LANSING — Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, the Republican vice presidential nominee, made a campaign stop Friday morning in Lansing to rally support for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, just four days before Election Day Tuesday.
The rally was held in a hangar of the Capital Region International Airport in Lansing, where Pence arrived by plane. There, he lauded Trump’s gains in several national polls over the past week, saying that comeback has spread to the state of Michigan.
“(We are) just four days away from a great victory all across the state of Michigan and all across the United States of America,” Pence said.
Both Trump’s and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaigns have had an increased presence Michigan over the past few days in an effort to secure the available 16 electoral votes. Clinton held a rally in Detroit on Friday evening, while Pence returned to Holland, Mich. on Saturday after additional stops in North Carolina and Florida on Friday, marking his the third consecutive day campaigning for Trump in Michigan.
President Barack Obama is also slated to visit Ann Arbor on Monday, along with a Monday visit from Hillary Clinton, and Trump and Pence are both set to return to the state Sunday and Monday.
Currently, Clinton is leading Trump in Michigan polls by a margin of 5 percent, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average.
While a Republican presidential candidate has not won in Michigan since George H.W. Bush in 1988, Republicans appear to have a 57,455-vote edge in absentee ballot voting, out of the roughly 840,000 ballots returned so far, according to The The Detroit News.
At Friday’s rally, the economy was a central theme, with Pence emphasizing his disappointment with the national economic recovery rate after the 2008 recession under the Obama administration. He acknowledged Michigan’s economic growth in the last seven years, but added he believes this growth has happened at the state level.
“You here in Michigan know what we know in Indiana, any progress you’ve made in the last seven and a half years has been in spite of what’s happening in Washington, D.C., not because of it,” Pence said. “They tell us this economy is the best we can do, but I think you all here in Michigan know better.”
Pence told the crowd that if elected, the Trump administration would lower business taxes and return jobs to Michigan, as well as overturn several executive orders on business regulation from President Barack Obama.
“We’re going to lower business taxes in America so companies in Michigan can grow and prosper and compete with companies around the world,” Pence said. “We’re going to repeal every single Obama executive order stifling jobs and growth in the American economy.”
Speakin specifically to health insurance costs, he charged that under the Affordable Care Act — legislation passed under Obama to make health care more accessible — those costs are rising and reiterated Trump’s commitment to repealing and replacing the act. Pence criticized Clinton for supporting Obamacare as well as Canadian-style single-payer health care, in which a single public agency pays health care costs.
“We’re going to replace it with health care reform that captures the power of the American free market,” Pence said. “We’re going to give consumers more choices, not more government.
Touting Trump as the candidate of change, Pence called on voters in Michigan to cast their votes for reform.
“I’m here to say to independents who are tired of gridlock in Washington, D.C., I’m here to say to Democrats who are tired of liberal policies and bad trade deals, I’m here to say to Republicans all across the state of Michigan: We can bring real change when we elect Donald Trump as president and we re-elect a Republican majority in the House of Representatives,” Pence said.