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

    Umito Posted on

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

    Presidential candidates invaded Arizona for perhaps the last time, holding duels barely six miles apart Thursday to make their closing arguments in a state where the contest is taking place. it could come down to a few thousand votes this week.

    Trump, Harris and their campaign surrogates presented two remarkably different visions of the country as each sealed the deal here. Now it’s up to voters to decide.

    The choice Arizonans make when they go to the polls — and many already have — could reverberate across the country. It is one of the few states where the The presidential race is as uncertain as a coin toss. Arizona will send 11 electoral colleges 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 next 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 Thursday afternoon, Harris said it was time to put the Trump era behind her. The vice president delivered a 25-minute speech describing the former president as a longtime divider in American politics and urged voters to put him out of business at the ballot box, highlighting issues including reproductive rights, controlling inflation, reducing taxes for children. Middle-class Americans and health care protection.

    “We have an opportunity to turn the page over a decade in which Donald Trump tried to keep us divided and afraid of each other. We’re done with that. We’re exhausted by this,” Harris said at the Talking Stick Resort Amphitheater in Phoenix. “I’m not looking to score political points. I’m looking to progress.”

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

    Later, Trump drew a crowd twice as large to deliver a speech three times as long that offered little in terms of what a second Trump term might bring. He attacked his Democratic rivals in personal terms and doubled down on his controversial belief that there is an “enemy within” the United States.

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

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

    Asset rehashed his political battles of the last decadecalling his 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton, calling Rep. Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, a “watermelon head,” calling Biden a “stupid bastard” and Harris “sleazy.” He took a quick detour to discuss Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and explained 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, calling her a war hawk unwilling to fight herself. He conjured up an image of “her with a gun standing there.” with nine barrels shooting at him.»

    “Let’s see what she thinks.” You know, when the guns are pointed in his face,” Trump said during the conversation with Tucker Carlson, angering his base with an ally who was fired from Fox News for reportedly having too extreme views for the cable network.

    The comment made national news and prompted an investigation into death threats by the Attorney General of the State of Arizona, a Democrat. It was emblematic of the dark and violent rhetoric Trump used this year in Arizona to portray Harris as too liberal on important issues such as the southern border and the economy, and to prevent undecided voters from turning out for her.

    Trump has compared the United States to a “trash can” for the rest of the world due to illegal immigration, and during lengthy speeches in Arizona this summer and fall. described migrants as “animals” and described the country as a “nation in decline” occupied by a “migrant invasion”.

    Trump’s running mate JD Vance echoed that rhetoric, saying during a visit to the state that migrant children who do not speak English are ruining the quality of American education by distracting teachers.

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

    Arizona: a land of contrasts

    Arizona is a land of contrasts, both humanly and geographically. Large wealth disparities coexist with a growing economy. The state is an emerging leader in the US semiconductor industry. Its population is growing, but not yet enough to earn it an additional seat in Congress or more votes in the Electoral College.

    This battleground state blends Southwestern, Midwestern, Native American and Latino cultures across its 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. report from the nonprofit Center for Arizona’s Future.

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

    Arizona’s decided independence streak was on display in 2020, when the suburbs of vote-rich Maricopa County shifted toward Biden and the majority-Latino southwest border city of Yuma turned red.

    Voters here are comfortable splitting tickets or voting for opposing parties on the same ballot. Many have chosen to leave their presidential choice blank and downvote only in recent years. More than 34,000 voters I didn’t choose between Trump and Biden here in 2020. This race came down to just 10,457 votes.

    Arizona is also home to some of the nation’s most incendiary political issues. Trump and Harris have each used Cochise County’s southern border wall as a backdrop to make their points on border security this year.

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

    This year, the question of whether or not to include the right to abortion in the state constitution is also on the ballot. The state briefly enacted one of the most extreme abortion laws in the country, a near-total ban on abortion in 1864, after the landmark Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade failed. Lawmakers quickly repealed the 160-year-old law.

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

    The state was a hotbed of election denialism after the 2020 election. Trump has claimed for years that Arizona’s election was stolen by Democrats, leading to a lengthy and expensive audit that found no evidence of widespread fraud.

    Arizona Republican Voters in 2020 and Trump Aides face criminal charges accusing them of participating in a scheme to prevent the legal transfer of the presidency by falsely certifying Trump’s victory.

    In addition to showing a tight race, Arizona presidential polls have for months revealed that voters have pessimistic views about the economy and the direction of the country, and are tilting to the right on immigration. More voters say they trust Trump to handle these issues, whether they plan to vote for him or not.

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

    Harris takes on the role of underdog. Trump tries to recapture his glory days

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

    While Harris focuses on unity and working to reach across the aisle, Walz has taken on the role of attack dog during her visits to Arizona, speaking out about the Republican nominee’s immigration rhetoric in harsher terms. tough here.

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

    As the election approaches, Trump’s allies have worked to recapture the feeling of his shock victory eight years ago rather than his dramatic 2020 defeat that is still being worked out in the courts. Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk told his supporters in Glendale that “I still have a pit in my stomach from 2020” before imploring them to help get out the vote.

    “We have the same energy as we had in 2016 right now, but it’s bigger,” Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law and co-chair of the Republican National Committee, said during a women’s tour of the ‘Team Trump’ in Phoenix last week. . The Trump campaign has done a lot to reach out to women, Lara Trump added, even though polls show a wide gap between men and women in Arizona when it comes to Trump and Harris.

    Despite the gains Democrats made in Arizona during the Trump era — the party has won both Senate seats, the governor’s office, the attorney general’s office and the secretary of state’s office since 2018 — Harris and her campaign took care to present themselves as the underdog in Arizona.

    Former President Bill Clinton reminded voters of this dynamic when he looked for Harris in October. Bill Clinton turned Arizona blue for the first time in nearly 50 years when he was re-elected here in 1996. Twenty years later, Trump beat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by 3 percentage points.

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

    Trump did the opposite, reflecting on stage at a gathering in the Prescott Valley in October that he had voted so well in Arizona that perhaps his time would have been better spent in dynamic Pennsylvania, the battleground with the greatest Electoral College prize of all.

    Umito
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