Pence and Harris meet to debate under the shadow of a surging pandemic

Vice President Mike Pence, 61, and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., 55, arrived in Salt Lake City as two of the most consequential running mates in recent history, adding an element of suspense to adebate that typically plays little role in an election result. President Donald Trump, 74, is still undergoing treatment for a virus that kills about 1 in 20 people in his age group, and former vice president Joe Biden, 77, has not committed to seeking a second term if he wins election next month. 

The two vice-presidential contenders were expected to carry the chief messages of their parties, with Pence planning to promote Trump's record, defend his handling of the novel coronavirus and attack the policies and fitness of Biden. Harris was expected to blame the current economic downturn and high level of national division on Trump, who she has argued has failed to respond effectively to the still-spreading pandemic.

The timing of the debate added even greater gravity, coming after a week of devastating viral spread, with at least 21 people connected to the White House or the Trump campaign testing positive for the coronavirus. So far tests have not shown evidence that the outbreak has reached the Biden campaign, despite the principals sharing a debate stage two days before Trump announced he had contracted the virus.

The disease has come perilously close to the current vice president, who attended various White House events with associates who have since tested positive, including a meeting with Trump in the Oval Office. The night before the vice-presidential debate, Pence's communications director, Katie Miller, was forced to depart Salt Lake City, where she had participated in debate preparations on Tuesday, after her husband, White House speechwriter Stephen Miller, tested positive. 

Pence has continued to test negative and has not quarantined after his personal physician concluded that his activities did not qualify as a "close contact" with an infected person under federal health guidelines.

But the specter of the pandemic hung heavily over the debate hall, with the stages outfitted with two plexiglass barriers to provide added assurance that the candidates could not infect each other with their breath, despite sitting at a 12-foot distance. 

The level of infection in Utah, where the debate was held, has been running at more than twice the national average, making both the state and the Salt Lake region areas of "code red" concern by the White House coronavirus task force, which Pence leads. Nationwide, infection levels are rising in a majority of states more than seven months after the first case of community spread was detected in the United States. The virus has killed more than 211,000 Americans and sickened more than 7.5 million. 

The Trump campaign had resisted efforts to install plexiglass barriers on Pence's side of the stage at the debate, arguing that they were not medically necessary. But Pence advisers agreed to the barriers on Tuesday, after a walk-through of the debate site where they were already installed. 

The Trump campaign, which has pledged to restart most in-person campaigning Thursday, continued Wednesday to mock Democrats for their safety concerns.

"You really have to question the insanity of the Democrats," said Marc Lotter, the Trump campaign's director of strategic communications."Vice President Pence and Sen. Harris are always going to be 12 feet apart, which is double the CDC recommendation, but she's insisting on surrounding herself in plexiglass to further protect her."

Federal health regulations warn against the possibility of aerosol spread in some circumstances, with particles that can travel more than six feet. People who are exposed to someone infected with coronavirus are typically asked to self-quarantine. 

National and state polling averages maintained by The Washington Post show Biden and Harris have a clear advantage going into the debate. They lead Trump and Pence by a margin of 53 to 42 in national polls over the last month. In other averages, the Biden campaign has three-point lead in Florida, a three-point lead in Arizona, a seven-point lead in Michigan, an eight-point lead in Pennsylvania and a seven-point lead in Wisconsin. Trump won all of those states in 2016.

Trump has also fallen behind the Biden campaign in spending on advertising. As of Tuesday, the Trump campaign had pulled $4 million from scheduled television ad buys in the previous week, mainly in Minnesota and Ohio, according to Advertising Analytics. The Biden campaign had added nearly $8 million in the same period. 

The fate of the final two presidential debates, scheduled for Oct. 15 in Miami and Oct. 22 in Nashville remained contingent on Trump's recovery and a negotiation over safety precautions, which was expected to begin later this week. Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller said Wednesday that Trump was already discussing the possibility of holding events over the weekend, or early next week, pending the approval of his doctors. Miller said Trump would be ready for the debate. 

"I think if he still has covid, we shouldn't have any debate," Biden told reporters Tuesday. "I think we're going to have to follow very strict guidelines." 

In a call with reporters before the vice-presidential debate, the Biden campaign made clear that Harris plans to focus less on Pence than on the Trump administration's failed leadership - particularly on the issue of the coronavirus.

"We don't view this debate about being about Kamala Harris and Mike Pence. It's not even really about Joe Biden or Donald Trump," said Harris's communications director, Liz Allen."She's going to be singularly focused on talking to voters at home about what a Biden-Harris administration would mean to their lives."

Harris spent the weekend in Salt Lake City preparing for the debate. Former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg has been spotted in Utah multiple times since Saturday and is presumed to be helping her prepare for the debate. 

Pence, who has been assisted by former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi in debate meetings, was expected to reprise a role he has filled since his selection as Trump's running mate four years ago, attesting to the accomplishments, character and motivations of the president he serves. A former Indiana governor, congressman and talk radio host, Pence's style is less aggressive or disruptive than the president, a fact the campaign hopes can be an asset in drawing back Republican voters who have been turned off, including by Trump's interrupting style in his debate with Biden. 

Wary of allowing Pence a space to soften Trump's hard edges, the Biden campaign begged for a skeptical view from those tuning in to the contest. 

"Mike Pence makes things sound good even if his lies and distortions are delivered with confidence and fuller sentences than Donald Trump," said Symone Sanders, senior adviser to the Biden campaign.

Harris advisers and allies have for weeks tried to play down expectations for the senator's debate performance. Pence, they warned, is experienced and talented. Harris, as Sanders put it, is not there "to eviscerate Mike Pence," even as her supporters on Twitter have predicted such an outcome since she was named to the ticket in August.

Harris is the first Black woman and first Indian American woman on a major-party ticket and the second Black woman to serve in the U.S. Senate. She is also the first graduate of a historically Black college and university on a major-party ticket.

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said he has been sending Harris pictures friends and relatives have sent to him of their daughters, who had not seen a Black woman in her position before, watching Harris on television or imitating her in recent weeks.

"This is going to be one of those nights that reverberates in history," Booker said.

The Trump campaign spent much of the day before the debate publicly focused on issues far afield from coronavirus. Trump tweeted repeatedly about a Tuesday release by the director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe, of a memo by former CIA director John Brennan discussing a Russian intelligence report of an alleged effort by Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2016 to connect Trump to Russia. The memo was previously described by Ratcliffe in a letter to the Senate on Sept. 29, the day of the first presidential debate. 

Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh also announced Wednesday that the campaign had left a ticket to the vice-presidential debate for the rapper Tupac Shakur, who died in 1996. This was an effort to mock Harris for once mentioning his name when she was asked for the "best rapper alive" in a radio interview. She had immediately corrected herself. 

Like last week's debate in Cleveland, the event at the University of Utah was taking place under new, strict coronavirus precautions, with a fenced-off perimeter only accessible to people who had tested negative for the disease.

Tom Moran, 65, walked back and forth outside the perimeter on Wednesday morning, holding a banner that read "210,000 DEAD. Covid-19. Trump FAILED U.S.." Moran, a school bus driver from Fenton, Mich., had been patching up the banner with new numbers as the death toll rose; he had started it at 90,000, when he brought it to events closer to his home.

"Trump is a failed president, and he needs to go," said Moran, who explained that he had more time to protest because there was no need for school buses with campuses closed. "Mike Pence was supposed to manage the pandemic, and he failed, too. I hope Kamala Harris goes after him like a prosecutor. 'Why didn't you encourage mask-wearing from the outset? Why didn't you stand up to the president?' "