KJZZ’s Friday NewsCap revisits some of the biggest stories of the week from Arizona and beyond.
To talk about some new polls on the initiatives that’ll be on the November ballot, JD Vance campaigning in the Valley and more, The Show sat down with Marcus Dell’Artino of First Strategic and Gaelle Esposito of Creosote Partners.
Conversation highlights
MARK BRODIE: Marcus, let’s start with the Republicans. Vice presidential nominee. JD Vance had a couple of events in the Valley this week, and it seems as though the Republican ticket is spending more time in the state than the Democrats. We haven’t really seen, Vice President Kamala Harris or (Minnesota) Gov. Tim Walz in the state much. What does it tell you that Vance is spending as much time here as he is?
MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: Well, it tells me — let’s reflect back a little bit. When Biden was the nominee, I think effectively a Southwest strategy was off the table for the Biden campaign, meaning he was not performing in Nevada and Arizona. Then we have a switch of candidates. We go to VP Harris. That angle, that line now opens up that Southwest strategy, I’d call it, because Nevada and Arizona are super tight right now, for both candidates.
So what we’re seeing now is, I think that VP Harris and Walz spent a lot of time in the northeast, but I expect them to pivot here shortly, and it will be a pingpong match in between the two campaigns — bouncing in and out of Arizona, Nevada and into Pennsylvania mostly and Michigan and in some of the northeastern states. So because you haven’t seen them lately doesn’t mean they’re not coming. I expect to see a lot of them in the next month.
BRODIE: Gaelle, what are you seeing in terms of — Marcus mentioned how Arizona, Nevada pretty tight. And the conventional wisdom has been that this is going to be as tight, if not maybe tighter than what we saw four years ago when President Biden won, by what, like 10,000 votes or something like that. Is that kind of what you’re seeing as well?
GAELLE ESPOSITO: Absolutely. Arizona is at the forefront of this political season once again. And I think they’re sending J.D. Vance out here to get earned media like this, because right now the Harris campaign is outspending them, outworking them in every other metric. And so I think Marcus is right. You’re going to see the vice president and Gov. Walz out here shortly.
But I think right now this is all about the Trump campaign trying to find ways to get some coverage to make up for that gap.
BRODIE: Do those kinds of events work? Like do they get people fired up? Do they get the kind of earned media that Gaelle was talking about? Do they make an appreciable difference in a campaign?
DELL’ARTINO: Yeah. I mean, they definitely fire up your base, there’s no doubt about it. And that’s sort of the new goal. I would say 10 years ago, your goal was to move those independent voters into your camp. And the strategy has changed dramatically — on both sides, by the way. And that is just to turn out your base. Those folks that are still question marks aren’t going to reach a decision and probably won’t pull a ballot, or are insignificant enough numbers that you can make it up with turning out your base.
And so that’s what those events are meant to do. Yes, get an earned media pop — which they did. But two is to excite your base and get them excited about chasing ballots.
BRODIE: And I would imagine that in a race that is expected to be as close as Arizona, winning at the margins means you have to get sort of those marginal voters to figure out who they want to vote for — hopefully you — and then get them to actually vote.
ESPOSITO: Yeah, and I don’t know if JD Vance is the right messenger for that. And this was definitely a base event. This was put on by Turning Point. These are people who, on MLK day, attacked the civil rights leader and started a campaign to overturn the 1964 Civil Rights Act. There. They have people on staff who were charged with assaulting a queer professor at ASU.
These are extreme voices that held this event with JD Vance. And I think his polling numbers are the worst of any vice presidential candidate, in a long time. I think they’re worse than Sarah Palin’s even were. And that’s really saying something. He is not the messenger for those marginal voters.
BRODIE: Marcus, I want to ask you about something else in presidential politics this week. We saw the youngest son of the late Sen. John McCain, Jimmy McCain, come out and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris. And I believe he actually said that he is maybe becoming a Democrat also, which is perhaps surprising for the son of such a Republican stalwart in Arizona.
And to him, he spoke on CNN and said the incident at Arlington National Cemetery was really a turning point for him. I know you were close to Sen. McCain. You worked for Sen. McCain. What do you make of the fact that his son is now really coming out in support of a Democratic presidential candidate?
DELL’ARTINO: I’m just shocked I would get this question. I didn’t see this coming.
You know, I was more shocked at the attention that this got in the media. This wasn’t an Arizona story. This was a national story. I was on the TODAY Show, for God’s sakes. And I think to give everybody some perspective, Jimmy just returned from overseas, serving his country. And so I’m not shocked that he would look at a controversial moment, shall we describe it at Arlington? I’m not too sure anybody knows, actually what happened. But certainly it was described as not a sort of peaceful event.
And so I certainly wasn’t shocked that Jimmy would look at switching parties and supporting a different candidate. And he has that right to do it. But now we’ve sort of covered, I think, every McCain humanly possible on where they are on the spectrum. It’s time to move on.
I don’t think the story is about Jimmy. I don’t think it’s about the rest of the kids and who they support. I think it should be more about what are the messages coming out of these presidential campaigns, and do Arizonans support one or the other?
BRODIE: Gaelle, Vice President Harris has touted support from a certain number of staffers from McCain and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney and former President George W Bush. Do you think that these endorsements, this crossover appeal, will that move the needle on some of those undecided, maybe independent voters that you were talking about earlier?
ESPOSITO: So, I don’t know if it’s necessarily about changing minds so much as it is about capturing a moment that's already occurring. These people are symbols for those voters who were those straight-ticket Republican presidential voters for several cycles and who since the Trump era have drifted away from the party. And they were already doing that.
And I think this just reinforces that that’s the right choice, that it’s a safe thing to do, that there are so many others like them. And there are so many others like them, specifically here in Arizona. And I think that’s why the McCain story picked up so much.
