With mail-in ballots on their way and just 27 days still the November election, Ohio Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz held events within hours of each other in Tucson on Wednesday.
The two candidates laid out starkly different themes during their speeches, with Vance carrying the refrain of Republican standard-bearer Donald Trump in pointing to migrants as the source of American’s problems. Walz said the Republicans have “no plan” beyond blaming migrants, discussed the “humanity” of the approach of Vice President Kamala Harris to border issues, and told a crowd of Democrats, “You love America.”
The Trump and Harris campaigns are still locked in a neck-and-neck race for Arizona’s 11 electoral votes, and each event focused on getting out the vote.
Walz, the Democratic nominee for vice president, addressed a crowd at Palo Verde High Magnet School on Wednesday evening, not long after Republican vice presidential nominee Vance delivered remarks at the Tucson Speedway racetrack.
Each event marked the significant contrasts between the two campaigns. Vance described an America beset by immigrants, who he claims drove up prices for housing and food, and increased wait times at emergency rooms.
“I mean this sincerely, if you’re watching, if you want to secure southern border, if you want to lower the prices of groceries, if you want to lower the price of housing in this country, you’re welcome to vote for Donald J. Trump for president, because he’s the person who’s actually going to fix those,” Vance told a crowd of around 300 people.
Vance blamed Vice President Harris for the flow of fentanyl up through the southern border, urging the crowd to vote for Trump if they want “to close down that border and deport illegal aliens.”
Immigration continues to be one of the most contentious issues in Southern Arizona politics, and a favorite issue for visiting politicians. At a campaign stop in Tucson last month, Trump vowed to launch “the largest mass deportation mission in the history of our country.”
At the racetrack Wednesday, Vance spoke about the “toll” illegal immigration has taken on the country.
“It’s not just the crime, it’s not just the fentanyl, it’s American children who have had their schools overrun with thousands and thousands of people who don’t even speak English,” Vance said.
Later on, Vance accused migrants that “Kamala Harris led into this country” of flooding American communities with fentanyl and murdering American citizens, including Laken Riley, a 22-year-old Georgia woman who was killed by a man from Venezuela.
Years of government data shows that most fentanyl is smuggled by U.S. citizens through legal border crossing points, and that immigrants (both legal and illegal) are less likely to commit violent crimes.
“Democrats always say that their illegal immigration policies are compassionate,” Vance said. “It’s not compassionate to American kids who deserve to get a good education and not have their schools flooded with illegal aliens, and it’s not compassionate to the 320,000 children who have gone missing thanks to Kamala Harris’s wide open border.”
The Department of Homeland Security report from August that Trump and his backers are basing their “missing” children claims on covers more than a year of the Republican’s presidency, and an spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enforcement called it “misleading.”
Vance promised that as vice president, he and Trump would “make life more affordable for American citizens” by closing down the border to the “illegal aliens” who are given homes “at the taxpayer expense.”
Some migrants are given temporary shelter by local governments on their way to be housed by sponsors, but the federal government is not providing homes to migrants on a longterm basis. Housing costs have been driven up by a myriad of factors, including a collapse of the available housing stock following the 2007 recession, as well as increasing prices driven by more vacation rental companies such as AirBnB and investment firms that bought up residential properties.
Before Vance, speakers at the GOP event included former Trump National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, Arizona Rep. Lupe Diaz, Arizona GOP Chair Gina Swoboda and Michael Whatley, the chair of the Republican National Committee. Whatley said Arizona voters should “get out the vote and protect the ballot.”
Vance joked about Democrats committing voter fraud, asking the crowd to “get out there and vote 10 times,” to some laughter, as the senator echoed a tweet this week by the mother of prominent Trump backer Elon Musk that was widely derided as encouraging illegal voter fraud.
“Now, some of you laughed, but some of you feel a little uncomfortable,” Vance said. “We’re Republicans. We only vote once. Here’s how to vote 10 times the legal way: take yourself and get nine of your friends and family, get them to the polls.”
Meanwhile, at Palo Verde High Magnet School, a raucous crowd of more than 600 filled the gym as the Sunnyside High School mariachi band played Wednesday afternoon. About 200 ore people waited outside after the doors closed. As colorful dancers swayed and brass trumpets echoed in the space, from the Los Diablitos Azules Folklorico, the crowd waved and danced.
Arriving later than scheduled, Walz took the stage at 10 minutes before 6 p.m. after an appearance in Phoenix, and spoke for around 30 minutes.
“You made the effort to come here for a very, very simple and beautiful reason,” Walz told the crowd. “You love America.”
Walz blasted Sen. Vance’s comments on immigration in his campaign remarks and at last week’s vice presidential debate, calling Vance “a salesman selling snake oil for his own good.”
“They want to blame everything on migrants and they want to take no responsibility and come up with no plan,” Walz said of Vance and Trump.
Walz recognized the desire for secure borders, saying that he and Harris had kept their promise to “do something about the border,” while retaining their “humanity.” The Harris-Walz immigration platform includes an “earned path to citizenship” for immigrants that have been in the country for many years, Walz said Wednesday.
Walz repeated a mistaken argument he made during the recent debate with Vance, telling the crowd that Trump built just “2 percent” of the border wall. In fact, the Trump administration raced to complete the barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border, largely building 30-foot tall “bollards” across federally protected land in Arizona.
By Jan. 4, 2021, Customs and Border Protection officials said there were 701 miles of “primary” border wall and 70 miles of “secondary wall” across the southwest border. This included 452 miles built during the Trump administration. Of that, 80 miles were new walls where there had previously been none, with the remainder replacing what officials called “dilapidated or outdated” barriers.
Speaking to the Tucson crowd, Walz evoked the late Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona several times throughout his speech, each time to cheers from the presumably Democrat-heavy audience.
“Remember when Republicans were the party of freedom?” Walz told the crowd. “You can’t tell me that John McCain would be OK with a former president telling Vladimir Putin to ‘do whatever the hell you want’ in Ukraine. That’s not the party of McCain nor Reagan.”
One of the evening’s biggest cheers came when Walz spoke about gun control: “Our kids need to be free to be able to go into school without being shot,” he said. “This is not about the 2nd Amendment. We respect the 2nd Amendment, but our first responsibility is to protect our children.”
On the stage before the Minnesota governor were Patrick Robles, Southern Arizona political director for the Harris campaign, and Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly, who both urged the crowd to get out and vote.
“I don’t think voting is the most important thing you can do. Voting is the least that you can do,” Cázares-Kelly told the audience. “The most important thing you can do is get involved.”
Kirsten Engel, the Democratic candidate for Arizona’s 6th Congressional District, was also on the lineup to introduce Walz. Engel spoke to the crowd about Pima County’s crucial position in the upcoming election, and the importance of securing the presidency, the Senate, and the House. This includes her district, which is currently represented by U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani, a Republican. The district went to Biden in 2020 by less than half of one percent of votes, but gave Ciscomani his House seat in 2022.
“We talk about this district as the battleground district in a battleground state. You know, votes in this district could determine the House, whether we flip this majority, whether we’re able to keep the Senate, and whether we’re able to keep the presidency,” Engel told the Sentinel before taking the stage.
Singer-actor Jaime Camil, a Mexican immigrant who recently became a citizen, called Latinos “the economic engine” of the country, and was followed by Tucson Mayor Regina Romero, who called Tucson the “blue wall of Arizona” — saying a wave of Democratic votes here may win Harris the election.
“The road to the White House is through Arizona,” said Romero, to cheers from the bleachers.
Raul Aguirre, ad agency owner and Latino media pioneer, introduced Walz to the crowd.
Wednesday was the second time the Harris and Trump campaigns converged on the city of Tucson at the same time — last month former President Donald Trump gave a speech at the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall while Doug Emhoff, husband of Vice President Harris, made an appearance Downtown later that same day.
Trump won Arizona in 2016 with 49 percent of the vote against Hillary Clinton’s 45 percent, but lost to Joe Biden in 2020 by less than a percentage point, or 10,457 votes.
For nearly the entirety of this race, both parties have been polling side by side. An average of polls compiled by Real Clear Polling showed Trump leading in the Grand Canyon State by 1.4 points Wednesday afternoon.
Vice President Harris — who made a trip to the border town of Douglas less than two weeks ago — will hold a rally in Phoenix on Thursday. On Sunday, Trump will host his own in Prescott Valley.