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Vice President Kamala Harris’s rally last week in Arizona featured several speeches from prominent Democrats in the state, from Rep. Ruben Gallego, who is running for Senate against Kari Lake, to Sen. Mark Kelly, who was at one point on Harris’s short list of potential running rates.
But perhaps one of the most impassioned speeches came from a local leader who isn’t a Democrat at all. John Giles, the mayor of Mesa, delivered a message for disaffected Republicans like him and was met with vigorous applause.
“I have something to say to those of us who are in the middle: You don’t owe a damn thing to that political party,” he said about Donald Trump and the GOP. “I would say in the spirit of the great Senator John McCain, please, please join me in putting country over party and stopping Donald Trump and protecting the rule of law, protecting our constitution and protecting the democracy of this great country.”
The speech was a conscious effort by the Harris campaign to bring Republicans into the fold. Earlier that week, the campaign had rolled out Republicans for Harris, which held a Zoom on Tuesday evening that attracted 60,000 people, according to Olivia Troye, a former adviser to Mike Pence.
It makes sense for Harris to invoke McCain, given that he was widely viewed as the conscience of the GOP, even though he largely voted along party lines. But he delivered Trump’s biggest policy blow when he voted to kill their repeal of Obamacare.
On the surface, courting McCain supporters might seem to be a harder lift for Harris than it was for her predecessor Joe Biden. Despite being a Democrat, Biden forged close friendships with McCain and other powerful Republicans, including Sen. Mitch McConnell, during his 36 years in the Senate.
That made voting for Biden more palatable to many suburban Republicans in tightly contested swing states like Arizona. Indeed, Biden flipped formerly solidly Republican areas like Maricopa County.
Harris, for her part, was attorney general for California after it became a solidly Democratic state, and she served in the Senate only briefly, overlapping with McCain for a short time. Harris also had a decidedly more liberal record as a senator and presidential candidate, which she’s now trying to pivot away from.
Even so, Mike Noble, founder and chief executive of Noble Predictive Insights who regularly polls 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.
“Harris absolutely has an opportunity there those, those wounds that Trump caused among McCain Republicans haven't quite healed yet,” he told The Independent. “So Harris has an opportunity to exploit that in her campaign, because Trump is still making bones about it, about the McCain folks.”
Noble added that Republicans should ostensibly be winning given the issues — but Trump has been too focused on side shows, like the military record of her running mate, Tim Walz.
“I mean, the top two issues among Independent voters are inflation and immigration or border security,” he said. “You already have them kind of dead to rights on the core issues that are really keeping Arizona voters up at night, especially the swing voters, focus your fire there would be the smart approach.”
Last week, Highground Public Affairs Consultants, which conducts some of the most respected polls in Arizona, released a survey showing Harris slightly ahead of Trump in the western state. Paul Bentz, who conducted the poll, said Harris really could win over more voters who might’ve gone for a Republican like McCain in past elections.
“I think those might be up for grabs, and a selection like Walz, depending on how they sort of portray him and the narrative they have behind Walz, could be very appealing to that audience,” he told The Independent before the Friday rally.
“So far, they've been really touting more of his progressive credentials to try to get the base on board,” he said. “That won't work as well here in the state, but if they lean into his military background, his background as an educator, as a coach, that certainly could be appealing to the to that demographic.”
Indeed, later that day during the rally in Glendale, Harris’s team handed out signs for Walz’s speech simply saying, “Coach.”
