Title: Swing State Check-In: Arizona

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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. We begin this week as voting is underway in much of the country by continuing our Monday series on the swing states. This week at swing state Arizona. For the last 50 years and more, Arizona always voted Republican for president, except 1996, Bill Clinton's reelection and in 2020, when it went for Joe Biden. Arizona is, of course, a border state. And Donald Trump was there yesterday in Prescott, emphasizing his usual top issue.

Donald Trump: I will rescue Arizona and every town across America that has been invaded and conquered. They've been conquered. They're conquering the towns.

Brian Lehrer: And for a campaign promise, he had this.

Donald Trump: And I'm hereby calling for the death penalty for any migrant that kills an American citizen or a law enforcement officer.

Brian Lehrer: Kamala Harris was there a few days ago, too, speaking to a group called Republicans for Harris in Scottsdale. She promised to name a bipartisan council of advisors.

Kamala Harris: Bipartisan council of advisors who can then give feedback on policy as we go forward. Because here's the thing I also understand and feel strongly about. In order for us as America to maintain our status as the strongest democracy in the world, we need a healthy two party system. We have to have a healthy two party system. We have to. It's in the best interest of all of us. It's in the best interest of all of us. The way that I like to lead. I bring folks in my office all the time and they know I don't want any yes people. I want people to come in and, first of all, be prepared.

Yes, no time to waste. But come in and then let's, as I often say, kick the tires on ideas, because the best ideas will survive those kinds of challenges, and the best ideas will then be most relevant to the American people, most effective to the American people. I'm going to create a bipartisan council so we can put some structure around exactly this point and do the work that is important.

Brian Lehrer: Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in recent days, wooing voters in Arizona. Let's talk and learn about swing state Arizona with Jim Small, a native Arizonan who has covered state government, policy, and politics since 2004 with a focus on investigative and in-depth policy reporting. His bio page says he is currently editor in chief of Arizona Mirror, an independent, nonprofit news organization. Jim, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for getting up early Arizona time for this. Welcome to WNYC.

Jim Small: Thank you so much for having me, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: And listeners, first priority on the phones will go to anyone in or from or with any ties to Arizona 212-433-WNYC. Tell us a story about this year's campaign in the state as you are observing it or experiencing it. 212-433-WNYC. Call or text 212-433-9692 and anyone with a question about Arizona, swing state Arizona, also welcome from anywhere else, 212-433-WNYC. Call or text 212-433-9692. Jim, let's start here. Why did Arizona break its decades long pattern and vote for the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, in 2020?

Jim Small: I think it's really as simple as the fact that for as long of a history as Arizona has had as a Republican state, it has also really-- conservatism has really, in a lot of ways, almost been kind of a libertarian feel and has been kind of an iconoclastic anti-- kind of anti establishment, anti authority kind of streak that's really wide in Arizona. And I think that really what we have seen here is that the MAGA brand, it struggles to win statewide. It struggles to win in those big contests. In 2018 we saw the cracks in it.

The state, for the first time in a generation, elected a Democratic US senator in Kyrsten Sinema, who defeated a woman, Martha McSally, who had really tied herself very directly to Trump and then tried to run away from Trump in the general election and voters saw through that, I think. We saw something in 2020, very narrow win for Joe Biden, again, Democrat winning the US Senate race. Then again in 2022, another Senate election and statewide elections. Democrats won up and down the ballot and they didn't win every seat, but the one common thread was that the candidates who were the most in the MAGA camp and identified themselves as part of that movement were the ones who lost.

And the Republicans running in these statewide offices who didn't and didn't lash themselves to Donald Trump and to his movement were the ones who got through because voters looked at them and said, "Okay, there's a difference between the current state of Republicans and this Donald Trumpified version of the party and what we would consider to be, I guess, "Normal Republicans" or what the Republican Party used to look like pre-2015.

And voters here, I think, are really okay with that version of Republicanism. Doug Ducey was governor at the same time that Democrats were winning statewide office. Doug Ducey and Kyrsten Sinema both won on the same election. Voter have the ability to hold two thoughts--

Brian Lehrer: One Republican, one Democrat, you're saying.

Jim Small: Right, exactly right. Voters have the ability to kind of hold these two competing thoughts in their head and they really do look at who the candidates are, what they're saying, and what they believe these people are going to do for the state. The Republican Party has become so extreme and so out of step, I think, with the mainstream that there's been so much effort spent trying to cater to really that increasingly intense and more extreme base that it has alienated and turned off a lot of voters.

I think the other really huge factor in 2020 that everyone seems to overlook was we were electing-- they essentially voted against an unpopular president who had mismanaged, in a lot of ways, a global pandemic and something that was terrifying for people at the time and was killing Americans by the thousands by the time the election happened. I think that that is a really salient point that was-- it was in voters' minds at the time, and that has faded from people's memories.

That was a really critical thing at the moment, as we were in kind of the grips of Covid-19 and trying to figure out, "What do we do, how do we survive, how do we make sure hospitals stay open, and that we're able to get through this on the other side as unscathed as possible?"

Brian Lehrer: Is Kari Lake another example of that post-2020 Republican politician who lashed themselves to Donald Trump losing a statewide election? You want to tell the Kari Lake story a little bit?

Jim Small: Yes, sure. Kari Lake was a newscaster here in the Phoenix area for, I mean, goodness, 25 years probably. One of those folks who you live in the area, you can't really not know who she is. I think was broadly liked when she was doing her job as a journalist. By the end of her tenure as a journalist, cracks had started to appear, and she'd started to make some pretty outlandish statements and seemed to be veering into some of the more right wing kind of conspiracy theory sort of stuff and was dabbling in with that. She left the local news station, and pretty quickly turned to politics and very much branded herself Donald Trump's right hand person and really as almost like a clone of Donald Trump.

Certainly there have been a lot of politicians across the country who have tried to do that and have seen what he does and how he captures attention and votes and support and have tried to mimic that. I think that she's among the better of them, the better people to do that. I think that's for a couple of reasons. I think a big one is that she understands sort of that showmanship attitude. Having been on TV for such a long time and being so comfortable in front of crowds, in front of the media and being combative, she understood how to do that. She really did capture, I think, the hearts and minds of most of Arizona's Republican Party in 2022, as she was running for governor.

By the time we got through the primary election in the summer and into the general election, again, it became grading for a lot of people. I think that that style works really, really well right now in Republican primaries. I think when you try to transition from a Republican primary election, where the voters eat that kind of attitude and all of those increasingly outlandish statements up, and then you try to move into a general election, especially if you're going up against someone who's a fairly milquetoast and bland Democrat, someone who's not an AOC or whatever, a Bernie Sanders type who's really far to the left and super progressive, it becomes a tough sell.

Kari Lake tried to distinguish herself from her opponent, from Katie Hobbs, but the way she did it was to basically show a lot of voters, "Hey, here's someone who's likable, and then here's someone who's not likable." I think a lot of voters glommed onto that, "Hey, maybe she's not that likable. I don't really know if I trust her being in charge of state government." The end result was that Katie Hobbs, the Democratic Secretary of State at the time, won the governorship in Arizona. First time we've had a Democratic governor since Janet Napolitano, who got elected in 2002 and then reelected in '06, and Kari Lake lost by about 17,000 votes.

A huge part of that is that she has turned off a lot of Republicans and right leaning independents. There was some really great analysis done after 2022 that showed that there were some 50,000, I think, 40,000 Republicans who did not vote in the governor's race. Voted in every other race, voted up and down the ticket. Skipped that race, though, really, as a sign of protest, I think. A sign of like, "Look, I don't like [unintelligible 00:11:15]"

Brian Lehrer: They didn't want it. They didn't want the Democrat, but Kari Lake, as a MAGA Republican was just too much to bear for them.

Jim Small: Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead, finish your thought. I'm sorry.

Jim Small: No, I was just going to say. In a battleground state like this if you're a Republican and you're running in a close race, anyone who skips your election and decides not to vote for you, even if they don't vote for your opponent, that really is still a vote for your opponent. That is, I think, a key factor that happened with Trump in 2020, with Kari Lake in 2022, and I think we're going to really see how that plays out in 2024 with Harris and Trump.

Brian Lehrer: We are talking about swing state Arizona with Jim Small, editor in chief of Arizona Mirror, an independent nonprofit news organization. 212-433-WNYC. If you're in or from or with ties to Arizona or anyone else with just a question about swing state Arizona, 212-433-9692 call or text. Jim, for all you've been talking so far that Joe Biden won in 2020 and Kari Lake lost the governorship race after that because Arizona is kind of an independent minded and not really MAGA friendly state, Biden barely won in 2020. I want to take a call for you from Pat in Apache Junction, Arizona, who's got something else related to say. Pat, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Pat: Hi, Brian. I remember I spoke to you two years ago and said that to mail my family's ballots, I drove to another county. I drove into Maricopa county, which is not that far away because our county is so Republican and we were afraid to put it anywhere else. It's pretty Republican still today. I mean, we have basically-- we voted, we have no, I think, one local candidate who's a Democrat. Otherwise, you either vote for the Republican or nobody, but we've been seeing a lot of Trump signs.

We've had them up for, frankly, four years. Two of the neighbors on my block have had their flags at half mast since the 2020 presidential election. I do think Kari Lake is not popular here. I think a lot of the Republicans will not vote for her. They may not vote for Ruben Gallego, the Democrat, but it seems like they are not too thrilled with her either. We're hopeful that we'll have two Democratic senators.

Brian Lehrer: Did you tell our screener that you think it looks like Trump is going to win the state in the presidential?

Pat: I think so. I don't get the feeling. I don't see much effort here. I also see the minority, the nonwhite vote now they're not as much for Harris as they were for Biden. Our state legislative district in Arizona, each state legislative district has one senator. State senator and two state representatives are both very conservative Black men. And it just seems that what I notice among talking to Latino and Black people is that a lot of them are voting for Trump.

Brian Lehrer: Pat, thank you for your call. There's one Arizonans political analysis, Jim, how do you react to any of that?

Jim Small: Yes. I think the point about Republicans being disenchanted with Kari Lake, I think, is a really salient point. It's something we've seen in polling. I've been looking at polls on that Senate race for six, seven months, since the springtime, and we've seen this consistently in the polls, is that Ruben Gallego captures 95 or so percent of Democratic support in people who are polled. Kari Lake captures less than 90%, typically, and oftentimes it's closer to 80%, and so if you're a candidate and you're [unintelligible 00:15:41]

Brian Lehrer: Of Republican support. This is the US Senate race this year, are you referring to?

Jim Small: Correct. Correct. When you're losing 10%, 15%, 20% of your own party support, that is a death knell, and that is bad. That's why you see these interesting kind of poll results coming out of Arizona where maybe you have Donald Trump and Kamala Harris that are locked in a very tight race, and maybe it's Trump up two or Harris up two, but they're right within the margin of error in almost every poll. Then you look at the Senate race and you see Ruben Gallego is up by 7 or 10 or 12 points among the same voters.

The reason for that is purely Republicans who have said, "I am done with Kari Lake and I do not like her and I will not support her." Those same Republicans say, "Well, I will hold my nose and support Trump." I think that [unintelligible 00:16:38]

Brian Lehrer: How does that make sense? I'm sure there are listeners right now thinking, "Wait, the candidate for Senate who tied herself to Trump is getting rejected by a lot of people as too MAGA, but not the originator of MAGA, who's running for president."

Jim Small: I almost don't think that they don't like her because she's too MAGA. I think they don't like her because they don't like her. That's really what it comes down to. Trump does his shtick and it lands with voters and a lot of voters roll their eyes at it. When Kari Lake does it, I think, it's a combination of probably, honestly, some just garden variety misogyny where people have a problem with voting for women. Some people are going to have that. That's going to be an issue, I think, in a lot of situations for women candidates.

Separately, I think that there's also a sense that Kari Lake necessarily isn't genuine and that people kind of see it as more of an act. Whereas with Trump, it's, "Look, this is who Trump is and this is what he does. We're not going to take it all that seriously. We're going to pay attention to the vibes and not the actual words." With her, I think that she, for whatever reason, has really just kind of left a bad taste in people's mouths. I do think that a lot of her spending the last two years trying to wage legal battles to take over the governorship has sat with a lot of people wrong.

The fact that she seems not willing to let go of the 2022 election and was a pretty clear loss for her, I think, is another factor for people. Really, I am many times just as puzzled as I think your listeners are when you think about the fact that you have voters who are going to cast a ballot for Donald Trump and then on that same ballot vote for Ruben Gallego and maybe even vote for our abortion ballot measure and then our secure border ballot measure and then vote for maybe a Democrat for the state legislature. It is really an odd situation. I think that it does come down to just voters really taking time to think about the candidates themselves and not necessarily just the political party and voting a straight ticket.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a call from Monique in Tarrytown, which for those of you in Tucson, is a little north of New York City at the foot of a bridge named for Mario Cuomo. Hi, Monique. You're on WNYC with Jim small from Arizona Mirror.

Monique: Hi. Hello, Jim. Jim, I have a question about-- I have a cousin who is a realtor in Arizona outside of, like, in the Phoenix area in the Phoenix suburbs. And she was commenting last time she was visiting that there's a great influx of Californians. And so I just was wondering how significant is the influx to the state as opposed to the city, and how significant is their impact going to be on the election? Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Great question, Monique. Thank you, Jim.

Jim Small: Yes, that is a great question. Arizona is and has been for the past 60 years, really a home for transplants, people coming from all over the country. We do have a lot of people that come here from California without a doubt. We're close by, generally been lower cost. If people get priced out of California with rising housing prices, they have historically moved to Arizona. I think it definitely is a factor. It's one of the reasons why Arizona, has started to tilt more purple in recent years. At the same time, that's also probably counterbalanced by folks moving here from the Midwest.

We get a lot of people who move from Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and places like that where you're trying to get out of the cold, out of the winters, to come to Arizona and deal with at least milder winter climates. One of the big factors-- the biggest factor probably in our changing political landscape here has really been the rise of the Latino vote. Particularly as a lot of these younger Latino voters have become of age, there is an upswell of really young voters here. Ans the average age of voters has come down and as the electorate has become more and more Latino, I think we've seen things get pulled further to the left and more from a solidly red state into a more deeper purple state.

Brian Lehrer: Although we hear in the polling results, anyway, if they're accurate, about Trump doing so well relative to past Republican presidential candidates, with Latino voters, even relative to himself four and eight years ago, no.

Jim Small: Oh, yes, absolutely. I think the key principle reason for that is economics. I think that the last four years, inflation has been really difficult on lots of Americans. I think the lower you are in the socioeconomic scale, the harder that inflation has been to deal with. The Phoenix area in particular was for quite a while, was one of the top places, highest inflation in the country. That's difficult. People look back on the Trump presidency, and I think there's a little bit of gauzy memory about what the economy was like coming from Obama into Trump, where the economy was going really well and things were going pretty good, certainly up until the pandemic, and then everything collapsed.

That's been one of the key messages for Republicans for a long time, and I think that Trump has really made that a key message. For some Latinos, I think that the immigration message really hits home as well, because it's not a monolithic voting bloc, and there are a lot of Hispanic and Latino voters who look at immigration and think, "You know what? Look, me and my family, we went through the channels. We did things the right way. We need to do to make everyone go through that and follow the same process that I did." There is some, I think, a divide, and it's enough when you have such a stark different, or at least kind of the stark presentation that Trump makes about the border and about immigration.

It's definitely enough to persuade some of those voters onto his side who traditionally, I think, you wouldn't look at as ripe for Republican candidates.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Here's one more clip we played to you earlier of Trump from his Arizona rally yesterday, leaning heavily on the issue of the border. Of course, he does this everywhere, but Arizona is a border state. Here's another little clip.

Donald Trump: I called them up, I said, "Close the border." That's here. There was no bill.

Brian Lehrer: Saying that when Kamala Harris accuses him of trying to scuttle the bipartisan immigration bill that was in Congress and would have gotten through, I think, by consensus reporting at this point, if Trump had not called up Republican lawmakers in Congress and said, "Don't vote for the bill, it's going to be bad for my reelection if you put this through under Biden's watch," but he says, "You don't need that." How much does the border issue resonate in this border state?

I think you were starting to describe maybe-- I don't know, a conflicted Latino population, on the one hand, the way they're vilified by Donald Trump, on the other hand, nobody likes a large influx of undocumented people coming in all at once or a lot of people don't.

Jim Small: No. Yes. The border and immigration and all of those issues have really been animating in Arizona for a long time. I mean, goodness, 20 years ago, we had ballot measures that went before voters that were all about anti immigrant rhetoric and anti locking down benefits and requiring IDs and proof of citizenship to do all sorts of different things. It has been a thing that has moved voters and has persuaded them and has really outraged them here. I don't think that that's any different today. There's a lot of rhetoric that doesn't match reality, which is not really surprising, I guess, in politics.

I certainly seem to notice it a lot more when it comes to the idea of border security and immigration and what it really means for this country. One of the biggest shifts we've seen on that front is it's gone from really mildly xenophobic, I think, into really actively and openly racist and xenophobic. When you're talking about how immigration is diluting the blood of America and things like that, I mean, those are just like vile and horrible things. Those are the kinds of statements that weren't made 10, 15, 20 years ago in Arizona or really elsewhere outside of maybe like the furthest fringes of the Internet or the most extreme elements within politics. Now they're kind of becoming standard talking points in a way.

It speaks to the frustration that a lot of people have but it also speaks to the fear that a lot of people have, especially white Arizonans and white Americans, that things are changing and that their communities are looking different, they're sounding different. They are different. As the face of America changes, as it becomes younger, as it becomes a little bit less white, and as these younger and less white generations start to come of age and get political power, I think that it's frightening for a lot of people. I think that that's what you see a lot of politicians trading on is that fear and really trying to poke that fear button in their brain to get them to go along with them and with the policies they're proposing.

Brian Lehrer: We'll finish up in a minute with Jim Small, editor in chief of Arizona Mirror. As we talk about Arizona as a swing state in the election year, particularly in the presidential. We have one more clip of Kamala Harris to play as she tries to woo some of those Republicans who are not crazy about Trump, who Jim's been talking about. We're definitely going to bring up climate change. Many of you remember what happened in Arizona last summer. Even for Arizona, it was historically hot in the summer and troubling. And yet Trump is out there campaigning on drill, baby, drill, and let's not do too much about that issue.

We'll have a text from a listener who wrote, "I grew up in Arizona. I saw Latinos assimilating in general and joining "White evangelical churches," more specifically than what I see living here in New York City." We're going to play a clip of Rusty Bowers, who remembers him? The former speaker of the Arizona State House of Representatives from the January 6th committee hearings, and ask our guest if Arizona is going to be one of those states where after election day on November 5th, the whole thing is held up over who knows what kinds of chicanery. So stay with us a few more minutes with Jim Small from Arizona Mirror. More of your texts and calls and those clips coming up right after this.

Brian Lehrer: Coming up on tomorrow's Brian Lehrer Show, we'll talk with both party's candidates in the race to represent parts of the lower Hudson Valley covered by New York's 17th District. The incumbent Republican is Congressman Mike Lawler. He'll be on and we'll talk with the former representative from that district, Mondaire Jones, running again, about the issues facing the district and how the inclusion of a working families party candidate on the ballot could change the direction of the race and maybe mislead people. We'll talk about that, Mondaire Jones, Mike Lawler race with both those candidates on tomorrow's Brian Lehrer Show.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue our Monday series on the swing states leading up to election day today at swing State Arizona with Jim Small, editor in chief of Arizona Mirror and your calls and texts at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Jim, I want to look ahead and go right to what might happen after election day, and I want to play this clip that I mentioned before the break of Rusty Bowers, former speaker of the House of the Arizona state House of Representatives. I do have that title right, don't I? I'm doing that from memory.

Jim Small: That's right.

Brian Lehrer: Okay. Rusty Bowers testifying at the January 6 committee. He was asked this question by California Democratic congressman on the committee, Adam Schiff.

Adam Schiff: Did you also receive a call from US Representative, Andy Biggs of Arizona on the morning of January 6th?

Rusty Bowers: I did.

Adam Schiff: What did Mr. Biggs ask you to do?

Rusty Bowers: I believe that was the day that the vote was occurring to each state to have certification or to declare the certification of the electors. He asked if I would sign on both to a letter that had been sent from my state and, or that I would support the decertification of the electors and I said I would not.

Brian Lehrer: Remind us in a little more detail, Jim, what happened in the attempt to flip the result of the presidential election of 2020 in Arizona, and then tell us importantly, how you think Republicans might be setting up to try to do that again this year if they are.

Jim Small: Sure. In 2020. Joe Biden won by, I think, when the dust settled about 10,500 votes in Arizona. Republicans were obviously upset. If anyone who remembers on election night, the wee hours of the morning Fox News was the first to call Arizona for Biden. Was controversial at the time, outraged the Trump campaign, but ultimately proved to be correct when all the votes were counted. It really kind of put a spotlight on Arizona and set a lot of national forces coming to Arizona to look at it. All kinds of allegations of malfeasance and fraud, and ballot stuffing, and ballot rigging, none of which was ever borne out, and there's never any evidence for.

The Arizona Republican Party, as happened in a number of other swing states, convened its own set of fake electors. They went through the-- they kind of did their own little make believe process where they signed the documents and sent them off to Congress as sort of an alternate slate of electors in the hopes that what would happen-- what we saw happen was going to happen, that Republicans in Congress would object to a number of states that Trump needed to win in order to get the presidency, and then that there would be a fight and a debate over which set of electors to go with the official ones who were backed up by the vote of Arizona and all of the elections officials and following state law or this other group.

And that is, I think, what Rusty Bowers in that clip was speaking to was part of that effort to legitimize this set of fake electors by having Arizona Republicans and politicians and the folks in government try to shove those through. Looking forward in terms of what's going to happen next, really, it sounds kind of crass, but I think the truth is it depends on who wins. If Trump wins, I don't think anything happens. I don't think we're going to see all of this post election litigation and this fighting and these demands to see the ballots and to audit everything. If Kamala Harris wins, I think we're going to see, in many ways, a repeat, probably, but a repeat turned up to 11 of what we saw in 2020.

The Republican Party here is already talking about its planned litigation efforts and how they're going to be going to court to contest elections that they lose. This is, I guess, the new normal, maybe the new abnormal state of our politics.

Brian Lehrer: My follow up question to that is, how better positioned are they to flip a legitimate Harris win than they were in 2020? We heard the Rusty Bowers clip, the head of the House in the Arizona legislature, who is a Republican, held firm to truth. Is he still in power? Is it going to be up to the--

Jim Small: No, he's not.

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead.

Jim Small: No, I think that Republicans are in a worse position now to do that here. At the time, in 2020, Republicans controlled both chambers of the state legislature and the governor's office. They had, I think, more, and an incumbent president right there. Trump had the levers of power in DC. Now, Republicans still control the state legislature, but there's a Democratic Governor, Katie Hobbs. I think that things are more difficult for them. I think the only path forward they would really have is through the courts. I don't think the legislature provides them any kind of an option. The state's congressional delegation, it depends a lot on the makeup.

Republicans control the US House, but Democrats control the US Senate still for the time being. I think that all really, the dynamics are a little bit different. I think that it's going to ultimately be through the courts. It does not seem as though-- I don't think our legislature would go along with it. Republicans might, but in order to do anything that they would need to do, I think, they'd need to have a supermajority vote, which they are absolutely nowhere near again.

Brian Lehrer: The Trump campaign and their allies lost 60 plus times in court. The courts didn't work for them because there really was no legal argument for overturning the election in the various swing states. Do you think there's any reason to believe that the courts in Arizona who might hear any of those cases are more receptive this year, either because there are more Trump appointed judges or whatever the reason might be to hear any requests to disqualify Democratic ballots that are not legitimate requests?

Jim Small: I think that they'll certainly hear them and they'll go through the normal judicial process, but I don't think the courts here are really fundamentally any different than they were in 2020. And I think that, again, because so many of those arguments are-- they're spurious. I mean, they're just trying to throw a pot of spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks. There really isn't a whole lot of legal backing to do any of the things that they've talked about doing in the past or that we can imagine that they might try to do in the future. I think it's very difficult because when you're on the campaign trail and you're trying to raise money and you're trying to rally voters, your rhetoric can be unbound from the facts and from truth at a lot of times, not so in court.

Court, you got to show up with evidence, you got to have receipts, and you got to be able to prove the things that you're arguing. They haven't been able to do that up to this point. I don't know what might arise that they might try in the future, but I suspect that we're going to see a lot of future cases that don't have a whole lot of evidence and factual backing behind them.

Brian Lehrer: I mentioned before the break this text from a listener. Listener writes, "I grew up in Arizona. I saw Latinos assimilating in general and joining "White evangelical churches," more specifically than what I see living here in New York City. Might this be why they are going in greater numbers toward the right?" Then another listener writes, "There was a guy on Bill Maher's Show this week that was raised as evangelical who said that these people think that only a guy like Trump can stop the wave of anti Christian sentiment they perceive as changing us away from a Christian society. They see him as bringing back the Christian dominance of 50 years ago."

I'm curious how you respond to either of those texts. How much is religion and maybe changing religious identity an issue demographically in how people might vote for president in Arizona?

Jim Small: I think it absolutely is predictive in a lot of ways. Religious affiliation, the more evangelical that a voter is, I think, they're far more likely to support Trump and to support Republicans. It's a really interesting schism within the Latino community or a growing divide that, I think, is traditionally a very heavily Roman Catholic constituency. I think that that's largely the culture, but there has been a really big growth in evangelical Latino churches the Pentecostal churches and things like that. Members of those churches, I think, are really drawn and driven by more of the moral things and the kind of culture war.

That idea, I think, it's really baked into a lot of evangelicalism of being persecuted and being the victim and then needing to fight back against that needing to grab the reins of the government in order to do that in a way that is traditionally not a part of, I think, kind of the Catholic dogma, which tends to be focused a lot more, I think, on people and on community and on lifting people up and providing them a path out of, say, poverty and things like that. There is a divide, and I think that that could absolutely be a part of the reason why we're seeing more Latinos going for Trump and going for Republicans now versus maybe last election or a decade ago or even a generation ago.

Broadly speaking, absolutely. I think evangelical movements are really tied to the hip with Trump right now. We've seen it in polling and some great national polling. The Public Religion Research Institute has wonderful looks at exactly how evangelical support has been a driving factor behind the MAGA movement and the Trump movement, and how when you see cracks in that, how that portends some potential problems for Republicans at the ballot box.

Brian Lehrer: One more call, BC in Times Square. You're on WNYC with Jim Small from Arizona Mirror. Hi, BC.

BC: Good morning. Thank you for taking my call. Happy International day of the world's indigenous people. My question was, with Arizona having the great Hopi nation and the largest population of indigenous people in any state, how are you campaigning this population?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, how is Trump, how is Harris campaigning to any native populations, indigenous populations, and how big a percent of the vote would you say they are in Arizona, Jim?

Jim Small: Yes, I think that we've actually been writing about this a lot. We cover indigenous communities. This is one of our focuses that we cover. I want to say there's about 300,000 voting age native peoples in Arizona, not all of whom are registered to vote, not all of whom will vote, but there has been a very concerted effort from Democrats to speak to those voters, and to motivate them and to try to get them to the polls. Just last week, Kamala Harris was here in Arizona, spent a couple of days here. We heard a clip of her earlier talking to a group of Republicans. Before that, she did a campaign rally on one of our tribal reservations and had about 7,000 people there, a reservation that's nearby the Phoenix area.

It is a concerted effort. Vice presidential nominee Tim Walz was here, had an event about five days ago that was specifically aimed at trying to get native voters out to the polls and working with native leaders to try to do that. You can absolutely make the argument that in 2020, a surge in voters higher than expected turnout on reservations, on tribal lands was a key component in why Joe Biden won. It was such a narrow race, and it's going to be ostensibly, I think, a really narrow race this year.

These races are going to be won and lost on the margins. If you can get a group of low propensity voters to turn out at a higher than expected margin and they're going to overwhelmingly back your candidate, those are the places where you're going to make those small gains. I mean, you make enough of them that they're going to end up potentially deciding the outcome of an election. The indigenous vote here, I think, is a key part of that for Democrats.

Brian Lehrer: Last question in our last minute. Also, at that Arizona rally yesterday, I heard the clip of Trump saying he was going to fight inflation by going drill, baby, drill, basically. I wonder how much climate change is an issue versus, or in conjunction with energy policy or inflation policy in Arizona, where, as I understand it, and we covered it last summer here on our New York radio station, even for Arizona, last summer was, frighteningly hot.

Jim Small: Last summer was frighteningly hot. This summer wasn't a whole lot better. It was maybe mildly less intense, but it was a lot longer. My goodness, last week had a day that was 108. We've had-- end of September, beginning of October was 110 plus here, which is beyond abnormal and it is terrible. Yes, I think that there's a lot of focus here on the weather and it's not enough on the climate and kind of on the broader trends. It's difficult to get people to come around.

I think that they finally are starting to realize and starting to come around on the idea that policy matters on these things and that maybe we need to do things a little bit differently, but you also have an entire political party that basically views that idea as something of a heresy and is unwilling to even consider it and let alone change anything about it.

Brian Lehrer: Jim Small, editor in chief of Arizona Mirror. That's our look at swing state Arizona. Jim, thank you so much for doing this with us. We know you had to get up early. Arizona time to do it. It. Thanks for spending a lot of time with us. Good luck covering the rest of the campaign.

Jim Small: Thank you, Brian. I appreciate it.

 

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