PHOENIX — With President Joe Biden dropping out of the 2024 race, all eyes now turn to Vice President Kamala Harris as she kicks off her campaign to win the White House – a path that will likely head through Arizona.
Harris, who has already secured enough delegates to become the Democratic presidential nominee, is launching an all-out blitz in the desert this week hosting more than 65 events across the state.
The “Weekend of Action” will kick off Thursday and go through the Sunday – engaging more than 1,300 people through canvass launches, watch parties, press events and visits from national political figures like Civil Rights activist Dolores Huerta and Harris campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez.
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“One hundred days before Election Day, Team Harris is leveraging the historic grassroots enthusiasm we’ve seen for our campaign and putting it to work. For over a year, our team has been building the battleground infrastructure needed to reach and persuade the voters who will decide this election — and now, we’re kicking it into overdrive,” said Harris for President Battleground States Director Dan Kanninen. “We have an enormous battleground advantage over Donald Trump, and this weekend that is going to be painfully clear to the Trump-Vance campaign. Our campaign is off to a running start and doing the work to defeat Donald Trump and send Vice President Harris to the Oval Office.”
The goal is to not only gain support for Harris, but also democratic candidates down the ballot ahead of the July 30th primary election.
Since Biden’s announcement on Sunday to not seek re-election, over 1,800 people have signed up to volunteer and more than 60 elected Arizona Democrats have endorsed Harris – including Senator Mark Kelly, who is one of the frontrunners in the VP race.
The latest polls show Trump is currently ahead in Arizona, however, that was before Biden’s decision to withdraw.
According to The Associated Press, Trump campaign has opened six field offices in Arizona since early June, with the plan being for paid regional directors to take a data-driven approach in directing their volunteers on which voters and neighborhoods to target.
“The focus now is on people you know that are around you, rather than everybody go out and randomly hit doors,” Arizona GOP chair Gina Swoboda told the Associated Press earlier this month. “This is data-driven, focused on the people in the areas that are the voters that we need to turn out in order to land that plane and win that victory.”
With the Harris campaign blitz and Senator Kelly among the finalists to join the Harris ticket, it appears the campaign is going all in on winning Arizona – a state Biden claimed in 2020.
