Arizona Raising Hopes for Democrats

Checking in on Arizona, which was, at a margin of 10,457 votes, the narrowest of all Democratic victories four years ago.

At the end of President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, the Grand Canyon State had fallen off a cliff for Democrats, with a 10-point loss seeming increasingly likely. When she came into the race, three weeks ago, it looked much the same for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Now? Not so much: According to the latest methodologically sound poll from Arizona, Harris leads former President Donald Trump by nearly 3 points, right at the edge of the margin of error, keeping up the trend across the swing states: Harris surging, Trump sagging.

As she headed to Phoenix on Friday, Harris went as a candidate pressing an advantage where just a fortnight ago she would have been seen as making a desperation play. The July strategy of holding all of the Blue Wall of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin and writing off the Sun Belt has given way to a new, ahem, southern strategy for Democrats. 

And it’s not just the top of the ticket. The same new poll shows GOP Senate candidate Kari Lake, fresh from a surprisingly close primary win, getting shellacked by Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego by 11 points, 50 percent to 39 percent.

Woof.

Maybe it’s because Lake is bad at politics, describing her opponent in a recent interview as “a cross between Mr. Rogers and G.I. Joe” and concluding that the response to getting so much pushback from moderate Republicans in her primary, despite backing from the national party establishment, is—what else—to go quadruple mega MAGA in the general election.

“I honestly believe that the America First agenda is the greatest way for people in the middle,” Lake told D.C. insider favorite, Punchbowl News. “Unfortunately, we have to push back against a very corrupt media that’s trying to paint this movement as extremist. Frankly, I don’t see anything extremist.”

Oh.

Or maybe it’s because Arizona still hasn’t gotten over the nightmare of the 2020 election.

Jenna Ellis, once the top spokeswoman for Trump’s efforts to overturn the results in Arizona and elsewhere, flipped herself this week, and is now cooperating with prosecutors who are going after former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows for their alleged role in an effort to manufacture fake electoral votes from the state to blow up the certification process in the Senate on January 6, 2021.

A good indicator of how much scar tissue is left over from Republican efforts to steal Arizona’s electoral votes is this: Schools in Maricopa County, the biggest and swingiest county in the state, will no longer open their doors as polling places.

“In this environment, where you have people with body cameras and weapons that are being brandished, that is a concern—that is intimidating for many people,” Superintendent Scott Menzel in Scottsdale, a tony suburb northeast of Phoenix, told the Washington Post. “It just takes one flash point to ignite something that’s catastrophic, and I absolutely don’t want that to happen on any one of my campuses.”

It’s far from over in Arizona. And given Harris’ vulnerabilities as the former czar-not-czar of the Biden administration’s initial efforts to staunch the flow of Central American migrants across the southern border, Republicans certainly know where to hit her and make it hurt with Arizona voters.

But the state gives us an insight on how dramatically the race has changed. With Democrats revving up younger voters and Hispanic voters back in full force, the chances to win the southern tier are real.

That puts Republicans in a position of having to defend must-win states instead of looking for one crack in the three states up north. What a difference three weeks makes. 

Holy croakano! We welcome your feedback, so please email us with your tips, corrections, reactions, amplifications, etc. at STIREWALTISMS@THEDISPATCH.COM. If you’d like to be considered for publication, please include your real name and hometown. If you don’t want your comments to be made public, please specify.

STATSHOT

General Election

Donald Trump: 43.2% (↑ 0.4 points from last week)
Kamala Harris: 46.2%  (↑ 3.2)
Robert F. Kennedy Jr: 5.4% (↓ 0.2)

[Average includes: Marquette Law: Trump: 42% – Harris 50% – Kennedy 6%; Marist/NPR/PBS: Trump 45% – Harris 48% – Kennedy 5%; TIPP: Trump 42% – Harris 44% – Kennedy 7%; Wall Street Journal: Trump 44% – Harris 45% – Kennedy 4%; New York Times/Siena: Trump 43% – Harris 44% – Kennedy 5%]

Generic Ballot

Democrats: 45.6% (↓ 0.4 points from last week)

Republicans: 46.2% (↑ 0.4)

[Average includes: Marist/NPR/PBS: 47% Democrats – 45% Republicans; CNBC: 44% Democrats – 47% Republicans; Wall Street Journal: 46% Democrats – 48% Republicans; Echelon Insights: 48% Democrats – 47% Republicans; Noble Predictive Insights: 43% Democrats – 44% Republicans] 

TIME OUT: JONAH GOLDBERG, CALL YOUR OFFICE 

The Paris Review: “The evening before the fourth annual Great Florida Bigfoot Conference in the north-central horse town of Ocala, I was in a buffet line at the VIP dinner, listening to a man describe his first encounter. ‘I was on an airboat near Turner River Road in the Glades and I saw it there,’ he said. … I sat down at a conference room round table and gnawed on an undercooked chicken quarter, looking around at my fellow VIPs, or as the conference’s master of ceremonies, Ryan ‘RPG’ Golembeske, called us, the Bigfoot Mafia. … The etymology of the name ‘Bigfoot’ can be traced to Bluff Creek in California. … Bigfoot hysteria entered the American psyche more broadly in the seventies after the release of the famous 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film, which purported to capture Bigfoot … in 16mm glory. … All of a sudden, people were heading into the woods in search of the creature.”

KAMALA RESETS RACE AS SUNBELT RETURNS TO TOSS UP

Cook Political Report: “Today, Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump by less than one point, a shift of more than three points in Harris’ direction. Battleground state polls are showing similar results, with Harris cutting into Trump’s lead by anywhere from two to five points. … Back in early June, her favorability ratings were underwater by 16 points (37% favorable to 53% unfavorable). Today, they sit at 43% favorable to 49% unfavorable, or -6%. … In other words, the presidential contest has moved from one that was Trump’s to lose to a much more competitive contest. As such, we are moving three battleground states that we moved to Lean Republican in early July — Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada — back into Toss Up. Bottom Line: Things look a lot better for Democrats today than they did a few weeks ago, but Trump is looking stronger now than he did in 2020. This is a Toss Up.”

Poll shows Trump, Harris even in Wisconsin: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are in a statistical dead heat in Wisconsin, according to a Marquette University Law School poll. … Among registered voters, 50% supported Trump and 49% supported Harris. Among likely voters, 50% supported Harris and 49% supported Trump. … When polling for President Joe Biden and Trump, Biden was at 42% and Trump at 47% among registered voters. … When factoring in third-party candidates like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Harris led Trump by two percentage points, 45% to 43%. … Respondents who considered themselves ‘very enthusiastic’ to vote still leaned toward Trump 52% to Harris’ 47%. That narrows the numbers from June, when that group leaned 61% for Trump to 39% for Biden. Harris has a slight lead among ‘somewhat enthusiastic’ voters.”

Backtracking, Trump reaccepts September debate: Bloomberg: “Republican nominee Donald Trump proposed three debates with Vice President Kamala Harris during a press conference as he sought to regain momentum for a campaign overshadowed in recent days by his new 2024 rival. Trump said he had agreed to debates with Fox, NBC and ABC in September but acknowledged that the Harris campaign has yet to sign off on the plan. He also said he believed CBS would host a vice presidential debate. … Trump also assailed Harris for not doing a sitdown interview with the media since her entry into the presidential race in July. … Trump has previously dismissed the need for a debate, saying there’s no reason to participate because he’s leading in the polls and ‘everybody knows’ him.”

Team Trump’s risky ground-game gambit: Washington Post: “With fewer than 100 days before the election, local GOP officials in battleground states have raised alarms about the scant presence of Trump campaign field staff. For the large armies of paid and volunteer door-knockers and canvassers who typically drive turnout in presidential elections, the campaign is largely relying on outside groups such as America First Works, America PAC and Turning Point Action. … Past experiments with outsourcing field operations, most notably Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s heavy reliance on a super PAC in the Republican presidential primary race, have wound up as expensive boondoggles. … The campaign’s own field operations are using the same formula that carried Trump to victory in the Iowa caucuses, relying on dedicated volunteers serving as neighborhood captains.”

SLOTKIN, ROGERS WILL FACE OFF IN CRUCIAL MICHIGAN CLASH Detroit Free Press: “The battle for Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat came into clearer focus Tuesday night as U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Holly, and former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Brighton, won their parties’ nominations to succeed U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow. … Slotkin led Detroit actor Hill Harper 76% to 24% in the Democratic primary, with 94% of the vote tallied statewide. Rogers led the Republican primary, with 63% to 16% for former U.S. Rep. Justin Amash. … The race to replace Stabenow is expected to be an unusually hard-fought one, given that no Republican U.S. Senate nominee has won in Michigan since 1994.”

Poll: Sheehy narrowly leads Tester in Montana: The Hill: “Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) is locked in a tight race in Montana as former President Trump boasts a wide lead over Vice President Harris in the state, polling shows. A new Emerson College Polling/The Hill survey puts Trump-backed Republican Tim Sheehy with a 2-point lead over Tester, 48 percent to 46 percent. Another 5 percent were undecided. … The poll also marks a shift from March, when the same pollster found Tester up by 2 points over his Republican challenger. … This week, Tester launched a ‘Republicans for Tester’ group to rally support from across the aisle as he braces for a competitive November contest. At the top of the ticket, Trump is a whopping 15 percentage points ahead of Harris.”

BRIEFLY

Squad down two members as Rep. Cori Bush loses primary—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Gluesenkamp Perez, Kent rematch looms in Washington’s 3rd District—Axios

Ferguson, Reichert advance to Washington gubernatorial general election—Seattle Times 

WITHIN EARSHOT: FROM THE AUGEAN STABLES 

“If Kamala really is black, have her say the N-word, let the people decide for themselves.” — Post from Kevin Sorbo, who famously portrayed the titular character in the long-running series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, with a suggestion for resolving former President Donald Trump’s doubts about the vice president’s ethnicity.

MAILBAG

“You write that Joe Lieberman was the first Jewish person on a presidential ticket. Setting Barry Goldwater, who was not halachically Jewish, aside, the first Jewish person on a presidential ticket would have been Tonie Nathan in 1972, who is also the first Jewish person and the first woman to receive an electoral college vote. A small correction.”—Joshua Katz, Phoenix, Arizona

Mr. Katz,

True, true! I should have said that Leiberman was the first Jewish American to be on a major party presidential ticket. While I can’t say for certain that no other minor party ever picked a presidential or vice presidential nominee of Jewish faith or heritage, we can for sure say that Nathan fits the bill. Details do matter, and I do delight in such arcana as Ms. Nathan’s place in vice presidential history.

She is of note for more than her barrier breaking, though. Nathan, running with 1972 Libertarian presidential nominee John Hospers—erstwhile friend of Ayn Rand and chairman of the philosophy department at the University of Southern California—got a grand total of 3,674 votes that year.

But they made it in the history books because of one man, Roger MacBride, a one-term member of the Vermont legislature who moved to Virginia and became treasurer of the commonwealth’s Republican Party. From that perch he was picked for the typically ceremonial duty of serving as one of what were then Virginia’s 12 electors in the Electoral College. 

President Richard Nixon won Virginia that year by 38 points, but MacBride opted to be a “faithless elector,” and cast his vote for Hospers and Nathan, bringing the official tally to Nixon 520, Democrat George McGovern 17, and Hospers 1. MacBride, perhaps not surprisingly, sought and won the Libertarian nomination in 1976, but received no electoral votes, faithless or otherwise. 

None of that was MacBride’s most notable turn in American public life, though. That distinction belongs to his status as heir to the estate of Rose Wilder Lane, daughter of Little House on the Prairie author Laura Ingalls Wilder. MacBride had been a close friend of the author’s daughter, with whom he shared a love of free market economics and frontier literature. She designated MacBride, an attorney, as sole heir and executor to her estate. After she died in 1968, it was MacBride who sold the rights to the book and helped develop the hit television series of the same name.

An unsuccessful lawsuit after his death in 1998 challenging his family’s continued ownership of the rights to Ingalls’ work suggested that the estate was worth at least $100 million at the time. 

All best,

c

You should email us! Write to STIREWALTISMS@THEDISPATCH.COM with your tips, kudos, criticisms, insights, rediscovered words, wonderful names, recipes, and, always, good jokes. Please include your real name—at least first and last—and hometown. Make sure to let us know in the email if you want to keep your submission private. My colleague, the tenacious Nate Moore, and I will look for your emails and then share the most interesting ones and my responses here. Clickety clack!

CUTLINE CONTEST: LOX-ED OUT  

Not all Cutline Contest winners are simple, but I think the very best ones tend to be, and we have a miniature masterpiece this week for a picture of Vice President Kamala Harris and then-running mate contender, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. 

 “Some of my best friends are Jewish.”—Peter Schwartz, Auburn, Alabama

Winner, Walz-ed Out of Contention Division:

“Some things are just mensch to be”—Tom Walk, Greensboro, North Carolina

Winner, Build a Wall Division:

“Let me be the first to introduce you all to the future Border Czar of the Harris Administration …”—Kirk Dunn, Yuma, Arizona

Winner, Shine a Light Division: 

“VP Kamala Harris continues ‘Freedom’ theme by asking Gov. Josh Shapiro to join chorus of Elton John hit.”—Linda McKee, DuBois, Pennsylvania

Winner, Joyful Noise Division:

“This is Joshua David Shapiro. J.D. Shapiro? [LAUGHTER] See? And, J.D. Vance! [LAUGHTER] The letters, right? Remember the letters? Those two letters! [LAUGHTER]”—Tripp Whitbeck, Arlington, Virginia

Winner, Salad Shooter Division:

“Webster’s dictionary defines ‘semite’ as ‘a member of any of the peoples descended from Shem, the eldest son of Noah.’ Eldest son. Family. Mothers and fathers. Daughters and sons. And arks! And that’s the significance of the passage of time, right, the significance of the passage of time. So, when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time in terms of what we need to do to win the election. What we need to do to create these votes. And there is such great significance to the passage of time when we think about a day in the life of our children. How true that is.  How true that is.”—David Connor, Reston, Virginia

Winner, Wrong Opinions Division:

“Now Josh … this is a man who can pull off the suit-no tie look.”—Tim Maloney, St. Louis, Missouri

FIRST DALE, DALE, DALE AND GOAL 

The Guardian: “Welcome to Pitbull Stadium, the home of your FIU Panthers. Florida International announced what could end up as a 10-year agreement on Tuesday with international recording artist, Grammy winner and entrepreneur Armando Christian Pérez—the Miami native better known as Pitbull—to put his name on their college football stadium. … Pérez will pay $1.2m annually for the next five years, the university said, for the naming rights. He will have an option in August 2029 to extend the deal for another five years and continue the rebranding. ‘Yes, we’re going to create history in Pitbull Stadium,’ Pérez said during a news conference in Miami. ‘This isn’t just an announcement. This is a movement.’ … According to the agreement, Pérez will be referred to as the ‘Official Entrepreneur of FIU Athletics’. … Pitbull—who also goes by ‘Mr 305,’ a nod to Miami’s area code—kicked off his music career in the South Florida rap scene.”

Nate Moore contributed to this report.