By Nandita Bose and Nathan Layne
WASHINGTON/DETROIT, Nov 2 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump devoted his final public remarks before Tuesday's midterm elections to touting renovations of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, while Democrats sought to contain a rift in Michigan's closely fought US Senate race.
Over the weekend, US Representative Haley Stevens, who lost the Michigan Democratic Senate primary to Abdul El-Sayed in a bitter contest, switched to backing Republican Mike Rogers and appeared
with him at a Detroit church. The race is critical to Democrats' hopes of ending the 53-47 Senate majority of Trump's Republicans in Tuesday's vote.
In his only public remarks scheduled for Monday, Trump, a former real-estate developer, spent more than 20 minutes discussing pipes, joints, caulking, granite resurfacing, algae and leaks at the belated reopening of the Washington reflecting pool.
"Does somebody have those pictures for me?" the president asked his aides before sharing illustrations of the "miles of joints" that had been replaced. "So we have a lot of great things planned for Washington, and I could get into the nation, but for that you don't have enough time," Trump said, also mentioning the grass at the White House, his new Marine One helipad, a golf course and a triumphal arch that faces a court challenge.
He made brief reference to the election, saying: "When you vote, remember: a party that hates America cannot be allowed to rule over the people who built our country."
Nonpartisan analysts generally favor Democrats' chances of winning a majority in the House of Representatives. Control of the Senate is more uncertain, with analysts seeing traditionally Republican-leaning states including Texas, Kansas and Iowa as competitive and giving Democrats more possible paths to a majority.
Control of either chamber would constrain Trump's ability to pass legislation and empower Democrats to investigate his administration, while a Senate majority would also allow them to block his appointees to federal courts including the Supreme Court.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Monday found 46% of registered voters said they would vote for Democrats in congressional elections, compared to 38% who picked Republicans. That 8-percentage-point advantage for Democrats was narrower than the 11 points found in the same poll a week earlier.
Some 32% of respondents said they approved of the job Trump was doing in the White House, unchanged from a week earlier and just above his record-low reading of 31% two weeks ago.
TRUMP SEEKS TO INTERVENE
The Trump administration has sought to intervene in election disputes in Alaska and California.
A federal judge on Sunday dismissed a US Justice Department lawsuit seeking to block certification of election results in Alaska if Republican incumbent Senator Dan S. Sullivan narrowly loses. On Monday, a US judge ordered the Trump administration to stop demanding that California election officials segregate ballots cast by people on its lists of suspected noncitizens.
Trump also filed an emergency request with the US Supreme Court on Monday to temporarily block California from counting mail-in ballots from more than 20,000 registered voters who federal officials allege are likely non-US citizens.
California said the lawsuit could disenfranchise 20,000 voters based on vague accusations and that the administration's process for identifying noncitizens was flawed and prone to error.
Meanwhile, Trump's Justice Department announced on the eve of Election Day it had charged six more people with noncitizen voting in California, bringing to 34 the total number the Trump administration has charged in the state.
MICHIGAN RIFT
After Stevens' endorsement of Rogers, El-Sayed's campaign said it raised $2.4 million on Sunday, its largest single-day fundraising haul, fueled by small-dollar donations averaging $36.74 from more than 65,000 donors.
El-Sayed, an Egyptian American Muslim born in Michigan, has been targeted by Trump and other Republicans who have repeatedly questioned his loyalty to the US and baselessly called him a terrorist sympathizer whose election would invite attacks on Americans. El-Sayed has called questions about his loyalty to the US "shameful."
The verbal attacks fit a broader pattern of inflammatory rhetoric from some Republicans targeting Arab Americans, Muslims and transgender people and portraying Democrats as communists and dangerous radicals ahead of the midterms.
Democratic voter Pamela Johnson, 72, criticized Stevens after casting her ballot for El-Sayed in Warren, a Detroit suburb: "Haley Stevens is a traitor."
Stevens' mother, Maria Marcotte, said her daughter decided to endorse Rogers because of what she described as dangerous political rhetoric from El-Sayed, pointing in part to his past appearances with Hasan Piker, a left-wing streamer who has been criticized for his comments about Israel and American Jews.
"She's really reached a point where she felt like her constituents, the people that she cares about, and the people she knows and loves are scared and frightened by some rhetoric that's coming out," Marcotte said in an interview with Reuters from the porch of her home in Birmingham, a northern Detroit suburb.
Also in Michigan, William Byrne, a 74-year-old retired plumber, said he voted for El-Sayed.
"I think the Democrats need to take control, and he was one of the Democrats that I think will take control of Trump," said Byrne, who has voted Republican in the past but has more recently leaned Democratic.
ALASKA INTERVENTION FALTERS
In Alaska, the Justice Department argued voters may be confused by the presence of a challenger named Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. on the same ballot.
The issue has roiled the campaign over the last several days after the New York Times reported that Democrat Mary Peltola's campaign was involved in recruiting the latter Sullivan into the race as a spoiler.
The senator said on Sunday he would accept the results of Tuesday's election even as the Trump administration presses a criminal investigation into the issue.
Peltola has denied involvement, and Sullivan Jr. has denied coordinating with Peltola's campaign.
(Reporting by Nathan Layne and Nandita Bose; Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York, David Lawder in Washington, Nathan Frandino in Wasilla, Alaska; Editing by Scott Malone and Howard Goller)
