Democrats worry Arizona may ‘slip away’ from an embattled Joe Biden

Arizona Democrats rode the anti-Trump wave to new heights.

But this year, with Donald Trump back on the ballot, some Democrats are worried that the presidential race is slipping out of Joe Biden’s reach in this crucial battleground.

Biden was already sagging in Arizona polls before his debate disaster set off a crisis of confidence in the party. Then Trump was wounded by an attempted assassin , upending an already unpredictable battle for the White House.

Biden has insisted he will stay in the race and can win, but some Democrats say it is easy to read the tea leaves after two of Arizona’s Democrats in Congress asked Biden to quit the race.

“They are seeing the chances of Arizona being a decision-making state slip away,” said Doug Wilson, a campaign veteran who worked on Bill Clinton’s 1996 Arizona campaign when he turned the state blue for the first time in 48 years.

It’s the latest dramatic turn for a once reliably red state that has become one of the most contentious battlegrounds on the electoral map. Biden won Arizona by fewer than 11,000 votes in 2020, the closest margin of any state. His narrow win prompted years of election denial by Republicans and a partisan “audit” that cost millions of dollars and found no evidence of widespread fraud .

Since then, Democrats have won tight races for governor, attorney general and secretary of state. Democratic Senate hopeful Ruben Gallego is leading Republican Kari Lake in statewide polls this cycle, and an abortion-rights ballot question is set to drive turnout on the left.

It still may not be enough to put Biden over the top for a second time, some Democrats fear.

Presidential polls paint a bleak picture of Biden’s standing in Arizona compared to where he was four years ago. Trump led Arizona with 51% of support to Biden’s 46% in a Fox News poll conducted before the debate in June. At the same point in June 2020, a Fox News poll showed Biden leading Trump 46% to 42% in Arizona. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report, which handicaps political races, took notice, too, shifting its Arizona Electoral College rating from a toss-up to “lean Republican.”

Voters are wary about the 81-year-old Biden’s age, his handling of the economy and his record on immigration, said Don Levy, the director of the Siena College Research Institute. Levy surveyed Arizona in the spring and often polls the national race and other battleground states.

“Our last poll in Arizona certainly showed that Biden was in trouble,” Levy said. “I just see issue after issue continuing to stack up in favor of Trump over Biden.”

Voter perception of Biden’s presidency wasn’t rosy to begin with, and national polls show that the president’s performance at the first presidential debate didn't help. Biden mixed up his words, stood with his mouth ajar and spoke softly in his face-off with Trump.

“The picture that's being painted of Biden today, even by the people that want him out, is that he has been a great president, he has done his job, and now it's time for somebody else to pick up the torch. Well, in Arizona, 79% of people say the economy's in trouble, and two-thirds say that we’re headed in the wrong direction,” Levy said. “You couple that with the incumbent having a really, pretty abysmal approval rating. … That it is very difficult to win.”

The Biden campaign pushed back on the president’s poll numbers in an interview and said that his operation is drawing on Democratic victories over the last six years to build an operation that can win Arizona again.

“Election results are far more predictive than polls, especially this far out from a general election,” said Dan Kanninen, the Biden campaign’s battleground state director.

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Biden campaign building a strong presence in Arizona

The Biden campaign has put considerable time and resources into Arizona: Biden has been to the state four times and Vice President Kamala Harris has campaigned here even more often . The Democratic National Committee just gave the state party $1.5 million to pour into advertisements and staff hires, and the campaign aims to double its 80 staff members in the coming months.

“We have built the campaign in Arizona to be strong and to be designed to win a close race. We very much see it as a critical part of our pathway to victory,” Kanninen said. “We think it's destined to be close in these places. We think the electorate is one that favors us at the end of the day. The issues certainly do, the candidates certainly do.”

The Democratic coordinated campaign plans to open 18 offices this election cycle, a number it says will mark the most offices of any coordinated campaign in the state. Locations include north Phoenix, Tempe, Oro Valley, South Tucson, Gila County and Graham County. The Trump campaign says it has six offices in Arizona.

Biden’s campaign also is spending millions on ads. Arizona is included in a $50 million paid media buy that Biden announced this month, and the campaign has made Latino voter outreach a key focus .

“We've always known that this is going to be a tough race, that it was going to be close,” Arizona Democratic Party Chair Yolanda Bejarano said. “So we're going to continue to do the work about the danger that Trump poses for us, and we're going to just keep our head down and focus on talking to voters, on reaching voters and helping them understand what's at stake, and the clear contrast between what Donald Trump wants for us and and what President Biden and Democrats want for us.”

Still, the president is not betting on Arizona to solve his Electoral College math problem, according to a recent memo. The Biden campaign has its sights set on the so-called "Blue Wall" of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Trump won all three states in 2016 and Biden turned them blue in 2020.

“Right now, winning the Blue Wall states — MI, WI, and PA — is the clearest pathway to that aim, but we also believe that the sunbelt states are not out of reach,” the campaign wrote . “The minor polling drop off we’ve seen with some Democratic constituencies is why you’ve seen the campaign remain laser-focused on the battlegrounds and prioritizing outreach to the coalition that sent Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the White House in 2020.”

Kanninen made it clear that Biden is not counting Arizona out. Of the six or seven states the campaign sees as battlegrounds, he expects any one at the end of the night could be the state Biden is waiting on to hit 270 electoral votes. “Arizona is very much in that camp as a likelihood,” Kanninen said.

The cracks in Biden’s Arizona support have become more visible since the debate. Two out of the three Arizona Democrats who serve in the House have called for Biden to step aside.

Rep. Greg Stanton , who won reelection by 11 points in 2022, said that the party needs a nominee who can “effectively make the case against Trump” and inspire confidence that they can “handle the rigors of the hardest job on the planet for the next four years.”

“Arizona could be a missed opportunity on the presidential level,” said David Waid, a former chair of the Arizona Democratic Party. “If there's a setback in this presidential election year, it's a setback that totally reflects the dynamics of this year, these candidates and the timing.”

To Quacy Smith, a Democrat running in a deep-red district against Republican Rep. Paul Gosar, the chaos inside the Democratic Party about whether Biden should run is creating an even larger down-ballot challenge than the president himself.

Biden would have to decide to step aside — the party would be hard-pressed to force him out at the Democratic National Convention — and he has said repeatedly that he is staying on the ticket.

“Let's not force a man who has done the job out just because he's old. He was old when we voted for him the first time. We knew what we were getting into,” Smith said. “The issue for folks like me that are on the ballot is not him being at the top of the ticket. It's what the party is not doing to affirm and support his decision to remain.”

The party is not heeding that warning. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a close ally of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a Senate candidate, on Wednesday became the latest high-profile Democrat to call for Biden’s ouster .

For its part, the Biden campaign said the media have focused too much on Biden’s every move and have given Trump “a bit of a free pass” in the wake of the debate.

Despite shakiness at the top of the ticket, experts say there’s still reason to believe the down-ballot trend may continue to favor Democrats. Gallego leads Lake in the same statewide polls that show Biden losing.

“I could certainly envision a situation in which Trump carries Arizona and Gallego wins,” said Levy, the pollster.

Small shifts in voting could tip scales for either Trump or Biden, experts say

Arizona voters have rejected the Republicans running in Trump’s image up and down the ballot for the last several years. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, now an independent, was elected as a Democrat over Republican Martha McSally in 2018. In 2020, voters handed Biden a narrow victory and elected Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly. By 2022, Kelly was reelected and Arizona narrowly had elected Democrats to serve as governor, attorney general and secretary of state.

Biden’s bid is staffed by campaign veterans who were part of those Democratic victories. Sean McEnerney, campaign manager of the Arizona coordinated campaign, led the party’s unified statewide campaign in 2022 when Democrats saw major wins and senior adviser Jen Cox served as Kelly’s campaign manager and chief of staff.

All agree that in a swing state such as Arizona, victories are often won by a small number of votes.

“Those margins in ‘20 and ‘22 are very small but consistent, and it seems like those margins have just sort of died,” said Chad Heywood, a former executive director of the Arizona Republican Party. “Enthusiasm and confidence in Biden, for people to cast a ballot for him, has just sort of dwindled, and those margins weren't ones that you take to the bank to begin with.”

Even a tiny shift among voters would be enough to tip the scales, whether it be independent voters moving toward Trump or part of Biden’s base deciding to stay home on Election Day.

“When we talk about this being some sort of sea change, I mean, 2% in Arizona is a sea change,” Heywood said.

Now, with Gallego running statewide and the party within striking distance of flipping the state Legislature, some Democrats are signaling that the presidential battle may be a lost cause.

“If it was just Biden without the debate, and the focus was on Trump, then I think Biden would have another good shot. But it’s not,” Wilson said. “If I were in Arizona now and I were advising the Democratic Party, I would say put your money into Ruben and put everything you’ve got into getting those two (legislative) seats.”

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Democrats worry Arizona may ‘slip away’ from an embattled Joe Biden