Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump sought to appeal to voters’ emotions Monday night on the eve of the primary in his home state of New York.
The billionaire, who’s expected to pull of a landslide victory in Tuesday’s nominating contest, spoke at length about the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center towers that left nearly 3,000 Americans dead.
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“The people in the towers who helped rescue each other and those that perished knowing that if they left earlier they could’ve gotten out — they stayed, they helped other people,” Trump recalled at a campaign rally in Buffalo, N.Y.
“Those are New York values,” he said. Trump continued, “The restaurants and local businesses who kept their shops open to help the first responders and people in need … Those are really the people when you think in terms of New York values.”
“Every small act of courage, those are New York values, OK?” he told the audience.
The Trump campaign has played down expectations in the past week about the results of his home state primary. But if the billionaire carries more than 50 percent of the vote, he will add all 95 delegates to his overall count.
That would put the real estate mogul less than 400 delegates away from the 1,237 needed to secure the GOP nomination and avoid a contested convention.
“We’re going to win and we’re going to win on the first [ballot],” Trump told thousands of his fellow New Yorkers.
“It could be that we have to go longer, but I don’t think so because I’m seeing numbers that are pretty compelling,” he added.
Voting will begin at 6 a.m. in some parts of New York state Tuesday morning. Trump currently leads his opponents by double digits, with 53 percent support in the final RealClearPolitics statewide polling average.
