Standing ovation from Tucson’s Trump supporters. A ‘do or die’ election.

From immigration to economics and rigged elections, Donald Trump made big promises and false claims to Southern Arizonans overfilling an energetic rally in Tucson. This traditionally liberal city — home to generations of Latinos and less than 70 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border — remains at the center of the former president’s reelection platform.

“Incredible being back in the great state of Arizona,” Trump said on Thursday at his campaign lobbying “infrequent” local voters to choose him in November for president.

Trump’s rally in Tucson’s borderlands and Indigenous lands — known for progressive politics and an independent streak that defies political stereotypes — drew more than 2,000 attendees. It was standing room only with hundreds of people left outside enduring 100-degree Arizona heat.

Trump and Harris campaigns came to Tucson on the same day. Both aiming to sway voters, especially undecided or marginalized people who don’t always feel empowered to cast a ballot. The presidential candidates’ spouses have taken different approaches to campaigning.

Melania Trump has been mostly absent from her husband’s bid for a second term as president. Douglas Emhoff has embraced his historic role as second gentleman alongside his wife, Vice President Kamala Harris. On Thursday, Emhoff spoke to a packed crowd at a private event nestled inside a brick building in the downtown heart of Tucson.

Trump’s rally spurred people from across Southern Arizona. Many came with worries about the economy and crime. With few exceptions, most people said they knew who they were voting for: Donald Trump in 2024.

It’s an important bellwether. With less than two months remaining until the general election, Arizona is a mainstay. An unpredictable swing state with heavily independent and Latino communities.

While Phoenix has been a stronghold of Republican politics in Arizona, Tucson is more complex. Near the border and surrounded by counties that voted heavily for Trump, Tucson remains vaquero (cowboy) — unpredictable, determined, loud and rebellious.

Arizonans who respect local Republican John McCain and Democrat Gabrielle Giffords are increasingly moving away from Trump.

With nearly as many independent voters as registered Republicans, and more non-affiliated voters than registered Democrats, unaffiliated voters will play a crucial role this election . The rising movement of Republicans for Harris, including Mesa Mayor John Giles, have denounced Trump’s actions in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and police officers.

At the rally Thursday in a state that supports rights to publicly carry guns, Trump says Harris wants to confiscate guns. He asks the crowd to raise their hand if they have a gun. A wave of hands jumps up, punctuated by excited cheers.

“Does anybody in the audience not have a gun?” asks Trump. One or two stray hands go up, some scattered laughter throughout the crowd. “If you want to keep your gun, vote for Trump.”

At Tuesday’s presidential debate Harris responded to Trump’s criticism about regulating guns.

“This business about taking everyone’s guns away. Tim Walz and I are both gun owners. We’re not taking anybody’s guns away. So stop with the continuous lying about this stuff.”

Harris’ running mate Walz served more than two decades in the Army National Guard, earning the rank of command sergeant major.

Still, on sweltering day in early September, Trump drew more than 2,000 ready-to-vote supporters to his rally at Linda Ronstadt Music Hall.

Ronstadt was not on her hometown stage at the events hall christened in her name. She spoke on social media: “It saddens me to see the former President bring his hate show to Tucson, a town with deep Mexican-American roots and a joyful, tolerant spirit.”

“I don’t just deplore his toxic politics, his hatred of women, immigrants and people of color, his criminality, dishonesty and ignorance — although there’s that.”

Standing-room-only crowd in Tucson welcomes Donald Trump

Even before Trump took the stage, the energy in the audience was high with anticipation. Occasionally, a group would break out into chants: “Trump, Trump, Trump” or “USA. USA. USA.”

Many people wore red MAGA (Make America Great Again) hats.  Camouflage MAGA, hot pink MAGA, black MAGA or white MAGA with Trump’s scribbly signature sewn in gold lettering on the brim. Even a few MAGA visors with orange wigs.

There were also dozens of cowboy hats and at least one Reagan-Bush hat.

In some cases, young people at the rally had skipped a day of school to attend.

Maddox is 16 years old. He attended the rally with his mother, Julie Travis. Travis is a lifelong Republican and owner of a local business. Maddox, too, said he was a lifelong Republican.

“I started wearing a MAGA hat when I was, I think, 10,” Maddox said. “I think it was great, really authentic. He understands what he’s speaking about.”

Julie Travis said the election was “do or die.” If Trump doesn’t win, she worries that a border state won’t be safe for her family.

A promise not to tax social security, make housing affordable

Two signs at the front of the stage inside the Tucson Music Hall at the Trump rally outlined two policy proposals: “make housing affordable again” and “no tax on tips.”

On housing, Trump promised to lower mortgage rates, end inflation and build more houses. “We will open up new tracts of federal land for large-scale housing development,” the former president promised, noting the large amount of federal lands in Arizona.

Trump also promised to remove taxes on tips and social security. He said he would end taxes on overtime hours.

For seniors – among his core of supporters — Trump vowed not to tax social security.

“The seniors have been destroyed by inflation,” he said. “So this is a whole new life for them.”

What makes a good life for seniors, according to some critics, includes access to healthcare. A group of Tucson doctors have raised concerns about Trump’s plans for access to healthcare.

“My patients and seniors across Arizona rely on Medicare, so we need to know, Mr. Trump, would you indeed cut funding for this lifeline?” asked Dr. Robert Beren in a press release Thursday in advance of Trump’s campaign event. Beren is a family physician in Tucson.

The physicians are members of the Committee to Protect Health Care , an organization that includes thousands of U.S. doctors and advocates working to expand health care access, lower insurance and medical costs and protect reproductive rights. The doctors’ questions come after debate moderator Linsey Davis asked Trump about the Affordable Care Act.

“So tonight, nine years after you first started running,” Davis said, “do you have a plan, and can you tell us what it is?”

Trump bashed “Obamacare” and hesitated to offer specific alternatives. “If we can come up with a plan that’s going to cost our people, our population, less money and be better health care than Obamacare, then I would absolutely do it,” he said. “But until then I’d run it as good as it can be run.”

Davis repeated her question. “So just a yes or no,” she said. “You still do not have a plan?”

“I have concepts of a plan,” Trump said.

Trump’s broad economic promise was important to Ignacho Peña, a new supporter. For more than a decade, Peña ran a trucking company that brought produce from México to Colorado and Texas.

Then in 2020, his business began to slow down. In 2022, Peña said he shut down his business. “I held on as long as I could, I downsized trucks to one, but I couldn’t hold on anymore. The price of fuel — I was paying more in fuel than I was making a week,” he said.

That economic pain, and his worries about the border, are why Peña is voting for Trump in November. Peña, who lives near Tombstone, had never been to a Trump rally before Thursday. “I need to see some changes,” he said.

Making a clear comparison of the economy under President Joe Biden compared to Trump is complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, a 2024 Reuters analysis comparing several economic indicators under both presidencies found, for example, that companies had a larger share of Gross Domestic Income under Biden, but workers’ share stayed fairly even under both presidents. Inflation started to grow under Trump, but continued to grow under Biden, the analysis found.

The Southern Arizona border

Southern Arizona’s borderlands remained a constant thread at Thursday’s rally, from Trump to U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake to Art Del Cueto of the National Border Patrol Council.

Trump repeated false claims about the number of immigrants who have entered the U.S. under the Biden administration. Customs and Border Protection has estimated 10 million encounters at the southern border during the Biden administration.

“People said I was angry at the debate, and yes I was angry,” Trump said. “Because you let 21 million people into the country. They’re destroying our country.”

The statement prompted the crowd to jump to their feet and begin chanting: “USA! USA!”

The former president spoke of people who had been sexually assaulted or physically harmed by people who are immigrants.” Immigrant and human rights advocates have decried Trump’s racist political rhetoric for inciting violent hate crimes, such as attacks on Asian Americans and the deadly mass shooting in El Paso, Texas. Multiple studies show that people who have immigrated to America are less likely to commit crime than people born in the United States.

Trump’s statements at the rally elicited angry gasps and outraged cries. In one case, an audience member yelled: “Kill them.” Trump received a standing ovation and more chants of “USA” from the crowd. He promised “the largest deportation operation.”

Multiple attendees at the rally said their fears tied to migration and the border were part of the reason they supported Trump.

Tammy Lukow is afraid to run outside her east Tucson neighborhood.

She was  shaken by reports of crime by immigrants she heard from a friend who works for Border Patrol. “It’s just really scary. I’m a runner, and I just don’t feel safe running around,” she said. “The border is really important to me.”

For others, Trump’s border policy was among the reasons they felt he would be dangerous as the next president.

Ronstadt, the American artist whose name adorns the hall where Trump spoke Thursday, called his Tucson rally in the building “a sad fact.”

Ronstadt said Trump hated women, immigrants and people of color, and that she would never forget the un-American trauma caused by his family-separation policy.FF

“In Nogales and across the southern border, the Trump administration systemically ripped apart migrant families seeking asylum,” she wrote. “There is no forgiving or forgetting the heartbreak he caused.”

High emotions less than a month from the election

After about an hour of Trump speaking, the rally began to wind down. Looking out over the assembled crowd, Trump encouraged people to vote as his last statement before leaving the stage. “Get everyone you know to vote,” he says. “If we have the big votes, they can’t rig it. We want to go too big to rig.”

Arizona has been at the center of false claims of voting and election security. A 2024 grand jury felony indictment of 18 people — ranging from sitting Arizona Republican senators to former top aides for Trump — offered a window into threats tied to a fake elector scheme to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election won by Biden.

At the Tucson rally Thursday, vendors sold Trump memorabilia as attendees left the hall as the 70s song YMCA played over the speakers.

Adrian Robinson has been following the Trump campaign and selling merchandise since 2015. Robinson is a Black entrepreneur who grew up in St. Louis. He’s primarily voted for Democrats. But when he heard Trump ask Black communities what they had won from being reliable Democratic voters for decades, he began to think differently.

“It struck a chord,” said Robinson, who now lives in Tampa but is now traveling alongside the Trump campaign.

Harris has maintained a lead among Black voters. An estimated 4 percent of Black voters support Trump in the latest poll, three times the support he saw in 2020. Black voter enthusiasm – with 85 percent saying they will definitely or likely vote – also dipped 7 points in September, though that change falls within the margin of error.

Robinson said his big issue is education because he graduated from a St. Louis high school without learning to read fluently.

“For them to pass me along like that, and send me out into the world, that’s very disturbing to me,” he says. His next stop with the campaign will be Las Vegas.

The most popular item he sells, said Robinson, are the red MAGA hats.

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