Kamala Harris in Arizona: Vice president, Tim Walz rally in Glendale
At a Glendale rally, Gov. Tim Walz, Sen. Mark Kelly, Gabby Giffords, Rep. Ruben Gallego and Mesa Mayor John Giles stumped for Kamala Harris on Aug. 9.
For the third straight presidential election cycle, Arizona is setting a record for campaign stops by the major-party candidates.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ Friday visit to Douglas will be the 17th such trip to Arizona for a member of the White House ticket since the start of 2023 and reflects the state’s battleground status.
An Arizona Republic review of presidential visits shows the state had 33 total visits over six election cycles from 1992 through 2012. From 2016 to now, it has already had 45. The Republic only counted visits in the year of or year before a presidential election.
Former President Donald Trump won the state in 2016 by fewer than 4 percentage points, a historically low margin for a Republican. Four years later, President Joe Biden won the state by about 0.3 percentage points. His margin of less than 11,000 votes was the closest of any state Biden won.
These results, along with a string of statewide wins for Democrats in the Trump era, explain Arizona’s relatively newfound political relevance. It’s no small thing for both parties to spend the time and cost of traveling across the country for what are typically brief events.
In this case, Harris travels to a border town with fewer than 16,000 residents to discuss border security, an issue of national significance and one usually seen as a strength for Trump.
But it also demonstrates the Democrats’ efforts to keep the state in their column.
Harris has already made seven trips to Arizona in the past two years, most of them while Biden topped the ticket for Democrats. Throw in her one solo appearance in Arizona in the 2020 campaign, and she has made eight visits here.
Former President Barack Obama, whose 2008 campaign put him against Arizona’s U.S. Sen. John McCain, had four campaign stops. Biden made five between his time as Obama’s vice president and his two subsequent presidential campaigns.
McCain visited his home state throughout 2008 but held only two formal campaign appearances in a state he always expected to carry with little effort.
No one has made more appearances in Arizona than Trump, who has had 17 campaign appearances. That doesn’t count a 2021 Phoenix appearance before the current election cycle got underway.
A visit to the border shouldn’t come as a surprise.
The Republic found that of 78 presidential campaign visits since 1991, only 29 were focused in Phoenix. Tucson, the state’s second-largest population center, hosted eight.
The rest, 43 in all, were held elsewhere around a state that has provided helpful backdrops for the campaigns in different ways over the years.
In September 1991, President George H.W. Bush made his first visit to the state since entering the White House with a trip to the Grand Canyon to praise a deal to help alleviate haze over the national park. The appearance also was a chance to boost his case that he cared about environmental concerns.
In January 2012, Obama visited Intel’s chip-making facilities in Chandler in a trip most remembered for then-Gov. Jan Brewer wagging her finger in the president’s face on a tarmac.
In August 2020, Trump visited Yuma to highlight his border policies during the Democratic National Convention.
Arizona was long an electoral afterthought, with Republicans safely carrying the state all but once from 1952 through 2012.
The only exception was 1996, when President Bill Clinton narrowly defeated U.S. Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., with help from conservative Reform Party candidate Ross Perot siphoning votes from the GOP.
Dole made four stops in Arizona that cycle, including a predawn visit to a Phoenix diner the day before the election as part of a cross-county blitz.
Clinton made three stops in the state. One of them was a September 1995 speech in Sun City that included a visit with former Republican senator and 1964 presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, who was in a hospital.
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Publish date : 2024-09-26 11:14:00
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