Harris counts on abortion measures for victory in the Southwest

As Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) campaign in Arizona and Nevada, they see a chance for victory with two pending ballot proposals that would guarantee abortion access in the southwestern states.

More and more states, including Nevada, have voted in November on a constitutional amendment to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.

Work is underway to secure ballot questions in other states, including Arizona, where activists have submitted the required number of signatures and are awaiting approval. The office of Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, has until Aug. 27 to review the signatures and certify the measure.

During Harris and Walz’s visits to Arizona and Nevada on Friday and Saturday, respectively, the two plan to highlight the abortion ballot measures in the hopes that they will mobilize their base and boost turnout. In some cases, abortion could also be a motivating factor for independent voters and even Republicans to support Harris — a key factor in swing states like Arizona.

Peggy Neely, the former Republican vice mayor of Phoenix, recently joined a new Republican task force in Arizona to organize support for Harris, specifically calling for the fall of Roe vs. Wade as part of her reasoning this week.

“Donald Trump’s radical and regressive agenda poses the greatest threat to women’s rights in decades, not just in Arizona, but across the country,” Neely wrote. “Donald Trump must be unequivocally defeated at the ballot box to secure our future.”

Harris’s Southwest swing will mark her seventh visit to Nevada and fourth to Arizona this year — but her first as the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee. It also comes after the Cook Political Report shifted these two crucial swing states from “lean Republican” to “toss up.” In 2020, Biden won these two states by a narrow margin: 33,596 votes in Nevada and by less than 11,000 votes in Arizona.

When it comes to ballot measures, there’s no guarantee their success will rub off on Democratic candidates, especially in the Grand Canyon State. Arizona voters have a history of voting for candidates from both political parties. In 2018, voters elected Republican Gov. Doug Ducey and also sent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), then a Democrat, to the Senate. Most recently, in 2022, Arizonans voted to deny Republican election-denying allies of the former president while continuing to vote for other Republicans on lower ballots.

Barrett Marson, a Republican strategist from Phoenix, said he is unsure whether voters who support a constitutional right to abortion in Arizona will cast their ballots for Harris and the Democratic candidate for Senate, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ).

“There are a couple of unknowns, and one of them is the fact that we’re almost certainly going to have an abortion initiative on the ballot,” Marson said. “Will young people vote for that? I’m guessing they will, and if they do vote, will they vote for Ruben and Harris? And I’m not sure about that.”

“I think this is something we need to pay close attention to over the next 90 days,” Marson added.

In Arizona, the abortion issue is particularly new to voters after the Arizona Supreme Court voted last April to uphold a 160-year-old, nearly total abortion ban that made no exceptions for rape or incest and allowed abortions only if the mother’s life was in danger. The law sparked controversy among Republicans, especially ahead of a crucial election year. State lawmakers later withdrew the bill and signed into law a 2022 state law that would limit most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Before the law was repealed, it put the abortion issue back in the national spotlight and forced former President Donald Trump to clarify his position. The former president asked the Arizona state legislature to “take immediate action” to change abortion laws in the same week that he also said the issue should be left up to the states.

At the time, Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake had also called lawmakers in the Republican-controlled House and Senate, urging them to repeal the law. While the near-total abortion ban did not materialize, there are concerns that it could have consequences for Republicans on Election Day. As a result of the ban, a movement began calling for a constitutional amendment to strengthen abortion rights.

“That whole operation this spring was just terrible for the party overall, and even though the law has been repealed, it’s still fresh in the minds of voters,” said a GOP operative with ties to Arizona, who asked not to be identified.

“Democrats are waging one of their most aggressive campaigns ever to flip the state legislature. All they have to do is win a few seats in both chambers and they’ll have a majority,” the person said. “One strategy they’ve used includes messaging about abortion and that train wreck that we saw.”

A poll of Arizona voters in May found that 65% supported a measure to add abortion rights to the state constitution.

The issue has the potential to increase turnout. A KFF poll found that about half of Arizona’s female voters said they would be more motivated to vote if the initiative were on the ballot.

Harris last pulled off a surprise impact at a reproductive rights rally in Phoenix, two years after the Supreme Court struck down federal abortion rights in June.

“The idea that so-called leaders would say to a survivor of a violent crime against their body, a survivor of a violation of their body, that that survivor has no right or authority to make a decision about what happens next with their body, that is immoral. And that is what is happening in our country,” Harris said at the event.

“Donald Trump says he’s proud of what he’s done,” Harris added at the time.

But focusing on abortion is no panacea for Democrats. Immigration, the economy, inflation and foreign policy are also important issues.

“The economy is going to play a much bigger role in how people vote — try to get a mortgage here, try to get a car loan at a reasonable interest rate. People are not happy with those statistics right now,” Marson said.

During his press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday, Trump said voters are not motivated by abortion rights.

“I think abortion has become much less of an issue. … It will actually become a very small issue,” he added later.

Republicans are also busy spotlighting the failed policies of the Biden-Harris administration, particularly immigration. GOP vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance was in Arizona last week, holding a rally in Glendale, Ariz., before traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border.

An outside political group supporting Trump recently released a new attack ad in several key states criticizing Harris’ work leading the Biden administration’s response to the crisis at the southern border.

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Harris aims to counter the criticism by pointing to a bipartisan compromise border bill that Sinema, Sens. James Lankford (R-OK) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) and White House officials drafted in February, but which ultimately died under political pressure from Trump.

She will also focus her message on her experiences as a former prosecutor in a border state, where she hunted down transnational gangs and drug traffickers.