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Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, will conduct the next leg of the Vice Presidential Rollout Tour in Phoenix, Arizona. This is part of Harris’ increased focus on Arizona. Opinion polls show that support for him is increasing in the state against Donald Trump.
Her campaign has already launched a “Republicans for Harris” event in Arizona, and Mesa’s Republican mayor, John Giles, has also endorsed her.
The Harris campaign says it has about 100 full-time employees and plans to open 18 offices in the state. These offices include one in the city of Tempe and one in North Phoenix, both in Maricopa County.
Harris’ decision to go all-in on Phoenix, and specifically Maricopa County, shows the campaign knows Arizona will win in Phoenix.
Historically, Maricopa County has been Republican country. In 1964, when Barry Goldwater struggled everywhere except the Deep South because of his opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, he narrowly won Arizona because of a strong showing in Maricopa County.
Then, in 2000, four years after Bill Clinton broke the Republican’s perfect winning streak since 1948, George W. Bush returned Maricopa to the Republican nomination, and he won it again in 2004. . The state’s senior senator, John McCain, defeated Maricopa by a double-digit margin in 2008. That helped him keep Arizona.
While all this was happening, Sheriff Joe Arpaio forced inmates to wear pink underwear and sleep in tents in what he believed was too comfortable a life in Arizona’s sweltering heat. He was busy enforcing things and gaining a reputation as a tough law enforcement officer. His crackdown on illegal immigration also served as a template for Donald Trump’s political style.
But 2016 showed signs of change. Trump will only win Arizona by 4.1 percentage points and Maricopa by 3.4 percentage points, as suburban and urban counties begin to turn away from the far right of Republican politics. The fact that President Trump publicly bashed McCain, a popular politician in the state who won Maricopa by 15 points, probably didn’t do him any favors. In fact, McCain will be the last Republican to win a Senate race in Arizona.
As a sign of things to come, Arpaio will also lose the race. He did so in part because he faced criminal investigation, but President Trump later pardoned him.
In 2018, Kyrsten Sinema, running as a Democrat, painted Maricopa bright blue, leading to a partial flip of the Senate seat.
Mark Kelly, who ran to finish out McCain’s term after McCain’s death in 2020, will likely flip Maricopa if Joe Biden wins the state. Kelly will beat Blake Masters by 6.4 points in 2022 to climb the scoreboard there, and Katie Hobbs will beat Kari Lake there in 2022 by 2.4 points to enter the gubernatorial race.
Unsurprisingly, Maricopa has become the epicenter of the right-wing lie that the 2020 election was stolen. At one point, Republicans even announced they were conducting an audit they claimed was testing bamboo fiber to determine whether China interfered with the election results. Although the investigation showed no evidence of wrongdoing, it has not stopped such falsehoods from spreading in the state.
Late last month, Maricopa County Recorder Steven Richer, a Republican who pushed back on election lies, lost the primary election.
At the same time, Maricopa continues to have a strong anti-Trump force. She still won nearly 20 percent of the Republican vote in the May 2024 presidential primary, which was held after Nikki Haley dropped out.
As a Westerner himself from neighboring California, Harris knows Arizona’s importance in holding onto the Sun Belt, and the momentum he’s gained in recent weeks could put Arizona on the field. On Thursday, a bipartisan Cook Political Report moves Arizona out of state. That tilts the Republican Party into a toss-up.
But if Ms. Harris has any hope of winning Arizona as a presidential candidate, and if Ruben Gallego has any hope of winning his Senate race against Mr. Lake, they will A lot will depend on Mr. Maricopa. Harris’ campaign shows she is taking that seriously.
