Transcript:
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
We’ve been covering swing states this election season as part of our series We, The Voters. This week, we’re focusing on Arizona. It’s a swing state going all the way down the ballot there from the race for President and the U.S. Senate to a key measure on abortion rights, where the votes could go either way. To talk about all of this swinginess (ph), we’re joined now by Camryn Sanchez with member station KJZZ in Phoenix. Hey, Camryn.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ, BYLINE: Hi.
CHANG: Hi. OK. So both presidential candidates have just been visiting Arizona. I know that you covered their events. And I want to just start with how former President Trump has been trying to appeal to voters there. Like, you know, obviously, Arizona is a border state. How is that shaping his message there?
SANCHEZ: It has consistently been his main message here. So Trump spoke at an arena in Prescott Valley on Sunday afternoon, which is just about two hours north of Phoenix. He spoke to an audience of thousands about border security and falsely claimed that Harris has imported criminals from all over the world.
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DONALD TRUMP: From prisons and jails, insane asylums, mental institutions, from Venezuela, from the Congo, all over, and she’s resettled them into your communities to prey upon innocent American people.
SANCHEZ: So as NPR has reported in the past, crime rates among immigrants are actually generally not higher than they are for the overall public. When I talked to Trump voters who were coming out, they said that they believe what he says about the border is true, and they like his emphasis on the economy as well. I’ll also note that Trump has continued to say at his rallies in Arizona that he won the 2020 election, although he did not. He lost in Arizona. He’s now also pushing for early voting and mail-in voting, which just started here, although those things were at the center of a lot of election fraud conspiracy theories in 2020, when Biden won. And here in Arizona, the Republican-controlled legislature investigated and came up with no evidence of fraud.
CHANG: That’s absolutely right. I know that you were at a rally for Vice President Harris a few days before that. How much did she try to preempt Trump’s arguments on any of those things? Like, what kind of case did she make?
SANCHEZ: She really took a very different approach. So at Harris’ rally in Chandler, Arizona, which is in the Phoenix metro area, she focused very much on her economic and her health care policies. She did criticize Trump. She criticized him for not debating her again and for his comments during their debate about what he said were his, quote-unquote, “concepts of a plan” to replace the Affordable Care Act. One thing people have pointed out is that while Harris is neck-and-neck and pulls with Trump in Arizona, the Democratic candidate for Senate, Ruben Gallego, who is a retired Marine and a congressman, he appears to be leading the GOP nominee, Kari Lake, who is a Trump endorsee.
So the key seems to be that you really need to win over independents and some Republicans to get state-wide office in Arizona. And Gallego has been doing that, but Harris is not so much. One issue that might win some independents for Harris is the emphasis she’s putting on abortion rights. And here she is talking about that.
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VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: More than 1 in 3 women in America lives in a state with a Trump abortion ban, including right here in Arizona, 3.5 million women. And many of these bans, like the one in this state, have no exceptions even for rape and incest. It is immoral.
CHANG: I mean, abortion, it’s a big issue in this presidential race, and it’s especially a big issue on Arizona’s state ballot this year. Like, there’s a very important measure on that ballot that voters are going to be deciding this November. It’s about Prop 139. You see signs about Prop 139 all over the place. Our team certainly did. Tell us what is going on with that particular issue.
SANCHEZ: There was just this tidal wave of momentum when Roe v. Wade was overturned, and Arizona is 1 of 10 states now voting on abortion rights questions on their ballot. Here, we have Proposition 139. Arizona got a lot of attention in the spring because there was a debate over a Civil War-era law that banned abortion, and it was narrowly repealed by the legislature.
So currently, we have a law banning abortion up to 15 weeks. But the amendment, if it passes, would allow abortion up to viability, which is about 24 weeks or so. Democrats are hoping that that drives a lot of voters to the polls. Now, the opponents of the measure say that it’s way too extreme. But some polls are showing that it has a lot of support, and that’s what I’ve heard from talking to people, both Democrats and independents.
CHANG: That is Camryn Sanchez from KJZZ in Phoenix. Thank you so much, Camryn.
SANCHEZ: Thank you.