Vice President Kamala Harris and her new running mate held a rally in Arizona on Friday as part of their tour of contested electoral districts, visiting a state that is home to a Democratic U.S. senator she bypassed in favor of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.
Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and gun control advocate, was a hot candidate for the vice presidency, winning two tough elections in politically divided Arizona.
By passing over Kelly, Harris may have lost the chance to win over people like 49-year-old Gonzalo Leyva, a landscaper from Phoenix. Leyva plans to vote for former President Donald Trump, a Republican, but said he would have supported a Harris-Kelly ticket.
“I prefer Kelly a hundred times,” said Leyva, a lifelong Democrat who became an independent early in Trump’s term. “I don’t think he’s as extreme as the others.”
In Arizona, every vote will be crucial. The state is no stranger to nail-biting elections, including in 2020, when President Joe Biden defeated Trump by less than 11,000 votes. Both parties are bracing for a similar outcome this year.
“These last few months are going to feel like years, and it’s hard to imagine anyone winning by a large margin,” said Constantine Querard, a veteran Republican strategist in the state.
Harris was aware of how tough the campaign will be when she and Walz toured a campaign office in north Phoenix on Friday afternoon and thanked volunteers who made signs with slogans like “This Mamala is voting for Kamala” and “Kamala and the Coach.” (Walz was a high school football coach.)
“It’s going to be a lot of work,” Harris told the volunteers, referring to his victory in November.
Democrats are confident that Harris is well positioned even without Kelly on the ballot. The senator is expected to remain a strong advocate for Harris and is already being mentioned for possible Cabinet posts or other key roles should the vice president ascend to the Oval Office.
“Kelly not being nominated hasn’t dampened support for Harris,” said Stacy Pearson, a Democratic strategist in Phoenix. She says she feels the same enthusiasm for the new slate that has drawn huge crowds to greet Harris and Walz at previous campaign stops, including at the home of fellow running mate, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.
Arizona is a magnet for Midwesterners looking to escape the cold, so several observers say Walz could still play well there.
Arizona was a reliably Republican state until Trump’s hawkish policies gained national traction.
Trump won Arizona in 2016 but quickly fell out with the late Republican Senator John McCain, a political icon in the state. This sparked a steady exodus of educated, moderate Republicans from the GOP and swept the Democrats in top-tier races.
In 2018, Democrats won an open race for the state’s Senate seat, foreshadowing Kelly’s 2020 victory and Biden’s victory there as well. In 2022, Kelly won again, and Democrats won the three key statewide races for governor, attorney general and secretary of state, defeating Republican candidates who maintained Trump’s style and his lies about voter fraud that cost him the 2020 presidential election.
Chuck Coughlin, a Republican strategist and former McCain aide, said the same voters who swung the state to Democrats over the past few election cycles remain lukewarm at best toward Trump.
“Trump is doing nothing to appeal to that part of the electorate,” he said.
The election campaign is already taking place on familiar terrain in Arizona – on the border with Mexico. Trump and his allies have sharply criticized Biden during his time in office for the influx of migrants and are now directing their attacks at Harris.
“It’s very easy for us to change our perspective and focus on them,” said Dave Smith, chairman of the Pima County Republican Party.
Kari Lake, who is running against Democratic-Republican Ruben Gallego for a vacant Senate seat in Arizona, released an ad late last week harshly criticizing Gallego for his support of what the ad calls Biden and Harris’s “radical border agenda.” The ad repeatedly shows cutouts of the vice president chuckling.
Meanwhile, Harris is targeting the state’s rapidly growing Latino population with an ad of her own, which highlights how Harris, the daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica, rose to the highest ranks of American politics.
