joe Biden as anti-law enforcement and in favor of (or, at least, unable to stop) protests that have turned violent in some cities across the nation, including in Raleigh.
"While some in the other party say law enforcement is the problem, we know that law enforcement is the solution," Pence said during an 18-minute speech outside Lawmen's Distribution, a law enforcement equipment company in Raleigh. A Johnston County Sheriff's Office armored vehicle was near the stage.
"Under President Donald Trump and our administration, we will always stand with the men and women who stand with law enforcement. We're not going to defund the police _ not now, not ever."
Pence accepted the endorsement of the Southern States Police Benevolent Association, a group that represents more than 32,000 federal, state, county and local law enforcement officers across the Southeast. A handful of law enforcement officers, wearing masks, stood behind Pence as he delivered his remarks to a small crowd.
"The truth is Joe Biden would double down on the policies that have led to violence in American cities. The hard truth is you won't be safe in Joe Biden's America," Pence said.
Recent polls indicate that Republican message has not convinced Americans. Biden leads on questions of who would best handle the protests and who would make the country more safe. He holds a national edge in the race, too.
Protests in Raleigh last weekend resulted in scattered vandalism and more than a dozen arrests for violating the city's curfew. Many businesses and property owners had boarded up their windows after violence at protests on May 31 and June 1, The News & Observer previously reported.
Both sets of protests started peacefully.
The protests earlier in the year were over the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man in Minnesota. The more recent protests were over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man in Wisconsin who was paralyzed after being shot seven times in the back.
Pence made brief mention of Floyd on Thursday.
North Carolina Republicans said in a Facebook post that the "chaos in Raleigh was the latest example of the violent leftist rioting taking place in cities across America" and used it as a plea to elect their candidates statewide.
Biden denounced the violence that has erupted in several cities _ including Minneapolis; Seattle; Portland, Oregon; and, most recently, Kenosha, Wisconsin, throughout the last four months _ in a speech in Pittsburgh on Tuesday.
"Rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting. None of this is protesting. It's lawlessness, plain and simple. And those who do it should be prosecuted. Violence will not bring change, it will only bring destruction. It's wrong in every way. It divides instead of unites, destroys businesses, only hurts the working families that serve the community. It makes things worse across the board, not better," Biden said.
Biden turned parts of that speech into a new $45 million ad. He also released a new ad Thursday morning aimed at Black voters, calling for racial justice and holding police accountable. Biden, too, has support from some law enforcement officials, including the endorsement of Hoke County Sheriff Hubert Peterkin.
"He is not against law enforcement. He is not against the community. He wants to bring everyone together," Peterkin said in a phone interview Wednesday. "He wants law enforcement to be held accountable, but also wants to make sure people are being protected. We both need each other. The community needs law enforcement and law enforcement needs the community as a whole. I see him bringing peace to this."
Pence said Biden didn't do enough in his speech _ saying he "never mentioned the anarchists and the left-wing mobs" and he "never condemned antifa."
"He never called out the Democrat mayors or Democrat governors who failed to quell the violence in their cities and their states," Pence said.
Earlier Thursday, Pence visited Gateway Women's Care and then spoke for about 40 minutes at Christ Baptist Church in an anti-abortion event organized by the Susan B. Anthony List. There were about 200 people in attendance at the church, including a host of Republican candidates and officeholders.
Pence touted the administration's success in appointing conservative judges to the federal judiciary and lamented a 5-4 Supreme Court decision that overturned a Louisiana abortion law. He called Trump the "most pro-life president in the history of the United States."
"We'll win this cause," Pence told those in attendance. "I truly do believe that the rising generation will be the generation that sees us restore the sanctity of life back to the center of American law. I encourage you to believe in that."
Pence's visit is just the latest from top-level Trump campaign officials stopping in North Carolina, seen as one of the key battleground states in 2020. Trump and Pence made appearances at the business part of the Republican National Convention in Charlotte in late August, and have made several other trips to the state in recent weeks.
Trump announced a trip to Winston-Salem next week. Trump was in Wilmington on Wednesday to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II.
"American warriors did not defeat fascism and oppression overseas only to watch our freedoms be trampled by violent mobs here at home. We stopped those violent mobs very easily, all they had to do is say, 'Please come in, Mr. President.' We'll have it done in one hour," Trump said Wednesday. "We must uphold the rule of law and defend the American dream."
Trump and Pence carried the state in their 2016 Electoral College victory. But North Carolina is considered a toss-up in 2020 between the Republican ticket of Trump and Pence and Biden and his vice presidential pick, U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris of California.
The state is getting particular attention now because absentee by-mail ballots will begin being sent out Friday. There have been more than 591,000 absentee by-mail requests so far, a number that far exceeds the nearly 200,000 absentee by-mail votes in the 2016 presidential election in North Carolina.
Trump, who has been against mail-in voting, suggested that his supporters try to vote twice in November, once in person and once by mail, as a means of testing the system. It's illegal to vote more than once in an election.
The coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 185,000 Americans and shut down parts of the economy, has dominated news coverage since March. Biden has been critical of Trump's handling of the pandemic.
"President Trump still does not understand that in order to fully and effectively restart the economy, we must defeat the virus," Biden said in a statement Wednesday.
But the killing of Floyd _ and other deaths of unarmed Black people _ led to a surge in protests and racial reckoning across the country. In some places, those protests have become destructive. There have been upticks in violence, nonprotest related, in some major cities. Some Democrats have called for "defunding the police," shrinking police budgets and reallocating those monies to other community programs.
Recent polling indicates that Americans do not think crime is the top issue in the nation. Just 8% of Americans said it was in a new Reuters/Ipsos poll. The issue lagged far behind the economy (30%) and heath care (16%), another issue that Democrats have tried to bring to the fore in the campaign.
"Vice President Pence's visit to Raleigh will not distract North Carolinians from the reality that he and President Trump are actively working to dismantle the Affordable Care Act in the midst of this deadly pandemic," U.S. Rep. Alma Adams, a Charlotte Democrat, said in a statement.
More than 60% of Republicans and Democrats polled said that crime is not increasing in their communities in the poll. But the Trump campaign is highlighting law enforcement officials who back the president and claiming that the protesters back Biden.
"The people that are protesting now are not President Trump supporters. They are Joe Biden supporters. They are ruining America," Butler County (Pennsylvania) Sheriff Mike Slupe said on a Trump campaign call with reporters last week.
In his speech this week, Biden said Trump has fomented the violence and failed to call on his own supporters to stop acting as an armed militia.
"I've been looking to lower the temperature in this country, not raise it," Biden said.
A new YouGov poll found that 52% of Americans believe a second Trump term would lead to more violence like that in Kenosha. Trump traveled to the city earlier this week and Biden was scheduled to go Thursday. In the same poll, 61% of Americans said bringing people together was the approach that would get these things under control, while 39% said law and order was the approach that would work.
Said Peterkin, from Hoke County: "I don't think things are going to calm down until we get a new leader."
