Arizona, the great battle for the border state

No one has to say it, it’s obvious: dressed in a plaid shirt and jeans, the look of any average cowboy, J.D. Vance is at the border. The long dirt road bordered by “the wall,” the white pickup trucks parked behind him, the rancher and the border agent, both wearing their cowboy hats, complete the scene. On Thursday morning, the Republican vice presidential candidate was in Cochise County, south of Tucson, in the border area of the state of Arizona. It was not by chance.

Arizona — the home of the Grand Canyon — is one of a handful of swing states that are likely to decide the November presidential election, along with North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The most recent polls on these states that have been released since Joe Biden withdrew from the race indicate that Kamala Harris has virtually erased Trump’s lead over Biden. A couple polls even put her ahead; all are within the margin of error. It’s still anyone’s bet, but in an election where immigration is a major issue, the result in Arizona — the only swing state that borders Mexico — may carry even more weight. With Vance’s visit and his speech full of attacks on Harris, the Republican has taken the battle to ground zero.

Standing in front of the cameras next to the border wall that Trump ordered, Vance repeated his favorite lie: that Harris failed in her job as “border czar.” In this way, Vance echoed an accusation that Trump made as soon as Biden announced that Harris would replace him, one that has since become the GOP’s main weapon against the Harris campaign. Even though Harris was never the “border czar,” Vance reiterated this claim and even specified the tasks that Harris was supposed to carry out, which he alleged she refused to do.

“You cannot have an effective border policy unless you have somebody who is coordinating all the different agencies of the U.S. federal government,” the current Ohio senator began to explain. “You need the involvement of the State Department involved to send people back to their home countries. You need the Department of Justice involved to prosecute these terrible drug crimes. And, of course, you need DHS [Department of Homeland Security] involved so that the Border Patrol is empowered to do its job. Kamala Harris as border czar was asked to coordinate all these functions of government, and she’s done nothing,” he said. “That is a scandal and that is a disgrace.”

Although Vance alleges that the media “lies” to cover up the fact that Harris was indeed the “border czar,” the reality is that the vice president never held that position. At the beginning of his presidency, Biden did assign her a role in his administration’s immigration policies, but her role was more diplomatic and had nothing to do with border oversight. Specifically, Biden tasked her with coordinating relations with the so-called Northern Triangle — Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, countries that then accounted for most of the migrants arriving at the U.S. southern border — to address the “root causes” of immigration from this region. This was explained by the president himself in March 2021, when he announced that Harris would assume this responsibility, a task similar to the one he himself had when he was Barack Obama’s vice president.

Harris was to lead a strategy to improve economic and security conditions in these three countries by investing in the region, creating jobs, fighting corruption and reducing violence so that migrants would reconsider migrating to the United States. It was a long-term plan, which the Biden administration recognized from the start. It is debatable whether the strategy has been successful or not, as border crossings soared during the first three years of the Biden administration and reached record highs until they began to fall in 2024, but the proportion of migrants from the Northern Triangle declined. The truth is that Harris was never designated “border czar.”

But the Republicans are not letting facts get in the way of a good narrative or a memorable nickname. Since becoming the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Vance, Trump and most of the Republican Party has directly blamed Harris for facilitating the trafficking of fentanyl into the country by not fulfilling her immigration responsibilities.

On Thursday in Arizona, the issue was brought up again and again. First, the border agent who introduced Vance said that by 2022, 23% of all fentanyl seized in the country had been seized within 20 miles of where they were standing. Then, in his remarks to the media, the vice presidential candidate recalled the devastation caused by the strong opioid with a personal anecdote — his mother was a heroin addict when he was a child — and laid all the blame on Harris and what she has “unleashed on this border.” But while policing the border has never been Harris’ responsibility, no one denies that the situation is critical. Just this past Thursday, some 200 miles to the west, still in Arizona, a record four million fentanyl pills were seized: a 20-year-old Arizona citizen had tried to smuggle them into the United States.

Polls list immigration and the opioid crisis as two of the most important issues for voters across the country, especially in Arizona. It is no surprise, then, that Republicans are focusing on these areas in the state, as winning Arizona is key to winning the presidency. In the last two elections, it tipped the overall balance decisively by the slimmest of margins. Biden won the state in 2020 by a mere 0.3 points.

In this year’s race, Trump had been building a lead that in early July — before Biden withdrew — was as high as 8 points, according to some polls. However, since the president announced he was leaving the race to Kamala Harris, the gap has been closing rapidly. By the end of July, a Bloomberg poll put the Democrat ahead of the Republican candidate in Arizona by two points; a trend that has been replicated in all the swing states. In some, Harris is only narrowing the gap, but in Michigan, a state that seemed to have turned its back on Biden, Harris has an 11-point lead. The change can be seen in the overall polls as well.

Riding the wave of enthusiasm generated by her candidacy, Kamala Harris has not made any obvious moves to court Arizona voters specifically, although she has received the support of a handful of mayors of border cities, almost all of them in that state. Her mission has been to rally the support of certain groups that with Biden on the ballot were, according to polls, beginning to lean towards Trump, such as Latino voters and Black men. But the Democrat has an ace up her sleeve in the form of her possible vice presidential candidate. Arizona Senator Mark Kelly is one of the names being floated, precisely because he can help the Democrats win the border state, a victory that is vital to winning the White House.

According to the Democratic Party, an official announcement will be made before next Tuesday. While Kelly appears to be the odds-on favorite, there is another man who also appears to be a strong candidate for vice president: Josh Shapiro, the popular Democratic governor of Pennsylvania. He could be chosen over the Arizona senator for essentially the same reason — Shapiro can help the Democrats win in the other swing state. It remains to be seen in which scenario the party feels it needs more help: in the rust belt fight or in the great battle for the border.

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