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How Did The Vice Presidential Candidates Come Across To Voters?

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

The old saying holds, the vice president is a heartbeat away from the presidency. In this election cycle, both presidential candidates are in their 70s, and one just got out of the hospital with coronavirus. That added some interest to last night's vice presidential debate.

NOEL KING, HOST:

In Salt Lake City, Mike Pence and Kamala Harris discussed the response to the coronavirus, the economy, taxes, the environment and the Supreme Court, among other things. Here's how one voter saw Harris.

FATIMA BERRY: Kamala Harris was very professional. She was very calm despite his interruptions, despite his long-winded answers and not allowing the moderator to moderate.

INSKEEP: Fatima Berry (ph) an immigrant from Sierra Leone who lives in Maryland, says she can identify with Harris.

BERRY: People are very much connected with her. They see themselves in her, especially for those of us who had immigrant parents who taught us the values that she espouses in reference to her mother, the fight to make it in this country.

KING: But Sharon Newsback (ph) of Stevensville, Md., had a different view.

SHARON NEWSBACK: She's like Hillary Clinton, I guess. I don't know. She kept making faces. And I don't get that, why she kept doing that. She kept making all these weird - I don't know. Maybe she didn't realize she was doing it.

KING: Newsback is an immigrant from Venezuela. She didn't trust Harris' answer, she said, particularly on race and protests. And she told us she cannot imagine herself voting for these Democratic candidates.

NEWSBACK: Even if something happened, I probably wouldn't anyway because there's no way I would vote Democrat for them, too, because they're like socialists now. I don't vote for socialists.

INSKEEP: Two of many views we're hearing on last night's vice presidential debate. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.