AKRON, Ohio — Doug Emhoff is not a household name.
But the entertainment lawyer from Los Angeles and the husband of vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris has become one of the Joe Biden-Harris ticket’s busiest surrogates. And his visit to Akron Thursday is a sign the campaign is not ceding the state to Donald Trump, who carried Ohio four years ago by 8-percentage points over Democrat Hillary Clinton.
In a brief interview with 3News, Emhoff said Ohio is very much in play and that’s why he was here.
“I think we are going to carry the day because people are smart and they are seeing this administration has failed on coronavirus and tanked the economy,” he said.
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Samantha Zager, the Trump campaign’s deputy national press secretary, defended the president’s economic record.
“President Trump built the greatest economy in the world prior to this unprecedented pandemic and he’s already leading a dynamic economic revival in record time,” she said in a written statement. “Ohioans trusted the President with their votes in 2016 and they will again this year because the President has delivered on his promises throughout his first term. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris offer nothing but the same tired, empty rhetoric and obstruction to President Trump’s agenda – exactly what the people of Ohio voted against when they elected an outsider to shake up Washington.”
Emhoff spoke to a several dozen people in cars idling in the parking lot of the United Steelworkers Local 2. In a disjointed 20-minute speech, Emhoff said workers and middle-class families will not be overlooked by Biden and Harris, stressing their pledge to protect healthcare, wages and the "dignity of workers."
Emhoff wore a shirt reading, “It’s a Goodyear to vote.” It’s a reference to Trump’s earlier calls to boycott the Akron-based company over its policies banning political speech in the workplace.
Emhoff frequently criticized the president’s management of the country’s response to the pandemic, a central theme of the Biden-Harris campaign.
In his interview with 3News, he talked more about healthcare.
“People now have figured out the connection between what [Trump administration and Republicans] are doing and what they are pulling away without a new plan in place,” he said.
He also echoed the campaign’s closing argument that president’s often divisive language has turned off voters.
“People are also sick of the division,” he said. “People like the unifying message of Kamala and Joe Biden.”
If elected, Harris, a U.S. Senator and former California Attorney General, would become the nation's first female, first Black and first Asian American vice president. That would make Emhoff the first “second gentleman,” a reference to his role as the spouse of the second in command.
Following the vice-presidential debate, the president criticized Harris as “nasty” and a “monster.”
Asked how he felt hearing such criticisms, Emhoff said: “I clearly don’t like it as a husband. But Look. It’s a distraction and it’s to take away from everything I just talked about. They know they failed, and they got us into this mess, and they don’t have a plan to get us out and. So, what are they left with? So, they what are they left with are baseless attacks.”
Numerous Ohio polls have shown that the race is a tossup, but the latest Quinnipac poll shows Biden with a slight edge in the Buckeye State.