At Vice President Kamala Harris’ rally in Arizona last week, several of the state’s prominent Democrats spoke, from Rep. Ruben Gallego, who is running for Senate against Kari Lake, to Sen. Mark Kelly, who was at one point on Harris’ shortlist of potential candidates.
One of the most passionate speeches, however, came from a local politician who is not a Democrat at all. John Giles, the mayor of Mesa, delivered a message to disillusioned Republicans like himself, earning loud applause.
“I have something to say to those of us in the middle: You don’t owe this political party a damn thing,” he said of Donald Trump and the Republicans. “I would say in the spirit of the great Senator John McCain: Please, please join me in putting country above party and stopping Donald Trump and protecting the rule of law, our Constitution and the democracy of this great country.”
The speech was a deliberate attempt by the Harris campaign to win over Republicans. Earlier in the week, the campaign introduced Republicans for Harris, which held a Zoom conference Tuesday night that drew 60,000 people, according to Olivia Troye, a former adviser to Mike Pence.
Harris’s reliance on McCain is understandable, as McCain was widely considered the conscience of the Republicans, even though he voted largely within the party. But Trump’s biggest political blow was to McCain when he voted to repeal Obamacare.
On the surface, Harris appears to have a harder time courting McCain’s supporters than her predecessor, Joe Biden. Although Biden is a Democrat, he developed close friendships with McCain and other influential Republicans, including Senator Mitch McConnell, during his 36 years in the Senate.
This made it more palatable for many suburban Republicans in hotly contested swing states like Arizona to vote for Biden. In fact, Biden was previously able to win heavily Republican-held areas like Maricopa County.
Harris, meanwhile, served as California’s attorney general after that state became an all-Democratic state, and she served only a short time in the Senate, overlapping briefly with McCain. Harris also had a much more liberal record as a senator and presidential candidate, which she now wants to move away from.
Still, Mike Noble, founder and CEO of Noble Predictive Insights, which regularly conducts polls in Arizona and other southwestern states, said Harris has a chance to win over more centrist Republicans from Trump, who famously clashed with McCain in his final years in office.
“Harris definitely has a chance there. The wounds Trump inflicted on McCain’s Republicans have not yet fully healed,” he said. The Independent“So Harris has the opportunity to exploit this in her campaign, because Trump is still keeping it a secret, through the McCain people.”
Noble added that given the problems, Republicans should actually win – but Trump has focused too much on sideshows, such as the military career of their vice presidential candidate, Tim Walz.
“I mean, the two most important issues for independent voters are inflation and immigration or border security,” he said. “They’re already pretty right-wing on the core issues that really keep Arizona voters awake at night, especially swing voters. Focusing on that would be the smart approach.”
Last week, Highground Public Affairs Consultants, which conducts some of the most respected polls in Arizona, released a poll showing Harris narrowly ahead of Trump in the western state. Paul Bentz, who conducted the poll, said Harris may actually win over more voters who might have voted for a Republican like McCain in previous elections.
“I think those could be up for grabs, and a selection like Walz, depending on how they portray him and what story they have behind Walz, could be very attractive to that audience,” he said. The Independent before the rally on Friday.
“So far they’ve been touting his progressive credentials to get the base on board,” he said. “That’s not going to work as well here in the state, but if they bring in his military background, his background as an educator and trainer, that could certainly be attractive to that demographic.”
Later that day, during the rally in Glendale, Harris’ team actually handed out signs that simply said “Coach” for Walz’s speech.
