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Harris Rides Momentum to Arizona, for What Campaign Says Is Largest Rally Yet
Kamala Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, drew 15,000 at a rally near Phoenix, the campaign said. To win in Arizona, they will need the diverse coalition that gave President Biden the state in 2020.
Vice President Kamala Harris at a campaign rally in Glendale, Ariz., on Friday.Credit...Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
Kellen BrowningShane Goldmacher
By Kellen Browning and Shane Goldmacher
Reporting from Glendale, Ariz.
Aug. 9, 2024
Vice President Kamala Harris rolled into Arizona on Friday evening with the same political momentum that has infused her first swing across the country this week, drawing a crowd that her campaign estimated at more than 15,000 — her largest yet — in a Western state that not long ago appeared to be falling off the battleground map.
Along with her newly minted running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Ms. Harris delivered a stump speech that is barely a week old, and yet familiar enough to an impassioned new following that some shouted her lines before she did.
The rally was her fourth in four days with an arena-filling crowd that demonstrated the degree to which her candidacy replacing President Biden’s had remade the 2024 race.
Mr. Walz relished the crowd that filed into the Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Ariz., in 100-degree heat as he poked fun at Mr. Trump’s obsession with rally crowds.
“It’s not as if anybody cares about crowd sizes or anything,” Mr. Walz said to knowing cheers.
Despite her momentum, Ms. Harris faces an uphill battle in Arizona, a longtime Republican stronghold that flipped to Mr. Biden in 2020 but, according to polling, had been drifting back to former President Donald J. Trump this year.
To win, she will need to reunite the diverse coalition of voters who delivered the state four years ago, and she made an explicit appeal to one part of that group on Friday: Native American voters.
“As president, I will tell you, I will always honor tribal sovereignty and respect tribal self-determination,” she said. The first speaker at the rally, notably, was Stephen Roe Lewis, the governor of the Gila River Indian Community, south of Phoenix.
In her speech, Ms. Harris zeroed in on two issues that are especially pertinent to Arizonans: immigration and abortion.
Crossings from Mexico into Arizona have remained high this year even as they have dropped elsewhere, and Ms. Harris positioned herself as supporting both an “earned pathway to citizenship” and tougher border restrictions, pointing to her record as California’s attorney general.
“I went after the transnational gangs, the drug cartels and the human traffickers,” Ms. Harris said. “I prosecuted them in case after case, and I won. So I know what I’m talking about.”
By contrast, Ms. Harris said, Mr. Trump was playing politics with the issue. She highlighted his opposition to a bipartisan bill this year that would have beefed up border security.
“He talks a big game about border security,” she said, “but he does not walk the walk.”
The comments come as her campaign began to air a tough-on-immigration ad that labeled her a “border-state prosecutor.” Senior Trump campaign officials see the border and immigration as one of Ms. Harris’s deepest areas of vulnerability, and his campaign has repeatedly labeled her, inaccurately, as Mr. Biden’s failed “border czar.”
Ms. Harris did add a new riff to her speech, responding to Mr. Trump’s muddled comments on Thursday at a news conference in Florida, in which he did not rule out directing the Food and Drug Administration to revoke access to abortion pills.
Ms. Harris said Mr. Trump’s agenda “would ban medication abortion in every state,” adding, “But we are not going to let that happen — because we trust women.”
In her speech, Ms. Harris zeroed in on two issues that are especially pertinent to Arizonans: immigration and abortion.Credit...Mr. Trump has previously supported the Supreme Court’s ruling on the abortion drug mifepristone. Karoline Leavitt, a Trump spokeswoman, said in a statement the former president’s position on mifepristone “remains the same — the Supreme Court unanimously decided on the issue and the matter is settled.”
The abortion rhetoric could prove especially potent in Arizona, where the State Supreme Court reinstated a near-total ban on the procedure this year. The State Legislature eventually repealed it, but abortion is still banned after 15 weeks, and voters will have a chance to enshrine the right to an abortion until fetal viability in the state’s Constitution through a ballot measure in November.
The speakers who preceded Ms. Harris on Friday made a number of appeals to independents and moderate Republicans, another segment she will need to win over.
“I do not recognize my party,” said John Giles, the mayor of Mesa, Ariz., who is a prominent Republican backing Ms. Harris. “We need to elect a ticket who will be the adults in the room.”
Senator Mark Kelly, the Arizona Democrat who is also a Navy veteran and former astronaut, introduced Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz. It was the second time this week that a finalist in Ms. Harris’s running-mate sweepstakes introduced her at a rally. Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania did the same in Philadelphia on Tuesday.
Mr. Kelly said Mr. Trump had “zero respect for any of us who have worn the uniform.” Mr. Trump’s allies have raised questions about Mr. Walz’s decision to leave the National Guard in 2005 to run for Congress.
Attendees and speakers said the enormous crowd braving scorching desert temperatures on Friday was a sign that, after months of dreariness among Democrats, momentum in Arizona was finally on their side.
“It may be a little warm outside,” Kate Gallego, the mayor of Phoenix, said, “but based on the energy in this arena, I know it’s Donald Trump who’s feeling the heat.”
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