Vice President Kamala Harris made her campaign’s closing argument on the White House Ellipse Oct. 29, drawing a crowd that her campaign claimed numbered 75,000.
The rally marked the first time a political speech has been held on the Ellipse since former President Donald Trump’s speech on Jan. 6, 2021 before the insurrection on the Capitol. Harris evoked that day in her messaging, calling the former president a “petty tyrant” and asking voters to “turn the page” on the former president.
“America, this is not a candidate for president who is thinking about how to make your life better,” Harris said. “This is someone who is unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance and out for unchecked power.”
Harris referred to the upcoming election as “the most important vote you will ever cast” and framed the election as not just a choice between two different parties, but whether the country would be rooted in “freedom for every American” or “chaos and division.”
“We have to stop pointing fingers and start locking arms,” Harris said. “It is time to turn the page on the drama and the conflict, the fear and division.”
Zach Lovejoy, the vice president and political director of American University College Democrats and a senior in the School of Public Affairs, attended the rally and is voting for Harris. He said it was his first big presidential rally and called it a “powerful moment.”
“It felt like the culmination of everything that sort of we've been working for as Democrats,” Lovejoy said.
Lovejoy took around 15 members of AU College Democrats to the rally, and at 3 p.m., they joined the lengthy line to get onto the Ellipse. Lovejoy said that waiting in line was representative of the enthusiasm he and other rally goers felt.
“It looped all the way down around the Ellipse, up a block and was doing laps and laps around,” Lovejoy said. “We waited in line for like four and a half hours and barely made it into the Ellipse before she was speaking.”
Attending the Ellipse rally is far from the only thing AU College Democrats are doing to get out the vote for Harris less than one week before the election.
Lovejoy said in addition to phone banks for voters in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, AU College Democrats boarded an early morning bus to Wake Forest, North Carolina on Saturday, with a goal of knocking on 1,000 doors. Then it’s back to D.C., where they will run two all-day phone banking events the day before and during Election Day, up until the polls close.
“We are running around with our heads cut off,” Lovejoy said.
Lovejoy said that though he voted in the 2022 midterms, this is his first time voting in a presidential election.
“I feel like now is the time when we're actually going to make change with our votes,” Lovejoy said. “Every vote for Harris is a vote for a new way forward.”
This article was edited by Mackenzie Konjoyan, Tyler Davis and Abigail Turner. Copy editing done by Luna Jinks.
