Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is launching a blitz in Arizona this week, with plans to swamp the battleground state with events and canvassing efforts, all timed around the start of early voting.
This week, Harris, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, second gentleman Doug Emhoff and first lady Jill Biden, in addition to a group of surrogates, are all engaging in more than 200 events spread across the state, hitting each of its media markets, according to details first shared with NBC News. They include a marquee rally by Harris in Phoenix on Thursday, when she will work to drive up energy on getting out the vote.
Nearly 6,000 people have already signed up to canvass and operate phone banks this week, and the campaign said over the weekend that it had scheduled more than 7,500 canvassing and phone-banking shifts.
Walz is headed for Tucson on Wednesday to kick off early voting, while Biden is heading to the border town of Yuma. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, Sen. Alex Padilla of California, Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas and Rep. Maxwell Frost of Florida are also taking part in events.
“All of that, to me, is the type of activity that’s required to win a close race. It’s a race that we’ve known would be close, we’ve prepared and planned for it to be close,” said Dan Kanninen, the campaign’s battleground states director.
The attention to the Western state at such a critical moment in the presidential race is a sign that the Harris campaign sees a competitive landscape there. Campaign officials also say to expect Harris to time events around early voting in many of the battleground states.
In Arizona, polling is consistently tight but has shown former President Donald Trump with an edge. Those polls also show Democratic Senate candidate Ruben Gallego outperforming Harris in his race against Republican Kari Lake. And there are reports of Republicans’ outpacing Democrats in voter registration.
But Harris campaign officials say they are leaning on a ground-game infrastructure months in the making that includes 19 offices and 190 staffers, as well as volunteers across the state.
The campaign said it has operations in place to reach out to Republicans and independent voters, and it pointed to Harris’ winning endorsements from a slate of state Republicans, including former Sen. Jeff Flake and Jimmy McCain, the son of the late Republican Sen. John McCain. Harris also recently visited the red territory of Cochise County to discuss how she would combat illegal border crossings.
“We understand, and have understood this entire year, that to win in Arizona, you’ve got to have some Republicans, you got to have some moderates and independents come to your side of the ledger,” Kanninen said. “That has happened for Democrats in the recent elections. There have been some very close races for Senate and for governor and for president in that state, but we’ve come out on top because we’ve built coalitions that could speak to Republicans.”
Democrats in Arizona hope to build on their gains in 2022, when they seized control of the governor, attorney general and secretary of state posts. An abortion initiative on the ballot could be another catalyst. And money has also poured into down-ballot state races, with Democrats trying to seize control of the state Legislature, long dominated by the GOP.
Democrats began building the infrastructure in Arizona when President Joe Biden was still a candidate. But as Biden’s approval rating faltered and concerns about immigration and the economy persisted, Arizona appeared out of reach. Harris’ candidacy, while still relatively new, has helped excite voters and expand fundraising and volunteer energy and, according to polling, put Arizona back in play for Democrats.
Since Aug. 1, Harris and entities supporting her candidacy in Arizona have spent $61 million on TV, radio and digital ads, whereas Trump and related groups have placed $47 million, according to ads tracked by the firm AdImpact.
Republicans report consistent energy for Trump, even as concerns have bubbled up over his campaign’s on-the-ground operation. Trump is scheduled to hold a rally in Arizona over the weekend.
In a recent interview, Arizona GOP Chair Gina Swoboda downplayed the number of field offices the party had compared with Democrats, pointing instead to enthusiasm for Trump.
“Our offices get blown out with people every single day, and that’s why we’re adding more,” Swoboda said. “As more people come, we keep building out bigger, and we keep filling them all and then adding on more. I haven’t seen the energy on the left. I think they’re kind of dead in the office. Our offices are kicking every day.”
Sean McEnerney, the Arizona Democratic Party’s coordinated campaign manager, pointed to hundreds of new volunteers coming out last weekend to knock on doors, despite temperatures of 100 degrees in October, as a sign of sustained energy on the left.
“We’ve been really seeing that tick up all through the month of September into October,” McEnerney said.
Having worked in Arizona over the past couple of major elections, McEnerney said the battle is similar to what Democrats have previously faced.
“We know it’s going to be really tight. We know it’s going to be a close race. It’s Arizona,” he said. “We built a winning coalition in 2022 and 2020 here by doing all the little things right — by building that coalition that can win, by just, in some races in 2022 just a few hundred votes. We know it’s going to be close, but we are focused on mobilizing our supporters but also continuing to persuade voters, and we’ll be doing that all through the early vote period.”
