MacKenzie, a Pennsylvania state lawmaker whose mother also serves in the statehouse, is running to replace Rep. Susan Wild (D-PA) in the 7th Congressional District, a district that includes the presidential battlegrounds of Lehigh and Northampton counties.

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report considers the Wild-Mackenzie race to be a toss-up, alongside the contests for Pennsylvania’s 8th and 10th congressional districts. With Democrats only needing a net gain of four seats next Tuesday to take control of the House next year, the Mackenzie race has received national attention, including an event with House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) the weekend before the election.

“We believe in Ryan and all of you,” Emmer told Mackenzie supporters Saturday in Allentown. “We’ve got members that are coming, in addition to leadership.”

But in an interview in his campaign office, where volunteers were preparing to canvas voters in-person or on the phone potentially for the last time, Mackenzie acknowledged his campaign now depended on turnout on Nov. 5, which could be helped or hindered by former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

“We are cautiously optimistic,” Mackenzie told the Washington Examiner. “I think we’ve done everything we can do on a campaign, all of the fundraising, and the grassroots, and the messaging, all of the things that are the traditional blocking and tackling of campaigns; we’ve done them. We feel like we’ve done them well.”

“In key competitive swing districts like this, as the whip said, it’s always going to be close; it’s always going to be competitive,” he said. “So in presidential election years, a big part of campaigns like this is the turnout, and so that’s not something that we can necessarily control as a congressional campaign; usually turn out is driven by top of the ticket races.”

Congressional races are notoriously hard to poll, but sporadic recent public surveys have Wild in the lead by between four and six percentage points.

But Mackenzie contended the broader political headwinds were blowing in Republicans’ direction, citing strong voter registration and early voting numbers, though many GOP supporters are waiting for Election Day to cast their ballots.

“When we’re talking on our side, like our base Republican voters, and then when we’re out there talking to swing voters, people are really looking for change,” he said. “If they’re coming out to vote for their party this year, it’s anti-Donald Trump on the Democrat side. So in our position, we’re different.”

To that end, Harris’s closing argument address at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., last week was about Trump, dismissing him as a “petty tyrant,” but she did not mention the former president by name in her closing ad.

“Throughout this campaign, I’ve seen the best of America, and I’ve seen what is holding you back and weighing you down,” she says in the 60-second spot that was released on Saturday. “High costs, fundamental rights taken away, and politics that have driven fear and division. You deserve better.”

Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District includes Allentown, a majority-minority city with a dynamic Hispanic–Latino community, many of whom come from Puerto Rico. That specific diaspora dominated news headlines this week after comedian Tony Hinchcliffe joked last Sunday during Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally that Puerto Rico is a “floating island of garbage.”

Mackenzie quickly criticized Hinchcliffe’s comment, condemning it as “wrong” and arguing it “had no place at a political rally.” But he downplayed the possible political repercussions, particularly because the Trump campaign has distanced the former president from the host of the comedy podcast Kill Tony.

“So once people hear that, they go, ‘OK, that’s good,’ like they’re back to the issues that are important to them and their race or, in our race, around economics, inflation, and high prices, around illegal immigration, the wide open southern border, around foreign policy, those are the things that people are going to end up voting on that are going to impact their lives at the end of the day,” he said.

Jennie Dallas, a senior adviser in Pennsylvania for the conservative-leaning Latino advocacy organization LIBRE Initiative, agreed that economic issues are vastly important to the community.

“Our median income is way less than most, so when you put inflation on top of that, it’s hard living,” Dallas told the Washington Examiner. “Everybody’s going to agree that putting a roof over your head, feeding your children, your family, is a priority.”

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Three days before polls close, Mackenzie reiterated his optimism, pointing not only to Republican registration numbers but the number of Democrats who have left their party for the GOP.

“So it does seem like the trend and the momentum is headed in our direction, but it always comes down to who shows up,” he said. “That’s what matters.”