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Election 2024: Battleground Arizona weighs choice: Trump or Harris?

Posted on by L. Dreeye
Election 2024: Battleground Arizona weighs choice: Trump or Harris?

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Kamala Harris tried to turn the page. And then Donald Trump read a long, convoluted chapter from his 2016 playbook.

Presidential candidates stormed Arizona for perhaps the last time, holding dueling events just six miles apart on Thursday to make their closing arguments in a state where the vote count could be down to just a few thousand this week.

Trump, Harris and their campaign surrogates presented two very different visions for the country in striking a deal here. Now it’s up to the voters.

The choices Arizonans make when they go to the polls — and many already have — can reverberate throughout the country. This is one of the few states where the presidential race is as up in the air as a coin toss. Arizona will send 11 Electoral College votes to the winner.

“Arizona, it’s up to you,” former Rep. Joe Kennedy III, D-Mass., said at a Harris campaign event in Phoenix last week.

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Harris on the upcoming battle against Trump

Kamala Harris speaks at a rally in Phoenix, Arizona, ahead of the November 5 election.

Speaking to a crowd of 7,000 on Thursday afternoon, Harris said it was time to leave the Trump era behind. The vice president gave a 25-minute speech calling the former president a decade of discord in American politics and called on voters to take his business away at the ballot box, emphasizing issues such as reproductive rights, curbing inflation, cutting taxes for middle-class Americans and protecting health care.

“We have an opportunity to turn the page on a decade in which Donald Trump tried to divide us and fear each other. We’re done with this. We’re exhausted from this,” Harris said at the Talking Stick Resort Amphitheater in Phoenix. “I’m not trying to score political points. I strive for progress.”

She promised to be a president for all Americans, even those who didn’t vote for her, and said people who disagree with her would have a “seat at the table” in her administration. The comments were part of Harris’ broader strategy to appeal to GOP and independent voters who feel alienated by Trump. Many live in the East Valley and vote on ballots that played a key role in President Joe Biden’s victory four years ago.

Trump later drew twice the crowd for a speech three times as long that offered little in terms of what a second Trump term might bring. He attacked his Democratic rivals on a personal level and further reinforced his controversial belief that the United States has an “enemy from within.”

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Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, RFK Jr., Charlie Kirk at a rally in Arizona

Charlie Kirk, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump perform on October 31, 2024 at the Desert Diamond Arena in Arizona, days before Election Day.

Trump rehashed his political battles of the past decade, criticizing his 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton, calling Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a “watermelon head,” calling Biden a “dumb bastard” and Harris a “scumbag.” He took a brief detour to discuss Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and talked about how Harris supporter and former Vice President Dick Cheney thanked him for pardoning Scooter Libby in 2018.

Trump then attacked Cheney’s daughter, former Wyoming Congresswoman and anti-Trump Republican Liz Cheney, as a war hawk unwilling to join the fight herself. He conjured up an image of “her standing there with a rifle, shooting at her with nine barrels.”

“Let’s see how she feels about this. You know, with a gun pointed at her face,” Trump said during a call with Tucker Carlson, angering his base at an ally who was fired from Fox News for reportedly holding views too radical for the cable network.

The comment made national news and prompted Arizona’s Democratic attorney general to open an investigation into the death threat. It was emblematic of the dark, violent rhetoric Trump used on the stump in Arizona this year to portray Harris as too liberal on important issues like the southern border and the economy and keep undecided voters from supporting her.

Trump has compared the United States to a “garbage bin” for the rest of the world because of illegal immigration, and during long speeches in Arizona this summer and fall, he called migrants “animals” and painted the country as a “nation in decline.” ”, which is occupied by an “invasion of migrants”.

Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance echoed that rhetoric, saying during a visit to the state that migrant children who don’t speak English are destroying the quality of American education by distracting school teachers.

“Nothing against kids, but we can’t have a border policy that destroys the quality of American education,” Vance said, standing between a pair of ballistic shields at a military and law enforcement facility in Peoria.

Arizona: land of contrasts

Arizona is a land of contrasts, both in people and geography. Huge wealth inequality coexists with a growing economy. The state is an emerging leader in the US semiconductor industry. Its population is growing, but not yet enough to give the state an additional seat in Congress or more Electoral College votes.

This battleground state has a mix of Southwestern, Midwestern, Native American and Latino cultures across 15 counties. Most Arizonans say they care about education, health care, economic opportunity, the environment, civic engagement, equal treatment and immigration reform, according to a report from the nonprofit Center for Arizona’s Future.

Arizona’s Democratic Party is losing ground, Republicans are holding steady, and a growing share of voters are registering without party affiliation.

Arizona’s strong streak of independence emerged in 2020, as the suburbs of vote-rich Maricopa County swung toward Biden and the southwest border city of Yuma, with its Latino majority, turned red.

Voters here find it convenient to split tickets or vote for opposition parties on one ballot. Many chose to leave their presidential choice blank and only voted against it in recent years. More than 34,000 voters here did not choose between Trump and Biden in 2020. This race came down to just 10,457 votes.

Arizona is also the epicenter of some of the nation’s most pressing political issues. Trump and Harris used the southern border wall in Cochise County as a backdrop for their speeches on border security this year.

Arizona has the most fortified southern border in the country, but it is also home to the busiest stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border for illegal crossings. Arizona voters will decide Tuesday whether to make illegal border crossing a state crime.

Also on the ballot this year is whether abortion rights should be enshrined in the state constitution. The state briefly passed one of the most extreme abortion laws in the country, a near-total ban in 1864, following the overturn of the landmark Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade. Lawmakers quickly repealed the 160-year-old law.

Arizona is at the forefront of the climate crisis. Temperatures in Phoenix have topped 100 degrees for a record 113 straight days this year.

Since the 2020 election, the state has become a hotbed of election denial. Trump has argued for years that the Arizona election was stolen by Democrats, leading to a lengthy and costly audit that found no evidence of widespread fraud.

Arizona’s 2020 Republican electors and Trump aides are facing criminal charges for allegedly participating in a scheme to prevent the legitimate transition of the presidency by falsely certifying Trump’s victory.

Presidential polls in Arizona not only showed a close race, but also showed for months that voters here have had pessimistic views about the economy and the direction of the country, and are shifting to the right on immigration. More voters say they trust Trump to handle these issues, whether they plan to vote for him or not.

However, they are also concerned about reproductive rights and democracy and believe Harris can better address these issues.

Harris embraces the role of outsider. Trump is trying to recapture his glory days

The question is whether enough voters will agree with Trump and Vance or side with Harris and his running mate, Tim Walz.

While Harris focuses on unity and the desire to cross the aisle, Walz has taken on the role of attack dog during visits to Arizona, speaking here about the GOP nominee’s immigration rhetoric in harsher terms.

“Donald Trump hates this country,” Walz said at a recent rally, calling Trump’s tone on immigration “pathetic” and “unpatriotic.”

As the election approaches, Trump’s allies are focused on bringing back the feeling of his shock victory eight years ago rather than his dramatic 2020 defeat, which is still being fought in court. Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk told his supporters in Glendale that “I still have a pit in my stomach from 2020” before pleading with them to help get out the vote.

“We have the same energy now that we had in 2016, but it’s bigger,” Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law and co-chair of the Republican National Committee, said at the “Team Trump Women’s Tour” in Phoenix last week. . The Trump campaign has done a lot to reach women, Lara Trump added, although polls show a wide gender gap between male and female voters in Arizona when it comes to Trump and Harris.

Despite Democratic gains in Arizona during the Trump era—the party has won both Senate seats, governor, attorney general and secretary of state since 2018—Harris and her campaign have sought to position themselves as underdogs. Arizona.

Former President Bill Clinton reminded voters of this dynamic when he stumped Harris in October. Bill Clinton turned Arizona blue for the first time in nearly 50 years when he won reelection here in 1996. Twenty years later, Trump led former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by 3 percentage points.

“One of the things Hillary and I learned the hard way is that in politics there are no permanent victories,” Clinton said. “Or defeat.”

Trump did the opposite, musing on stage at a Prescott Valley rally in October that he was polling so well in Arizona that he might be better off spending his time in vibrant Pennsylvania, the battleground for the Electoral College’s biggest prize. everyone.