Winning over Trump voters could be key for Arizona Democrat in Senate race

The crowd gathered in Chandler for a meet-and-greet with Ruben Gallego on a recent Saturday afternoon was an almost perfect snapshot of the voters Democrats need to win statewide in once-ruby red Arizona. There were small business owners, Latino youth activists, a retiree in a “Comma La” T-shirt, a handful of veterans, disaffected Republicans, at least one California transplant and a former Trump voter.

The diverse attendance was one sign of what polls, strategists, Democrats and even some Republicans acknowledge: the race for an open Senate seat is the 44-year-old Democrat’s to lose, a surprising position for a progressive congressman in a purple state running against Trump-endorsed firebrand Kari Lake.

In brief introductory remarks, Gallego shared his insights after nearly two years of campaigning across the Grand Canyon state. He bragged about the Arizona’s economic boom – a new battery manufacturing plant, the new semiconductor fab.

But he acknowledged many Arizonans were “still hurting”. At a gas station in south Phoenix, Gallego said he had noticed motorists weren’t filling up their tanks all the way. He recalled his family’s own financial struggles growing up, raised alongside his three sisters by a single, immigrant mother in a cramped apartment outside of Chicago.

“That’s the kind of thing that I want to bring to the US Senate: a real understanding of what people are dealing with and what we should be doing to make their life a little better,” he said, “to just breathe a little bit easier and have a chance at the American Dream.”

Across town, his opponent, the former TV news anchor Lake channeled Trump, whom she has molded herself after since her foray into politics two years ago. She had called an “emergency” press conference to discuss Kamala Harris’s visit to the Arizona-Mexico border the previous day, tying Gallego – who did not accompany the vice-president – to what she described as the administration’s “abject failure” on border security.

She scolded the media for not doing more to hold Gallego responsible for migration, which has fallen sharply after reaching record highs last year. She accused Gallego of being “controlled” by the drug cartels because of his long-estranged father’s criminal history.

“We need to be calling out what he is about,” she said. “I want to end the cartels.”

The dueling campaign events underscored the very different paths the two candidates are charting as they vie to succeed Senator Kyrsten Sinema, the Democrat turned independent leaving the chamber.

As early voting begins in Arizona, polling shows Gallego with a consistent edge in a contest that could be pivotal to determining which party controls the Senate. The Democrat is trouncing Lake in fundraising, giving him more local airtime and mailbox presence. And surveys and interviews suggest he is winning a sizable, perhaps decisive, chunk of Trump voters.

Ruben Gallego debates Kari Lake in Phoenix, Arizona, on 9 October. Photograph: Joe Rondone/Arizona Republic via AP

Lake has alienated some conservatives and independents with her attacks on the Republican establishment and her embrace of election denialism, including in her own failed bid for governor in 2022, which she claims – baselessly – was stolen.

But it isn’t over yet: Lake delivered a polished performance during Wednesday night’s debate with Gallego, and could pull out more attacks on her opponent in the final stretch - including his divorce records from his split with the Phoenix mayor, Kate Gallego, which may be unsealed this month. After the debate, she got a boost from the only Republican who seems to matter.

“The Trump-endorsed Senate Candidate in Arizona crushed her Liberal Democrat Opponent,” Trump wrote on Truth Social after the debate. “Kari will help me Secure our Border, Stop Inflation, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

But Trump, who lost Arizona in 2020 by less than 11,000 votes, is able to stitch together a coalition of loyalists and independents that even his most adherent Maga acolytes – and Lake is one of them – can’t always replicate. Paul Bentz, a pollster at Arizona public affairs firm HighGround, ran a recent poll that showed the presidential race essentially deadlocked. But in the Senate contest, Gallego led Lake 51% to 41%.

The survey showed both Trump and Lake losing more Republican voters than Harris or Gallego are among Democrats, but Trump is losing fewer of them – and Trump is ahead of Harris with independents, unlike Lake, who lags Gallego with the group.

Billboards financed by the Arizona Republican party that boast of “team unity” don’t include Lake - instead, Trump is alongside out-of-staters like JD Vance, Elon Musk, Robert F Kennedy, Vivek Ramaswamy and Tulsi Gabbard. Lake’s campaign bus, on the other hand, is wrapped in a photo of her and Trump. “Endorsed by President Trump” is written in larger font than Lake’s own name.

“The vast majority of the money and the vast majority of the effort is in supporting Trump,” Bentz said. “It does not seem to be following the rubric that we’ve seen in past elections to help the down ticket that’s building a slate of support.

“It’s not vote Republican, it’s vote Trump.”

Even so, Lake supporters are hoping the polling numbers - which Lake herself has said differ from what she’s seeing internally - won’t bear out. A Republican operative involved in the effort to elect conservative candidates in the state said high turnout in a presidential election year with Trump at the top of the ticket could bring Lake over the line.

Lake did not respond to a request for an interview, and Gallego was not made available for an interview.

Building a coalition

Years of political upheaval – Arizona has had six senators in just over a decade – and the Republican party’s Trumpian turn, has created an opening for Democrats in the land of Barry Goldwater and John McCain. Waves of new residents, many coming from more liberal parts of the country, and a suburban shift away from Republicans, has changed Arizona’s political landscape.

If Gallego wins in November, he will be the first Latino to represent Arizona in the Senate while Lake would be the first Republican woman elected to serve the state in the chamber.

Gallego announced his campaign for Senate in early 2023, effectively daring Sinema to stay in the race after infuriating Democrats by blocking pieces of Joe Biden’s agenda. Without a primary opponent, he had ample time to introduce himself to voters across the vast state, from the tribal lands to the borderlands and the populous Maricopa county.

He has a compelling personal story, repeated in television ads that have been airing for months: the son of a Mexican and Colombian immigrant, who was raised by his mother and worked odd jobs at meat-packing plants and pizza shops to earn extra money for his family.

A Harvard graduate, he enrolled in the Marine Corps, and was deployed to Iraq as part of a unit that saw some of the heaviest casualties of the war. On the trail, he often recalls how combat training kicked in on January 6, when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. Photos from the day showed Gallego directing his colleagues how to put on gas masks and helping them evacuate the chamber.

By contrast, Bentz said Lake hasn’t spent much time trying to reintroduce herself to voters, perhaps confident that they know her from TV or from her 2022 bid. For more than a year following her defeat, Lake was in the news for her fruitless attempts to overturn the results. She was sued for defamation by the Republican election official, after he claimed she upended his life with her false accusations that he rigged the election against her. She ultimately declined to defend her statements in the case.

During the debate, Lake repeatedly accused Gallego of undergoing an “extreme makeover” to blot out his progressive record in the House and cultivate a more moderate appeal. But Lake has struggled to paint Gallego as too far left.

The Congressman has tacked more toward the ideological center in the past year, particularly on immigration. In a state where activists remember him marching for immigrant rights after a Republican-led crackdown on undocumented workers, he is now touting his support for a border security bill that would limit asylum and provide more resources to hire border agents.

Becky Wyatt, who hosted Gallego at Fuse Flex Space, the co-working space she just opened weeks before, called the choice in November a “no-brainer”.

“There’s just such a character flaw difference between the two Senate candidates,” Wyatt said.

This year, Lake has attempted to mend fences. The state’s former Republican governor, Doug Ducey, set aside their feud and endorsed her bid for Senate earlier this summer. Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, a hardline conservative seeking to replace Mitch McConnell as party leader, appeared as her surrogate after the debate.

But her harsh words toward McCain Republicans still linger. During her campaign for governor, she told this subset of Republicans to “get the hell out” and claimed she “drove a stake through the heart of the McCain machine”.

Gibson McKay, a Republican lobbyist, was an aide to McCain. He donated thousands of dollars to Lake’s gubernatorial campaign, but her comments on his former boss soured him. He’s now one of the Trump-Gallego crossover voters who would be needed for both the former president and Democratic congressman to win the state.

Kari Lake speaks to supporters in Scottsdale, Arizona, on 10 October. Photograph: Go Nakamura/Reuters

“John McCain was my friend. She can play that game with her Turning Point friends, and she’ll never have my support because of that,” he said. “It’s mean, it’s ugly, and it’s what’s tearing down on the fabric of American politics.”

He’s friends – “a friend friend, not like a political friend” – with Gallego and his name was on a fundraiser for the congressman this year. A conservative, he aligns more with Lake on policy, but a few factors, including his personal friendship with Gallego, played into his decision to back the Democrat this cycle. He also believes Gallego is more authentic than Lake, just as he believes Trump is more authentic than Harris.

McKay’s support for Gallego hasn’t gone over well with some of his Republican friends. McKay is an elected precinct committeeman, the foot-soldiers of political activism. Republicans in his legislative district censured him for supporting the Democrat, and there was an effort afoot to try to remove his duties in his elected role.

McKay says he hasn’t seen evidence Lake is trying to make peace, and it wouldn’t ring true if she tried it. Earlier this year, McCain’s daughter, Meghan McCain, rejected the idea, saying: “No peace, bitch. We see you for who you are – and are repulsed by it.”

Debate gives Lake a boost

On Wednesday, Lake and Gallego met on stage for their only televised debate this cycle. From the jump, Lake, comfortable in front of the camera after decades anchoring the television news, attacked Gallego over immigration, her strongest issue.

She claimed a red-eye flight out of Phoenix’s airport “looks like a migrant encampment” because migrants first come to Arizona before shipping out elsewhere.

Gallego, stiff and sticking to talking points, pushed Lake on abortion and her shifting positions. (She had previously expressed support for Arizona’s pre-statehood abortion ban before the Supreme Court upheld the law, sparking a massive backlash. She backed the state GOP’s effort to repeal the law and reinstate a 15-week ban. Gallego has said he would support a federal law restoring Roe, which protects abortion until the point of fetal viability, roughly about 22 weeks of pregnancy.)

The two issues typically top lists of importance for voters in Arizona, which shares a border with Mexico. An abortion ballot measure to increase access to the procedure beyond the current 15-week ban is also before voters in November, probably buoying turnout and expected to pass easily.

Lake stumbled a bit on her reproductive health care responses, erroneously calling in-vitro fertilization “UVF” – it is abbreviated IVF – while repeatedly pointing out she was a woman who had many women in her family and attempting to pivot.

“I’m astounded that he actually knows the difference between a woman and a man,” she cracked at one point, “because I thought there were, what, 147 different genders. I do care about women’s rights.”

Lake also made it personal: she called Gallego a sexual harasser and brought up family ties to drug cartels, a charge Gallego ignored. He previously grew emotional while addressing the claims in a press conference, saying he’d worked his entire life to get away from his father’s misdeeds.

Gallego repeatedly raised Lake’s refusal to accept her defeat in the 2022 race for Arizona governor. He called her dangerous, noting how her election lies led one election official to need private security because of increased threats.

The debate ended with Gallego sharing his personal story, his biggest asset on the campaign trail. “I’m a very lucky man,” he said to the camera in a closing statement. “I’m just lucky to be born in the best country in this world. And by all counts, I shouldn’t even be here. My mom raised us alone, and with a real belief in the American dream, and a real want to succeed, I got to where I am.”

Given the final word, Lake promised that as a senator she would usher in a “strong, secure border” and “strong Trump economy”. Then she echoed her opponent.

“If there’s any kiddos watching, I don’t want you to worry,” Lake concluded. “I want you to dream really big. I want you to know that we’re going to turn this country around, and your American dream will become reality.”