Rallying supporters in two battleground states, Vice President Kamala Harris signaled on Friday that her closing campaign message would focus on the life-or-death risks that abortion bans pose to American women — and on the argument that former President Donald J. Trump is to blame.
In Madison, Wis., a crowd that had been ebullient suddenly grew hushed as Ms. Harris spoke about her visit with the family of a Georgia woman who died of sepsis after waiting for more than 20 hours for medical care to treat an incomplete medication abortion.
“She was a vibrant 28-year-old,” Ms. Harris said. “Her name, Amber Nicole Thurman, and I promised her mother I would say her name every time.”
Earlier in the day, Ms. Harris traveled to Georgia, where Ms. Thurman and another woman, Candi Miller, died after delays in medical care tied to state abortion restrictions, according to reporting by ProPublica. Their deaths occurred in the months after Georgia passed a six-week ban made possible by the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
In Atlanta, Ms. Harris condemned the deaths of the two women in an impassioned speech, saying that Mr. Trump had caused a “health care crisis” and that women were being made to feel as “though they are criminals.”
Ms. Harris’s stops in the two battleground states capped a relatively smooth week for her campaign as Mr. Trump again caused or confronted several politically unhelpful headlines and controversies. Most strikingly, the Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina, whom Mr. Trump has praised as “Martin Luther King on steroids,” was found to have called himself a “Black Nazi” and praised slavery in a pornographic chat room.
The vice president’s campaign sought to mitigate what could have been one bright spot for Mr. Trump, the national Teamsters union’s decision not to endorse either candidate, by having her be introduced in Madison by Bill Carroll, the president of the local Teamsters union that represents Wisconsin.
That choice was a not-so-subtle dig at the national Teamsters union, one of the most powerful labor groups in the country with 1.3 million members. The union endorsed Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020, as well as the Democrats Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.
On Thursday, the Harris campaign said it had received the endorsements of local Teamsters unions representing roughly one million members, including in the battleground states of Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. The local Teamsters in Wisconsin has also endorsed Ms. Harris.
“Trump is a scab,” Mr. Carroll said to roars from the crowd in Madison.
While Madison is one of several large communities in battleground states where the presidential election permeates daily life, there may be no place quite like the city. Here, voter registration tables dotted the downtown sidewalks, people selling bootleg Harris campaign gear had set up tents outside bars, and homemade “Harris for President” signs stuck out of manicured front yards.
Turnout in Madison eclipsed 90 percent in the 2020 election, when Mr. Biden won 76 percent of the vote in Dane County, which includes the capital city and is the state’s fastest-growing region.
This year, Mr. Biden defiantly held one of his final campaign rallies in the city, a gathering in a cramped middle-school gym with about 1,000 people after his dismal June debate.
The Harris rally on Friday could not have been more different. Held in a 10,000-seat arena that will soon have cows parading as part of the annual World Dairy Expo, it began with participants bouncing to “Jump Around,” a familiar song to fans of the University of Wisconsin’s football team. Later, the music of Taylor Swift, who endorsed Ms. Harris after last week’s debate, pumped through the loudspeakers.
“It’s a complete difference from fear of Donald Trump winning and a hopelessness we had and the joy of the Harris campaign now,” said Representative Mark Pocan, a Democrat who represents the city and who, during his warm-up speech for Ms. Harris, asked if there were “Swifties in the house.” “It’s as different as you can imagine.”
The rally was Ms. Harris’s fourth visit to Wisconsin since she replaced Mr. Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee, but it was her first in Madison.
She told supporters that some of them should expect to begin receiving absentee ballots in the mail soon. Early in-person voting, she reminded them, has already begun in Minnesota and Virginia.
“The election,” she said, “is basically here.”
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