David Tapia has watched one election after another from the sidelines, unfazed and largely uninterested in politics. Until this year, when Donald Trump’s candidacy stirred him to become more politically aware.
He intends to cast his first vote for Kamala Harris.
“Looking at both sides, I’ll be honest, I’m not a supporter of Trump. I’m just not,” said Tapia, 42. “I have no fear of him winning, I don’t think any of us should. I think it’s really what’s right and what’s wrong.”
The balance between Arizonans who share Tapia’s views and those who disagree may go a long way in determining the outcome of the fight for the state’s 11 electoral votes. It’s one of the tightest battlegrounds in the country, where Latino men are highly coveted by both sides.
With early voting already underway here, the presidential candidates, their running mates and a parade of surrogates are descending upon the state in a scramble to gain the upper hand in a race that several polls suggest is stubbornly close.
“Arizona is the blue wall of the southwest,” said Tucson Mayor Regina Romero, a Democrat.
Abortion and immigration are driving factors in the election in all corners of the country, but the issues are colliding in Arizona like few other battlegrounds. Voters are deciding ballot measures to guarantee abortion rights in the state constitution and a separate question on whether to make violations of immigration law a state crime, rather than only a federal offense.
Trump is set to appear at a rally Sunday in the central Arizona city of Prescott. Harris spent Thursday and Friday in the Phoenix area, where she implored thousands of supporters to consider the consequences of the presidential election.
“This is not 2016 and 2020,” the vice president said. “The stakes are even higher.”
Four years ago, Trump lost Arizona by 10,457 votes out of more than 3.3 million cast – one of his narrowest defeats of any battleground state. Joe Biden became the first Democrat to win here since Bill Clinton in 1996 and only the second since Harry Truman in 1948.
Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance invoked the 2020 election result at a stop Wednesday in Tucson to encourage supporters to shed any skepticism about early voting programs.
“Eleven thousand votes, that was the margin last time,” Vance told supporters at the Tucson Speedway, a rare acknowledgment of Trump’s defeat that many of his supporters here still question. “We have got to get out there and take advantage.”
Abortion on the ballot
In the first presidential election since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion is literally on the Arizona ballot.
A proposed constitutional amendment to protect abortion rights is widely expected to prevail, strategists in both parties told CNN. Far less certain is whether the measure, Proposition 139, will draw to the polls people who may otherwise not have voted, which could benefit Harris.
“Arizona, we need to fight this battle on every front,” Harris told supporters here Thursday night. “You have the chance on the state level to vote ‘yes’ on Proposition 139 to protect your right to make your own health care decisions.”
The measure would create a “fundamental right” to receive abortion care up until fetal viability, around the 24th week of pregnancy, with later exceptions if a health care provider believes the life or mental health of the mother is at risk.
“It was a right that we had for 50 years,” said Donna Ross, a retiree who attended Harris’ rally and believes the measure will help drive turnout for the presidential campaign. “It’s crazy to think that you can take that right away. Who does that?”
The scrambled politics of abortion are among the key questions hanging over the closing chapter of the presidential campaign, and it’s far from certain whether Proposition 139 would give Harris a definite edge over Trump.
Laura Dent, whose group Arizona for Abortion Access helped gather more than 800,000 voter signatures to put abortion rights on the ballot, said support for the amendment has come from across the political spectrum, not merely from Democrats.
“It’s something that resonates with independents, with Democrats, with Republicans,” said Dent, the group’s campaign manager. “That support we absolutely welcome.”
Mayra Rodriguez, a former Planned Parenthood clinic manager who became an anti-abortion activist, has been driving around the Phoenix area in a large RV with a warning to vote “no” on Proposition 139. She said she strongly opposed Harris and would support Trump, but did not believe he was sufficiently supportive of the anti-abortion movement.
“I don’t believe he is,” Rodriguez said. “I always tell people, unless Jesus is on the ballot, we have to choose the lesser of two evils.”
Asked who that would be, she replied: “To me, it’s Trump.”
Yet not all Trump supporters agree.
As Candy Purdue walked to a Vance event earlier this week, wearing a Trump hat and campaign button, she said she intended to support Proposition 139 and thought the government should stay out of it.
“I’m against abortion,” Purdue said, “But I will vote for Prop 139 because I feel like every woman has a right to decide what they want and what they can live with.”
The immigration ballot measure, Proposition 314, adds another dimension to the long-running debate over border security. Republican state lawmakers voted to put the issue on the ballot, rather than collecting signatures to do so.
Despite border security being a hot-button issue in a state that shares a 370-mile border with Mexico, the measure has not received the same attention as the abortion proposal. Virtually no money has been spent on ads compared with the abortion proposal, which dominates the airwaves here.
Dueling coalitions
Republicans held a 6-point advantage in voter registration over Democrats in late July, according to the Arizona secretary of state. New figures after the October 7 voter registration deadline have not yet been released.
More than $117 million has been spent on advertising in Arizona by all sides, according to AdImpact data, with Democrats outspending Republicans $65 million to $52 million.
As Arizonans vote in person or by mail, every day until November 5 is Election Day in Arizona, and more than 855,000 Latinos are expected to cast ballots, according to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, which is about the same as the 2020 turnout and an increase of 58% from 2016.
Nearly 1 of every 4 Arizona voters is expected to be Latino.
To win, Trump must perform strongly among registered Republicans and win a sizable share of independent voters, who make up about a quarter of the electorate. The campaign is courting voters who like Trump, even if they haven’t routinely participated in recent elections.
Harris is seeking to thread a more challenging needle – besides Democrats, she’s looking to win most of the independent voters and a slim share of Republicans, with a particular focus on members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon church.
About 5% of Arizona adults, or more than 400,000 people, are Latter-day Saints, according to the Pew Research Center.
Mesa Mayor John Giles, an LDS member who leads the group Arizona Republicans for Harris, said the election “is going to be decided by who does the better job of getting out the vote.” He urged family members to help their relatives fill out the four-page, 80-question ballot.
“Do we have an appreciation for the urgency and the tremendous responsibility that we have as Arizona voters?” Giles asked supporters Tuesday at an event with Doug Emhoff, the vice president’s husband, who was also campaigning here. “As goes Arizona, so will go this election.”
