Joe Biden and Kamala Harris meet tribal leaders, rally supporters in joint visit to Phoenix

Former Vice President Joe Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, made their first campaign trip to Arizona on Thursday, pitching voters on their plans for economic relief, combating COVID-19 and bridging a political divide that may have opened up an opportunity for them to win this once reliably red state.

But contrasting with the large events President Donald Trump and his surrogates have held in the Valley over the last several months of the pandemic, Biden and Harris stuck to small gatherings, wore masks and highlighted the ongoing public health issues that have exacted a painful toll on Arizona.

Sounding themes familiar from his Democratic National Convention speech and last week’s debate, Biden told a small group of supporters at a union training center that Americans have suffered from a detached president — one who downplayed COVID-19 and flouted public health guidelines — and vowed to do better. 

“Americans deserve a president who understands what they are going through,” Biden said. “The last thing they need right now is a president who exacerbates the problems.“

A very different kind of campaign rally of the sort Arizonans have seen over the last few months, those attending the event were instructed to wear masks throughout and sat in folding chairs within socially distanced white circles.

As he has before, Biden urged Trump to “get out of his bunker and golf courses, or sand traps" and help Americans get through the pandemic and the resulting recession.

Biden criticized Trump for nixing negotiations on another relief package Tuesday and called for more help to businesses reeling from closures and governments grappling with unprecedented challenges. 

Biden pointed to the closure of a Phoenix restaurant, Barrio Cafe Gran Reserva, and the struggle of its owner, chef Silvana Salcido Esparza.

“The loan Silvana was able to secure back in the spring thanks to the legislation passed by Democrats in the House helped for a while but it wasn’t enough,” Biden said.

To make ends meet, Esparza canceled her own health insurance after treatment for a terminal illness. She ended up closing Barrio Cafe Gran Reserva and is now focusing on her other restaurant, Barrio Cafe, which Biden and Harris visited Thursday afternoon.

“Businesses like Silvana’s are closing, schools aren’t back to normal because Donald Trump can’t focus on what matters,” Biden said.

Biden and Harris also visited FABRIC, in Tempe, which bills itself as Arizona’s only fashion incubator and which is currently working on reusable gowns for health care workers. The campaign was staying in Phoenix overnight.

They started their trip with a visit to the Heard Museum, where they met with tribal leaders from around Arizona.

The meeting coincided with the release of their campaign’s tribal policy, which includes proposals to remedy health care disparities, defend voting rights, protect cultural sites, restore tribal lands and clean up hundreds of thousands of abandoned mines.

Biden and Harris were joined at the museum by Cindy McCain, the widow of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and together, they paid their respects at the American Indian Veterans National Memorial.

The Democratic campaign has touted McCain’s support as it seeks to win over Republicans disenchanted with their party’s direction under Trump. 

Biden again alluded to an article from The Atlantic magazine that, citing anonymous sources, claimed President Donald Trump called U.S. troops “suckers” and “losers.”

And Harris told supporters McCain “knows Joe and I will always do what she and John did and that’s put our country first.”

In turn, Republicans have sought to cast Biden as anything but a moderate or political bridge builder and pounced on remarks he made shortly after landing in Phoenix about calls within the Democratic Party to add seats to the U.S. Supreme Court if Trump’s nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, is installed.

Biden refused to answer the question, just as Harris had refused in a vice presidential debate the previous evening in Salt Lake City.

“You will know my opinion on court-packing when the election is over,” Biden said.

Republicans have argued that voters have a right to know Biden’s position on an idea now wholeheartedly endorsed by some lawmakers within his own party.

But Biden has avoided the issue, arguing it as an attempt by Republicans to shift attention away from their efforts to appoint Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court over widespread objections. Polling shows voters are split on the move in some key states. In a poll by Suffolk University and The USA TODAY Network published last week, 43% of voters surveyed said the Senate should vote on a nominee before the end of the president’s term while 51% said it should not.

As Biden and Harris visited Arizona, voters participated in the second day of early voting.

In fact, the presidential campaigns seemed to converge on Arizona all in an afternoon.

Vice President Mike Pence made his own visit to the Phoenix metro area, speaking to supporters at a tactical gear shop in Peoria. It was Pence's fourth trip to Arizona this year.

Trump remained at the White House Thursday after news last week he tested positive for COVID-19 and his hospitalization over the weekend. But he called into Fox Business on Thursday to discuss the previous evening's debate and called Harris a "monster" and "communist." Harris did not respond to the remarks when asked in Phoenix, but Biden said the remarks were "despicable" and "beneath the office of the presidency."

Ballots are in the mail to millions of voters who have requested one. While voting early in-person has not been as popular as voting by mail in recent elections, 2,922 people voted in person around Maricopa County on Wednesday, up from 847 during the first day of early voting in 2016, according to Recorder Adrian Fontes.

But with voting already underway, the small scale campaign events raise a novel question.

If a candidate comes to town and hardly anyone sees him, does it change the race?

“A lot of the electorate is locked in and not very persuadable,” said Kyle Kondik of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “However, I think we also have to remember that campaigns only have a limited number of options to try to reach voters.”

While candidates can air a lot of television ads — and they are — visits like this can attract attention and excitement in a different way. The visits also generate local media coverage.

A visit by a presidential candidate also signals a state’s importance in the race, Kondik added. Trump has come to Arizona five times this year.

“Arizona is a very important state for both candidates, and Biden’s visit tells us that he sees it as important too,” he said.

While Biden and Harris have made nods to the state's Latino, faith-based voters and seniors this election cycle, they have focused their physical appearances in other battleground states, such as Florida and Pennsylvania. 

However, Arizona is a must-win for both parties after Trump's narrow win in 2016 over Democrat Hillary Clinton by just 3.5 percentage points. 

Nationally, polling averages as calculated by the polling tracker FiveThirtyEight show Biden with a 9.5% lead. In Arizona, according to the tracker, Biden has a 4.4% lead over Trump. 

The Democrats’ appearance in Phoenix makes good on a promise Biden made in August to visit the state sometime after Labor Day.

And a win for a Democratic presidential candidate here would mark a political shift for the state as none of the party’s nominees have won Arizona since Bill Clinton in 1996. Before him, it was Harry Truman in 1948.

That political shift is palpable for supporters like Carol Blackman, a Phoenix retiree who volunteers on the campaign.

“After the first debate,” she said while awaiting Biden and Harris at the union hall, “the phones were ringing with people volunteering to do phone banking.”

Republic reporter José-Ignacio Castañeda Perez contributed to this story.

Contact Ron Hansen at ronald.hansen@arizonarepublic.com. Contact Andrew Oxford at andrew.oxford@arizonarepublic.com.

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