(Posted Sept. 30, 2024, at azcentral.com)
Arizona Republic: Trump or Harris must win over 3 voting groups in massive Maricopa County
By Ronald J. Hansen and Caitlin McGlade
GILBERT, Ariz. — This bedroom community is an enclave for many members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and long seemed a political constant in Arizona.
Its mayor is a Republican, as were a string of her predecessors. U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., has headed the far-right House Freedom Caucus in Congress and is one of former President Donald Trump’s most reliable supporters on Capitol Hill.
So it’s no small matter when Daniel Barker, a former state appeals court judge and a prominent member of his Latter-day Saints church, became a visible backer of President Joe Biden in 2020 and Vice President Kamala Harris now.
“The way Trump treats people started this,” he said from his Gilbert home on the southeastern edge of Maricopa County.
Trump’s conduct has reaffirmed Barker’s reasons, which he said are rooted in behavior unworthy of Christians and a disrespect for the rule of law.
“It wasn’t hard for me,” Barker said. “There are policy differences on the role that government plays, and Kamala Harris’ views being very liberal. But it’s hard to view Trump as being conservative in the old-fashioned sense.”
Barker’s “Arizona Republicans for Harris” reflects a sliver of GOP defections, including a smattering of Latter-day Saints voters, and helps explain why the state is once again a presidential battleground.
And in Maricopa County, easily the state’s population center, the race could come down to what amounts to a handful of communities.
Beyond the east side GOP with some Mormon voters troubled by Trump, there are tens of thousands of Hispanic residents on the west side who collectively lean Democratic but often don’t vote at all. As Trump makes inroads with Latino men, that demographic could have outsized importance.
And along the Loop 101 freeway that helps tie Maricopa County’s vast population together is an area of upscale voters in Phoenix, Scottsdale and Chandler with a penchant for split-ticket voting, a rarity in contemporary American politics.
After days of counting, Biden won Arizona in 2020 by fewer than 11,000 votes, the narrowest margin of any state he carried. Biden did so because he won Maricopa County by about 49,000 votes, offsetting Trump’s net advantage in the state’s other 14 counties.
U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., ran in 2020 and 2022 and knows the contours of Maricopa County well.
“There were probably about 110,000 voters who voted for me and Trump,” he said. “There’s a purple part of the county like there’s a purple part of the country. People cross over in both directions.”
Shaped like a piece from a jigsaw puzzle, Maricopa County has the land mass of Vermont, and its 4.6 million residents make it more populous than 25 states.
Arizona became a swing state in the Trump era, and Maricopa County’s rapid population growth and shifting political loyalties are a major reason why.
While it is vast in size and population, much of the county is also relatively predictable from a voting standpoint.
But these three key areas of Maricopa County could help settle Arizona’s 11 electoral votes in 2024.
Abortion, border security, economy top issues for voters
Democrats and Republicans generally agree on the formula for winning Maricopa County, even if they achieve that in different ways.
Lorna Romero Ferguson, an Arizona Republican political strategist who worked for the late U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said if Trump stays focused, the GOP can appeal to college-educated women along the purplish Loop 101 corridor.
“They want to hear about the economy. What are you going to do about the cost of living? It’s the pocketbook issues … and public safety is very important to them,” Romero Ferguson said.
“On the flip side, (they don’t like) talking about fringe issues that the majority of the electorate don’t care about: the conspiracy theories, still talking about elections being stolen. That actually turns them away from these Republicans.”
Eric Chalmers, an Arizona Democratic consultant, admitted his party saw “backsliding” with Latino voters in 2020 but had real appeal with Republicans along the Loop 101 and in the LDS community who “vote their values.”
“This is still a Republican-majority county,” Chalmers said.
But the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that erased federal abortion rights, followed by more than a year of ambiguity about whether Arizona law rested on a near-total ban from the 19th century, has added to the Democratic coalition.
“Republicans have way overplayed their hand on abortion,” he said. “That has pulled back so many people to reconsidering what used to be a very easy Republican-Democrat choice.”
The state has a proposed constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion rights on the ballot in November that is widely expected to pass. That measure could draw significant support from people who don’t usually vote, potentially lifting Harris.
If Democrats see momentum on that issue, Republicans think a pair of issues could break for them.
Border security is a perennial concern of conservatives in a state that shares a 370-mile border with Mexico. And Phoenix felt the pinch from inflation harder than any other large metro area in the country for a time as the coronavirus pandemic eased.
These issues are front and center in Trump’s case for a second term and have outsized relevance in a state he wants to win back.
Republicans had a 6.6 percentage point registration advantage over Democrats by the time of the state’s July 30 primary. Historically, the GOP’s edge is even larger in actual turnout.
That means Republicans focus on holding together their GOP base and try to win a significant slice of independent voters who account for about one-quarter of the voting electorate.
Democrats must hold their party base but also win most independents and a fraction of Republicans.
Hispanic voters’ turnout could be a tipping point
If there’s an X factor in Maricopa County voting, it’s Hispanic voters.
They consistently turn out in relatively low numbers. That is especially evident in south Phoenix and parts of the West Valley.
In 2020, turnout among Hispanic voters was about 72%, according to data compiled by L2, a research company that compiles demographic information on registered voters across the nation. Maricopa County’s turnout among all voters that year was 81%.
As a demographic bloc, they tend to be younger, less affluent and, for those in immigrant families, live in households where fewer adults are even eligible to vote.
Hispanics tend to mostly vote for Democrats but less decisively than African Americans. Trump has flashed surprising strength with Latino men who appreciate his blunt, decisive political style.
“Trump appeals to tough guys. Machismo is part of our culture, whether we want to admit it,” said Alfredo Gutierrez, a political consultant who did his first voter registration drive in 1968.
Even so, a drive through Maryvale, a largely Hispanic neighborhood in Phoenix, offers glaring evidence of bipartisan apathy. Signs for any political race are nearly impossible to find on many streets, unlike American flags and signs for the military.
Cris Zepeda, 27, is among the Latinos drawn to Trump, but not with passion.
He said he doesn’t intend to vote this election.
“The main reason is I don’t believe either candidate is suitable for president. I don’t think either of them represents anything of true value. … I find it a little sad that that’s what it has boiled down to.”
Zepeda operates a thrift store and lives in Glendale, a city on the west side of Phoenix. He cares about business regulations and pays attention to politics because it seems like he must, but he is unimpressed with what he sees.
Gutierrez said there are signs the Latino community is more energized by Harris than they were for President Joe Biden. But, he said, it’s not clear how many will vote.
Joseph Garcia is the executive director of Chicanos Por La Causa’s Si Se Vota, which tries to boost voter registration of Hispanics in Arizona.
Garcia said 400,000 Latinos voted in 2022, which was 60,000 more than voted in 2018. Like everything in Arizona, much of that change happened in Maricopa County.
Entrenched support for Trump
However, not everything is changing in Maricopa County, which keeps the area from tilting left.
Christopher Nolan, a Navy veteran who lives in Mesa and works for the town of Gilbert, is again showing his fervor for Trump.
For several days, the longtime Republican flew a half-dozen Trump-related flags in front of his house, including one with a vulgar reference to Biden.
He also had a placard with the iconic image of a bloodied Trump after the July assassination attempt that nearly killed the former president.
Nolan’s homeowners’ association made him take down the politically charged content — including a red, white and blue canvas over his garage door — but nothing is dampening his zeal for Trump.
“I don’t like Biden, and Harris doesn’t actually know how to talk. Everybody knows that,” Nolan said. It reflects his support for Trump, who he said took care of the military while in office.
But things are far less cut-and-dried for many others, including longtime Republicans in the LDS community.
The Pew Research Center found about 5% of Arizona adults, more than 400,000, are Latter-day Saints.
Exit polling by the Associated Press found that Mormon voters chose Trump over Biden in 2020 by about 4-to-1. But Biden did about twice as well with that demographic as Hillary Clinton did in 2016, giving him thousands more votes in the closest state in the country.
Barker is among those whose faith could not allow him to support Trump in 2020 or now. Others in the church can’t go the extra step of voting for Harris.
“I am totally at peace with saying the party system as we have it … has brought us the extremes of both sides,” said Rusty Bowers, the former Arizona state House speaker who gained national acclaim for resisting Trump’s requests to overturn the certified 2020 election results in his state.
“I’m fine to not vote for either one,” Bowers said.
In 2023, Biden awarded Bowers the Presidential Citizens Medal, the nation’s second-highest civilian honor. But Bowers said he can’t support Harris, whom he said hasn’t spoken candidly about her political plans and backs abortion rights, or Trump, who he believes is morally offensive and publicly called Bowers a coward.
In talking to fellow Mormons, Bowers compares the choice to that of Shiz and Coriantumr, two figures from the Book of Mormon who were considered evil and sparked wars that left everyone dead.
“They go, ‘Yeah, it’s kind of like that,’” Bowers said.
Purple voters who focus on candidates, not party
Near the Loop 101, voters wrestle with politics, too, but have blurred their loyalties.
The Loop 101 freeway traces a northern arc around Phoenix, dipping south into communities east and west of Arizona’s capital city. In many ways, it is the American suburban archetype: generally safe, relatively affluent and politically up for grabs.
In 2020, at least 19 precincts near this part of Maricopa County flipped from Trump in 2016 to Biden in 2020, according to election result data. That was about one-third of all the precincts that changed countywide.
Phoenix resident Elizabeth Arango, 59, grew up in a Republican family and has been a registered voter for nearly 30 years. But Trump helped her realize that her political views no longer fit with the GOP.
So, sometime before the 2020 election, she switched and became a Democrat.
“It was during the time when I was raising my kids and a stay-at-home mom and was extremely busy,” Arango said. “I didn’t know which president I was going to be going for. The Democrats are definitely more along the line of how I want to live. I didn’t want to follow suit with what I grew up with.”
Arango said she’s no fan of Trump, but that doesn’t mean she’s enamored with Harris.
“If there was an independent, I might even vote for an independent, but there isn’t, so I’m definitely going to vote for Kamala,” she said.
