Harris campaign takes over Arizona’s horizon, airwaves—and your doorstep

A Herculean effort by the Harris-Walz campaign to dominate Arizona’s airwaves during the 2024 Olympics has brought the presidential ticket thousands of new volunteers to help turn out voters in the battleground state.

The Harris campaign announced in July they would spend $50 million across a select number of states, a large portion of which would be concentrated in Arizona. The ad blitz put its initial focus on the Summer Olympic Games, where nearly $200,000 was spent on ads to air during coverage on 12 News. The number dwarfs that of Donald Trump’s campaign, which spent just over $50,000 on locally televised ads during the Olympics.

Jen O’Malley Dillon, Harris’ campaign chair, said the massive push to introduce voters to Harris is thanks to the outpouring of financial support they have received.

“Throughout her career as a courtroom prosecutor, Attorney General, United States Senator, and now as Vice President, Kamala Harris has always stood up to bullies, criminals, and special interests on behalf of the American people – and she’s beaten them,” said O’Malley. “This $50 million paid media campaign, bolstered by our record-setting fundraising haul and a groundswell of grassroots enthusiasm.”

Keeping momentum up

The support has proven to be more than financial: in the first week of the campaign, 2,000 Arizonans volunteered to help the Harris campaign contact voters at their doors and over the phone. Less than two weeks later, that number has exploded to over 20,000 newly registered volunteers. Jaelin O’Halloran, press secretary for Harris for Arizona, told The Copper Courier they’ve made an effort to harness the initial enthusiasm over Harris’ candidacy into sustained momentum that will carry through to the November election.

“Since the moment Kamala Harris launched her presidential campaign, we’ve seen a groundswell of support in Arizona, and we’re not taking anything for granted, putting in the work every day to engage voters across the state,” O’Halloran said. We have momentum in the battleground Grand Canyon state.”

In addition to blanketing the Olympic airwaves, the Harris campaign has invested heavily in online voter outreach. While Trump and Harris have spent nearly identical amounts on Google ads in the past week—$20,000 and $24,000, respectively—Harris has dominated the Meta platforms Instagram and Facebook: $122,000 to Trump’s $24,000.

Those numbers are only expected to increase, as the campaign plans to spend $50 million as a lead-up to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago from Aug. 19 – 22.

The Republican National Committee and its local affiliates did not disclose any planned increase in voter outreach efforts over the coming weeks. While the Trump campaign did open a new field office in north Phoenix, the state party has yet to open a new headquarters after it sold its office in March.

Thank you #LD2 for hosting our office. We are going to go block by block to win up and down the ballot in AZ- Sign up to help us WIN https://t.co/oBumtPRrAU ⁦@GOP⁩ ⁦@KariLake⁩ ⁦@ShawnnaLMBolick⁩ ⁦@AriBradshawAZ⁩ ⁦@WernerforAZ⁩ ⁦@azjustinheap⁩ pic.twitter.com/I5ZWkmBj83

— Republican Party of Arizona (@AZGOP) August 6, 2024

Overshadowing Trump

In addition to overshadowing Trump online and over the airwaves, the Democratic National Committee and local progressive groups cast a physical shadow over US Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, when he visited Arizona in July. Bilingual billboards were plastered along the freeways he was expected to travel, highlighting his complete opposition to abortion and reinforcing the assertion that he’s a “weirdo.”

“Vance is an unremarkable Senator,” said Abigail Jackson, Digital Director for Progress Arizona. “He has time to attack ‘childless cat ladies,’ but has yet to provide an explanation for his flip-flop from ‘a never Trump Guy’ to now supporting and running with the man he called ‘America’s Hitler.’”

Vance, the first-term Ohio senator, has been criticized for repeatedly attacking people without children. He has described the tens of thousands of Arizona voters without children as “psychotic,” and suggested that the 2 million households in the state with no kids living there should have less voting power than 800,000 that do.

“Look, I’m a husband, I’m a father, I’m happily married, and I love my life,” Vance told FOX News. “I’m doing this because I want to be a good public servant who fixes the problems of the Democrats. They can call me whatever they want to. The middle school taunts don’t bother me.”

While Progress Arizona focused on Vance’s bizarre viewpoints and unpopular belief that abortion should be outlawed absolutely, Abhi Rahman, deputy communications manager for the DNC, said they wanted to highlight the authoritarian bent Vance would bring to a Trump White House.

“Donald Trump tapped JD Vance to be his running mate because Vance will ultimately fall in line with Trump’s Project 2025 agenda to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits for our most vulnerable communities, dismantle our democracy,” Rahman said. “And create a reality in which American women don’t have access to abortion—one that Arizona women are living in right now thanks to a MAGA-led abortion ban.”

 

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