MARICOPA’S MOMENT — Arizona was the site of Joe Biden’s narrowest victory in 2020 — he won by a mere 10,457 votes — and it unleashed a hurricane of election denialism, false fraud claims and disinformation that upended the state’s political landscape.
The state Republican Party fractured in the aftermath. Democrats picked up a Senate seat and the governorship two years later. Biden’s victory marked the end of an era in which Republicans dominated presidential races in this traditionally red state. Between 1952 and 2016, Arizona voted Democratic just once (a close victory for Bill Clinton in 1996) and punched above its weight by producing two GOP nominees, Barry Goldwater and John McCain.
The secret of Biden’s success was flipping Phoenix’s Maricopa County, where roughly 60 percent of the state vote is cast. He was the first Democrat to win the presidential vote in Maricopa since 1948 and it doomed Trump’s chances. This year, Maricopa once again looms large — the Phoenix media market has seen more than $326 million in ad spending so far, according to AdImpact.
As part of Nightly’s efforts to illuminate the battleground states that will decide the presidency, tonight we’ll hear from POLITICO politics editor David Siders, who spent several days there recently reporting a story. What issues are dominating the political debate in Arizona this year? Are they different than in any of the other battleground states?
The issues are much the same — the economy, immigration, the state of democracy, abortion rights. And I tend to think that you can’t spend much time in the battlegrounds, or anywhere else for that matter, and conclude there are huge regional variations in the issues motivating people. But since we’re talking about tiny margins that are likely to make the difference next week, sure. Arizona’s a border state, so even if much of its growth is
fueled by people moving in from other states, there’s perhaps a better understanding of border politics than in a lot of places. That isn’t great for Democrats. When asked about the effect that recent immigrants from Mexico and Latin America have had on life in the state, voters are far less likely to say “better” than “worse.” Remember this is the state of S.B. 1070
. And it’s where Trump went the other day to describe the United States, in one of his anti-migrant diatribes, as “like a garbage can for the world.” The other issue that could resonate a little differently in Arizona than elsewhere is one that’s much better for Democrats: abortion. There’s a measure on the ballot to codify abortion rights in the state constitution. It looks like it’s going to pass
. Given how motivating the issue has been in other states, Democrats hope it can help drive up turnout for Harris, too. Since 1953, Arizona has elected just four Democratic senators. But Democrat Ruben Gallego has held a steady lead over Republican Kari Lake for months in this year’s open Senate race. What are the dynamics shaping that race?
If independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema had stayed in the race and made it a three-way contest, things might have been different. As it stands, Lake is done for, if the polls that have her trailing by about 6 percentage points are anywhere close to right (She insisted when I saw her outside an event there that they aren’t, of course).
What’s striking is that the same surveys that show Trump ahead in his race show Lake behind in hers. This was the candidate who was once a rising star of the MAGA movement — and, stylistically at least, one of the closest approximations you could find to the former president. So what gives? For one thing, unlike Trump, she carries the baggage of having lost her only prior bid for office in Arizona, in the gubernatorial race in 2022, even if she is still challenging the result. Her
approval ratings are underwater. And in a state where moderate Republicans and independents have a lot of pull, it probably didn’t help that she bragged in the midterms that she “drove a stake through the heart of the McCain machine.”
Then there are the mechanics. Gallego is vastly out-raising and out-spending Lake. That’s allowing him to swamp the airwaves with ads promoting his humble upbringing and Marine Corps service while pillorying Lake for her past comments on abortion.
Speaking of Lake, the Arizona Republican Party has been badly infected by election denial fever, with Lake playing a leading role. How might the divide on the right affect the presidential
contest?
For one thing, it’ll be interesting to see how Lake responds if she loses but Trump wins — which would seem to make the conspiracy peddling more difficult, though probably not impossible. Election denialism is still rampant in Arizona. A recent CBS News/YouGov poll
found more than 70 percent of Republicans in the state still don’t believe Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election in the state. And just 9 percent of Trump supporters are very confident that this election will be run fairly and accurately.
But there are a lot of independents — and a slice of Republicans — who don’t feel that way. And though many people who have adopted Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was rigged say they care about democracy, too, the issue does seem to be a point of strength for Harris in Arizona. Among voters for whom democracy is a major factor, according to the same CBS/YouGov poll, Harris leads Trump 57 percent to 42 percent.
In a state where youth voters turned out in record numbers in 2020, Kamala Harris is lagging with younger voters, especially young men and younger Latinos. What’s the problem? Part of it is just the numbers across the country. Trump has
made inroads nationally with young Latino men, and there are a lot of them in the West. But why does Harris seem to be lagging in Arizona in particular? Our colleague Megan Messerly, who was in the state recently to write about precisely this
, found a lot of apathy or resignation among young voters — and a sense from some of them that Democrats hadn’t done anything to improve their lives. Even if the economy is humming, housing costs are high and education is expensive. And young voters don’t have as much of a comparison to previous administrations to draw as older ones do. Democrats are trying to make the election, in part, a referendum on Trump. That may be a hard sell for some young voters who, as Megan writes, “were in elementary school … last time [Trump] took office.”
What does Donald Trump’s path to victory look like in Arizona? What about Kamala Harris? Republicans have a registration advantage in Arizona, so Trump’s path to victory is to juice the base while trying to scare moderate Republicans and independents — even some who might be uncomfortable voting for him — away from Harris. The hardline rhetoric on immigration is a big part of that.
And then there’s the economy, which to hear Trump tell it, might as well be shot to hell. Indications are that it isn’t, especially in Maricopa, the state’s largest county. But people in Arizona, as elsewhere, aren’t feeling that, and the issue is an advantage for Trump. While all the battlegrounds are tight, the polling looks a little better for him in Arizona than in some other states.
Harris needs women to turn out in big numbers. But she also has to do what Biden did in 2020, when he won independents by a double-digit margin in the state. Pulling over moderate Republicans would help, too. That’s why she’s running ads featuring endorsements from Republicans. Harris is
winning some of those voters. But our colleague Ally Mutnick, who was in the state recently to report on the Senate race, notes that the pool of independents and infrequent voters there includes some of the constituencies Trump seems to be making gains with, like Latino men. Some of those people are the ones who, while supportive of Gallego in the Senate race, are breaking for Trump at the top of the ticket. Lightning round question: Name one place, person or thing we should be watching in Arizona on Election Night.
I’d be watching the parking lot outside the Maricopa County elections office. If Trump wins Arizona, or if the result is decisive in other states, it may not amount to much. But it’s not hard to imagine a repeat of the protests that started there following the 2020 election, before the state morphed into a hotbed of election denialism.
Bill Gates, the Republican county supervisor who gained national attention for his resistance to election disinformation in the state following the 2020 election, told me the other day that “at this point, I would say the threats are certainly down from where they have been.” But, he said, “As those words come out of my mouth, I’m knocking on wood.”
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