Trump Victory Draws the Line Against Team Biden in Key Battleground State
[jwplayer ZF6d1PKB]The southwestern arm of President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign spoke out Thursday against 2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden for late entry into the Arizona grassroots.
According to The Arizona Republic, Biden did not begin to establish any sort of substantial footprint in the state until mid-June, when his campaign finally hired its first permanent staffers to facilitate operations in the region.
The former vice president had reportedly been late to the general election ground game as a result of laser focus placed on ensuring victory in the Democratic primary — a conclusion widely expected, but momentarily called into question by a series of discouraging losses in first-to-vote states.
Local operatives across the aisle, however, described the Biden campaign’s late arrival as an arrogant attempt to “parachute into Arizona” at the last minute and sneak out an inexpensive victory.
Come November, Trump Victory spokesperson Keith Schipper told The Western Journal it would cost the Democratic National Committee another crucial election.
“Biden and the DNC, they think that they can parachute into Arizona with four months until Election Day and they are going to be sadly mistaken when they realize that we have had a permanent ground game here in Arizona since 2016,” Schipper said.
“We’ve been building relationships with not only our volunteers, but also obviously voters. We have built this operation for years and, as you can see with how we’re producing, it’s a lot of hard work and a lot of dedication from people that are passionate to re-elect the president and Republicans down the ballot.”
“I think the Democrats, what their strategy seems to be is just kind of dropping in at the last minute and trying to replicate what we have going on,” he added.
“The DNC has been broke for most of the last few years and we’ve obviously invested. We’ve been setting fundraising records and invested heavily, and I think it does show that [Biden]… Perhaps he’s resting on kind of neglecting Arizona.”
Turning Point Action and Students For Trump are proud to stand with our great President!
Our student activists are working to deliver ONE MILLION votes for President @realDonaldTrump to ensure FOUR MORE YEARS of conservative leadership in the White House!
Join our mission! pic.twitter.com/eGjeNafjcl
— Students For Trump (@TrumpStudents) July 1, 2020
The same was not to be said for the Trump campaign, Schipper said, touting several years of consistent grassroots efforts within the state.
According to TownHall, Trump Victory’s July 4 Weekend of Action saw campaign volunteers nationwide engage roughly 340,000 likely voters at their front doors and make more 1.7 million phone calls.
The result was nearly 4,000 Americans directly registered to vote in the upcoming presidential election and another 52,000 interacting with the Republican National Committee’s voter registration website.
Arizona alone accounted for roughly 190,000 of the campaign’s voter contacts this past weekend, Schipper told The Western Journal, adding that the Trump apparatus in-state has made more than 2 million voter contacts and held roughly 2,000 official campaign events to date.
Having handily secured victory in the state by four percent of the vote in 2016, Trump himself has also made it a point to highlight Arizona as an essential part of his 2020 re-election efforts.
Reinvigorating his trademark stadium-series rallies last month, the president stopped off in Phoenix on June 23 to headline a Students for Trump convention which included guest speakers like GOP Congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida, Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell and Trump campaign senior advisors Kimberly Guilfoyle and Donald Trump, Jr.
The event filled the local Dream City megachurch to capacity with approximately 3,000 young voters.
Trump is not the only major administration figure to make his presence known in Arizona over the past few weeks.
On July 1, Vice President Mike Pence, head of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, flew to Phoenix for a brief meeting with Republican state Gov. Doug Ducey to discuss a major surge in the state’s confirmed COVID-19 case totals.
“I couldn’t be more proud of our nation’s response to the coronavirus pandemic,” Pence told The Western Journal during a media gaggle following that meeting.
“From very early on, at the president’s direction, not only did we reinvent testing — now, more than 33 million tests — and perform nearly 600,000 tests a day are being done around the country but, in the area of personal protective equipment and ventilators, the president marshaled a whole-of-America response.”
“I’m very confident that if all of us do our part each and every day, we’ll slow the spread, we’ll flatten the curve, we’ll save lives all across this state and we will lay a foundation to bring this state’s economy back bigger and better than ever before,” the vice president added.
This level of intentionality in the Trump administration’s policy and public relations interplay with battleground states like Arizona, Schipper said, would be key to driving voter turnout in November.
The spokesperson would go on to tout Trump’s success in driving economic change across stagnant states by renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement and cracking down on illegal immigration at the U.S. Southern border with enhanced surveillance and piecemeal construction of physical barriers.
“[Trump] has built the greatest economy. It’s set records and he’s going to do it again,” Schipper said. “Arizonans know they can trust that he is going to build the greatest economy this world’s ever seen again. The [United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement] has been huge for our manufacturers and our farmers and ranchers down South. Those are big things that impact Arizonans in their daily lives.”
“Compare that to Joe Biden, who has embraced socialist policies such as giving free healthcare to illegal immigrants or, Joe Biden, big part of NAFTA — and obviously everyone felt the pain of the economy during the Obama-Biden years. Those are just contrasts that Arizonans can see,” he added.
“The promises made, promises kept agenda is what Arizona needs for the next four years.”
Public opinion data, however, seem to show that agenda may not be resonating as strongly with heartland America as the Trump campaign might like.
According to RealClearPolitics polling aggregates, Trump currently trails Biden by between 3 and 11 percent of the vote in the key battlegrounds of Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Despite similar polling trends in 2016, a politically untested Trump did manage a historic victory over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a similar Democratic establishment figure.
The Western Journal has reached out to the Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee for comment, but has not received a response.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
