Trump vows to spend big on White House race, Clinton targets Florida

Polls showed the Democratic nominee, who is vying to become the first female US president, still comfortably ahead of her billionaire Republican rival with just 13 days to go before Americans pick a new president.
The 70-year-old Manhattan businessman took heart, however, from a new survey that shows him with a two point lead in early voting Florida, and a slight narrowing in the race nationally.
“We are going to have, I think, a tremendous victory,” Trump said in an interview with CNN before heading to North Carolina, one of the battleground states he needs to win on November 8.
Pressed on whether he’ll open his wallet to match an onslaught of Clinton ads, Trump said he will have spent $100 million by Election Day.
“I’m willing to spend much more than that if I have to,” he said.
Trump departed for Charlotte, North Carolina after carving out precious time for the grand opening of his new luxury hotel in Washington, the Trump International Hotel.
Clinton marked her 69th birthday campaigning in Florida, speaking to a capacity crowd in Lake Worth before flying to Tampa on the Gulf coast.
A Bloomberg poll out Wednesday put Trump 45 to 43 percent among likely voters in Florida, a must-win state for him.
A RealClearPolitics poll average still puts Clinton ahead in the state by 1.5 percent. But Bloomberg’s survey shows Trump doing somewhat better than Clinton with independents, who may hold the key to victory in a state that famously deadlocked in 2000. The Supreme Court decided the outcome, giving the win to George W. Bush.
Clinton holds a 4.7 percent lead nationally over Trump in a poll average compiled by tracker RealClearPolitics, but it has narrowed by over half a point since Tuesday.
“There are 13 days left. Most Americans are going to cast their votes on Election Day. And we know we are going to win this election because enthusiasm and momentum, the movement in the polls,” Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said on CBS “This Morning.”
“She’s the one with the huge advantages. We’re the ones with the momentum,” she said of Clinton.
Clinton reached out in taped radio interviews to audiences in Florida and North Carolina as she started her day.
To a Hispanic audience on Miami-based Univision’s National Radio she trumpeted her promises to introduce comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship “as soon as I get there.”
“I’ll do everything I can to keep families together, and to ensure that people living here who have been here for years, who’ve raised their kids here, who’ve worked hard, will have a chance to come forward and finally become citizens,” she said.
Rallying supporters at a college in southern Broward County on Tuesday, Clinton urged Floridians to help propel her to the White House by getting out and voting “right now.”
“Please join me. This is bigger than me. It’s bigger than any of us. It’s even bigger than Donald Trump if you can believe it,” she told the cheering crowd.
President Barack Obama — who will campaign for Clinton on Friday in Florida — has said he wants an overwhelming Democratic victory in order to send the message that Americans reject Trump’s divisive rhetoric.
Florida is the country’s third most populous state, and one with a wide mix of constituencies, including retirees, Hispanics and Bible Belt whites.
“We don’t plan to lose Florida. It is the biggest prize,” Clinton’s communications director Jennifer Palmieri told reporters Tuesday.
North Carolina voted for Republican nominee Mitt Romney in 2012, but the conservative southern state has been leaning Democratic in the current White House race.
Clinton holds a two percent lead there and the state’s Republican leaders worry that controversies that have dogged Trump throughout the campaign will hurt them in congressional races.
North Carolina’s Republican Senator Richard Burr is in a tight, closely watched re-election contest with Democrat Deborah Ross. A Burr loss could tip control of the US Senate to Democrats.
Trump’s standing in polls has been hit hard, particularly among female voters, since this month’s release of a 2005 video on which he boasts that his celebrity allows him to grope women with impunity.
Since then, about a dozen women have come forward with sexual misconduct allegations.
But a more disciplined Trump has largely stayed on message in Florida, attacking Clinton over taxes and foreign policy, and jabbing at her email scandal.