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In closing days, Harris leans on ground game advantage as outside groups bolster Trump’s voter mobilization

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In Allouez, Wisconsin, a Democratic-leaning neighborhood in a county former President Donald Trump won in 2020, voter Mark Losson said the canvassing effort by Vice President Kamala Harris‘ campaign has been persistent. 

One door knocker was “insistent on a response” and repeatedly offered to come back until his wife was home, Losson told CBS News. 

“She had a checklist and she was making sure she checked all her boxes,” said Losson, a former Republican voter who did not vote for Trump in 2020, and is leaning towards voting for Harris. 

The Harris campaign has held a steady advantage over Trump in terms of physical resources on the ground. It has 353 field offices and over 2,500 staff members in the battleground states. 

The campaign says its volunteer effort has been surging and said from Oct. 14-21, during over 124,000 shifts, volunteers knocked on 1.6 million doors and made 20 million phone calls. 

The Trump campaign did not disclose how many field offices it has, but it said there are about two dozen in Pennsylvania, which is considered to be the most critical battleground state in this election. 

The Harris campaign is banking on its ground game advantage with volunteer resources on the ground to help push the vice president over the top in November. The presidential race in every battleground state remains within the margin of error, according to CBS News polling. 

“I can’t really speak to what Donald Trump is doing,” Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly told CBS News in early October. “My guess, from what I can tell about the way he campaigns, is he just drops verbal bombs on TV and doesn’t do the hard work. It got him across the finish line in 2016. I don’t think it’s gonna work again.”

“Trump Force” captains and low-propensity voters

The Trump campaign has taken a less traditional approach to its get-out-the-vote efforts in the battleground states. It’s trying to mobilize low-propensity voters — people who infrequently cast their ballots in elections — to win in the crucial battleground states with what they’ve dubbed their Trump Force 47 program. 

The program relies on Trump’s most loyal supporters — referred to as “Trump Force” captains — who are recruited by the campaign to go after these voters. The campaign provides the captains with a list of 25 people in local areas inclined to vote for the former president but who have not yet voted. 

The captains are then tasked with identifying, engaging and “activating” those voters by encouraging them to make a plan to vote early, by mail or in person for the former president. 

The Trump Force 47 program is also incentivized by tiers. The first tier is called “Ten for Trump.” If the captains engage and activate ten voters for Trump, they receive a red t-shirt that says “Trump Force 47.”  When they achieve the next tier, “24 for 24,” captains get expedited entry into campaign rallies. And if the captains reach 45 voters, they achieve the tier called “45 for 47” and receive a white “Trump Force Captain” hat. Captains also receive a “Trump Force 47” patch for completing the basic volunteer training. 

The model, developed by the campaign’s political director James Blair and deputy political director Alex Meyer, was first deployed in Iowa, where Trump won the GOP caucuses decisively. 

The Trump campaign is outsourcing its mid-propensity and high-propensity voter outreach to groups like Elon Musk’s super PAC and Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA group.  

In Wisconsin, another critical battleground state, Elon Musk’s America PAC combined forces with Turning Point Action. Musk, who has donated $75 million to his PAC, has taken the lead on data and ground game operations using Turning Point staff. 

Musk has also held events with his super PAC in Pennsylvania this month, where he urged attendees to register to vote. He’s also pledged to give $1 million to a registered voter from a battleground state a day, sweepstakes-style. Election law experts are raising red flags about the giveaway.

The big tent for the Harris campaign

Harris inherited an already-built ground operation from President Biden when he left the race, and it also taps into the existing infrastructure built by state and county parties. In the closing weeks, the campaign has taken an “all-of-the-above” voter contact strategy. 

While traditional door knocking and phone banking remain at the core of their voter outreach, the campaign is focusing on digital and social media ads, too. A campaign official also pointed to “relational organizing,” that is, urging supporters to convince their family, friends and neighbors to vote for Harris. 

The universe of voter targets for the campaign is large, and that’s evident from Harris’ recent travels. Within 48 hours in the last week, Harris spoke at two Black churches in Atlanta to mobilize base voters and then toured the “blue wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin for town halls with former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney to appeal to Republicans and moderates. 

Black and Latino voters are key get-out-the-vote targets, an official says, but the campaign is also trying to reach Republicans and rural voters to cut into Trump’s margins in some counties where some GOP voters have shown a reluctance to support Trump.

Suburban voters, primarily women and college-educated voters, are also key for Harris in states like Michigan. Wisconsin Democratic officials are focusing on Dane County, home to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a large number of young voters. 

“Normally, campaigns shift to straight mobilization in the final sprint,” this official said. “But because of how unpopular Donald Trump is with Nikki Haley voters and others who have traditionally voted Republican, we are continuing to reach out to and persuade conservative-leaning voters right through the very end.”

Harris, with help from super PAC Future Forward, has maintained an advantage over Trump on ad spending in the battleground states in the closing weeks, according to advertisement tracking firm AdImpact. From Oct. 1 through Election Day, Harris and her super PAC will have spent $328.3 million on ads in the seven battleground states, compared to $215.9 million spent by Trump and Republican groups.

Only in Pennsylvania has the gap narrowed, in part due to pro-Trump outside groups such as the Florida-based “Right for America” PAC, which has spent $11.7 million on ads in the closing month. 

Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, has had a steady drumbeat of battleground state campaign events. Top surrogates within the Democratic Party, former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, have also been deployed to the trail to mobilize voters. 

Obama is slated to appear with Harris in Atlanta on Thursday and former first lady Michelle Obama is campaigning with Harris in Michigan on Saturday. Early voting is underway in both states. 

The volunteers knocking on the doors 

In northeastern Wisconsin, a competitive but Republican-leaning part of the state, Democratic-leaning voters voiced a mix of confidence and anxiousness about the election, if they were willing to talk. 

Sarah Stabelfeld, a Wisconsin Harris campaign volunteer, hadn’t knocked on doors since Obama’s run in 2008. She was dispatched to knock doors in Appleton, Wisconsin, a Democratic-leaning town in Outagamie County where Trump won by 10 points in 2020.

“What feels different this time around is much more hesitancy when we knock on doors, people are hesitant to share their opinions,” she said at a Harris event in Ripon, Wisconsin, with Cheney. 

“Door knocking is so labor intensive. We’re all experiencing ads, commercials, mailers. But there’s nothing like that human-to-human connection,” said Wisconsin State Assembly candidate and local Democratic county chair Christy Welch. “If they’re willing to have a dialogue.”

Welch knocked on the door of Democratic voter Barbara Biebel, who said she’s seen much more activity and investment from the Democratic side in her area. She said she’s still anxious. 

“[Trump] would be devastating for our nation. It doesn’t keep me awake at night, but I clench my teeth a lot,” said Biebel, who added she and her neighbors have agreed not to bring politics up. “We know who is who on this block.”

In Nevada, the Harris campaign’s efforts are bolstered by canvassers for the Culinary Union Local 226, an influential labor union that represents 60,000 voters in Las Vegas and Reno. 

When they walked door to door in North Las Vegas on Thursday, the canvassers ran into just one undecided voter: Shirley Jackson, an older Black woman who supported Democratic voters in the past but wanted to know more about how Harris would address the rising costs in groceries and health insurance.

“I really don’t know her. I’m still trying to decide,” Jackson said, adding that while she thinks Trump is “a little better” on the economy, she’s not considering voting for him.



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Examining retail crime rates in California. Will Proposition 36 actually help?

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Is retail crime in California really up, and will Proposition 36 help?


Is retail crime in California really up, and will Proposition 36 help?

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California voters will soon decide on a high-profile ballot measure that would increase penalties for certain drug and theft crimes. 

Last week, CBS News California took a closer look at the drug component of Proposition 36 — also known as The Homeless, Drug Addiction and Theft Reduction Act

Here, we examine whether retail theft is really on the rise in California and whether the tough-on-crime Proposition 36 would actually help. 

Are California retail crime rates up? Yes and no. 

We analyzed data from the California Department of Justice (DOJ), which shows that statewide retail crime — which includes shoplifting, commercial robberies and burglaries, and organized retail theft — reached its highest levels in two decades in 2023, with about 213,000 reported incidents. 

Shoplifting and commercial robbery in 2023 were both at their highest levels since 1997 — however, there were nearly seven times the number of shoplifting incidents than there were robberies. In 2023, the number of reported non-residential burglaries was slightly higher than in pre-pandemic years but lower than levels seen during the pandemic. 

Statewide, reported shoplifting crimes increased by about 2% from the five years before another controversial ballot measure was passed by California voters to the five years after. Passed in 2014, Proposition 47 made hard drug possession and theft under $950 misdemeanors instead of felonies. 

In 2015, immediately after Proposition 47 was passed, there was a 12% increase in statewide shoplifting, but those numbers ended up decreasing in the years after.

In 2023, reported shoplifting statewide rose 26% from 2019 levels. However, last year’s numbers for both shoplifting and overall retail crime were far lower than those of the 1980s and 1990s, and the trends vary from county to county. 

Compared to pre-pandemic (2015-2019) averages, about half of California counties saw an increase in shoplifting in 2023, while the other half saw a decrease, according to state crime data. 

There were significant jumps in many larger, more populated counties, but some large counties saw decreases. 

According to a Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) study of data from the DOJ, a statewide increase in overall retail theft between 2019-2023 was mostly driven by “11 of the state’s 15 most populous counties but generally decreased in smaller counties.” 

For instance, the PPIC study shows that rises in retail crime in Sacramento County, Alameda County, San Mateo County and Los Angeles County during those five years accounted for more than 90% of the statewide increase over that time. 

Property crime in California, which includes all robberies, burglaries, and thefts regardless of location jumped above the national average for the first time in 2015 and saw a gradual decrease afterward, state and federal crime data show. 

However, the statewide property crime rate has remained above the national average ever since that jump and has separated from the national average more after the pandemic when many countries relaxed criminal justice policies even more. 

“We had individuals in our city who were arrested or cited over 15, 20, 25 times in a period of 24 months,” San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said. “That culture of a lack of accountability really started to take root.” 

Why is retail crime up? That depends on who you ask.

Mahan and Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho are among a growing number of high-profile elected Democrats who support Proposition 36

“I think it cuts to the core of the cycle of serious addiction and retail theft and unsheltered homelessness,” Mahan said.

Ho and Mahan took us to a homeless encampment along the Guadalupe River in downtown San Jose, across from a Target shopping center. They described the area as a microcosm of the need for voters to pass the high-profile ballot measure. That is where we met a homeless man named Richard. 

“Some people that have a drug problem, they choose to go steal something,” he said. 

Richard said it’s not uncommon for some of his unhoused neighbors to steal from nearby stores. Whether they get cited for shoplifting, drug use, or unauthorized camping, he said repeat misdemeanor tickets are not a deterrent. 

“I’m going to keep getting tickets and keep getting tickets,” he said. 

Supporters of Proposition 36 say the ballot measure is needed to fix the unintended consequences of Proposition 47. 

“We took away tools to intervene in cycles of addiction that have an interplay with retail theft, with unsheltered homelessness,” Mahan said. 

Ho noted that misdemeanor petty theft is a cite-and-release offense, which means even repeat offenders generally walk away with a notice to appear in court. 

“We have in Sacramento over 30,000 bench warrants for people that never even show up,” Ho said, echoing what Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper said at a Senate Standing Committee on Public Safety hearing in September. 

While the first two offenses under Proposition 36 would remain misdemeanors, the ballot measure would make a third conviction a felony. 

The No on Proposition 36 campaign points to a decrease in theft clearance rates — arrests for reported crimes — as a key factor in the rise of the statewide retail crime rate. 

Simply put, critics like Cristine Soto DeBerry — who wrote the opposition argument to Proposition 36 — argue that theft is up because “no one is being arrested.” 

Our CBS News California analysis of state crime data found that clearance rates dropped after Proposition 47 passed. 

The statewide clearance rate for thefts was about 8% in 2023, according to DOJ data. Clearance rates for theft peaked at more than 20% in 1990 and declined steadily until about 2000, where rates hovered around 14-16% until 2014, when Proposition 47 was passed. 

Theft clearance rates then dropped after 2014 and then dropped again to an all-time low of 6% during the pandemic. They’ve been slightly increasing since. 

However, just like the retail crime, clearance rates vary by county, and more counties saw a drop after the COVID-19 pandemic than after the passing of Proposition 47.

Soto DeBerry pointed to law enforcement claims that they often can’t respond to reports of theft due to understaffing. She argues that Proposition 36 won’t change that. 

“What deters people from committing crime is the belief that they will get caught. That’s it,” Soto DeBerry said. 

Supporters of Proposition 36 say that repeat offenders will face a so-called “wobbler,” which can be charged as either a misdemeanor or a felony. They argue that under Proposition 36, repeat offenders would be more likely to be held in jail until they see a judge, which would incentivize officers to make an arrest and create a greater deterrent for serial thieves. 

Proposition 47 or the COVID-19 pandemic?

The struggle to pinpoint the cause of the recent increase in retail crime isn’t only figuring out if it was due to lesser consequences or a lower chance of getting caught. There’s also the challenge of pinpointing changes during different time frames.  

For example, a PPIC study examining crime after Prop 47 and the pandemic found evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic might have had a stronger impact on retail crime than Proposition 47 and that clearance rates are more closely tied to retail crime increases than jail or prison. 

The study found that while jail and prison populations have dropped by a total of 30%, “the impact on crime has been modest and limited.” 

Lower incarceration as a result of Proposition 47 likely only contributed to a roughly 4% rise in auto thefts and car break-ins (neither of which are retail crimes). Meanwhile, Proposition 47 clearance rates led to a 3% rise in burglaries, a 2% rise in auto thefts and a 1% rise in thefts. 

However, the study found that when jail populations and burglary clearance rates fell during the pandemic, “commercial burglaries rose by a combined 5.3%, representing roughly one-third of the increase observed over that time. Some weak evidence also points to a 2021 rise in commercial burglaries tied to low clearance rates.” 

The study did not include the increase in 2023 and it acknowledged that retail crime data is messy and not always complete. Some stores may be reporting fewer thefts to law enforcement, while others may be reporting more. 

“Given the lack of data that accurately, completely, consistently, and credibly captures retail theft incidents, it is impossible to reliably assess the role of Prop 47 on retail theft,” the study read. 

One grocery store worker we spoke with, who we’ll call Laura, is just one of many on the front lines of what has become a constant and well-publicized retail theft battle in the nation’s most populous state.

We agreed to conceal Laura’s true identity to protect her job. She said felt compelled to speak out on behalf of her coworkers, showing us videos of repeated thefts in her store. 

“They know if the police even come, they’re just taken off the property, they turn right back around and come back,” she said of offenders. 

Laura added that viral retail theft videos like these don’t show the reality of retail theft. 

Many stores forbid employees from stopping shoplifters and, in some cases, fire employees who do, like this Safeway employee in the San Francisco Bay Area

“Everybody knows that we can’t touch them,” Laura said. 

Laura added that workers can’t report every theft, and when they do call the cops, thieves are often long gone before law enforcement arrives. 

“It’s not just homeless and the drug addicts,” she said. “It is people coming in Teslas, walking out with carts full of groceries.” 

Even California Gov. Gavin Newsom has witnessed retail theft. He described to a group of California mayors on a Zoom call how a Target clerk blamed him for the rash of retail theft after the governor witnessed the incident. 

The governor was a proponent of Proposition 47 and is now against Proposition 36. 

In August, Newsom signed a bill package into law targeting organized retail theft and property crimes. This package featured harsher punishments targeting repeat offenders. In September, Newsom signed another bill specifically targeting smash-and-grab robberies, mandating harsher sentences for incidents that result in major theft and damages.

Laura hopes that stiffer penalties under the governor’s bill package and Proposition 36 will incentivize officers to make more arrests and deter would-be thieves. She said that while it may not put an end to all retail theft, “we have got to do something.”



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10/24: The Daily Report – CBS News

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10/24: The Daily Report – CBS News


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Lindsey Reiser reports on new developments in the case of Erik and Lyle Menendez, the latest in the race for president as we enter the home stretch ahead of Election Day, and what comes next as striking Boeing factory workers rejected the latest contract proposal from the company.

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Harris and Obama campaign together for first time

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Harris and Obama campaign together for first time – CBS News


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Former President Barack Obama introduced Vice President Kamala Harris at a campaign rally in Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday night, marking the first time they have campaigned together. CBS News congressional correspondent Nikole Killion reports.

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