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With Vice President Kamala Harris set to be her party's presidential nominee, Democrats are making efforts to win an important voting bloc in the swing state of Arizona. Nearly 25% of Arizona voters in 2020 were Latino, and that trend is expected to continue in this year's presidential election. From member station KJZZ in Phoenix, Wayne Schutsky reports on how Harris is mobilizing leaders in the community.
DOLORES HUERTA: (Chanting in Spanish).
WAYNE SCHUTSKY, BYLINE: Ninety-four-year-old civil rights leader Dolores Huerta is speaking in a sweltering union hall in Phoenix. She's calling on working class voters, including those in the Latino community, to support the vice president.
HUERTA: We have to go recruit our compadres, our comadres, our vecinos, our neighbors, our relatives, OK?
SCHUTSKY: Huerta was joined by Harris' campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, the granddaughter of labor organizer Cesar Chavez.
JULIE CHAVEZ RODRIGUEZ: I've seen who she's fighting for when she's in the halls of power. In the most powerful places, she fights for families like ours.
SCHUTSKY: Harris supporters say her campaign to reach Latino voters is an extension of the same effort when President Biden was running for reelection. But polls found Biden was lagging with Latino voters before he dropped out of the race. As a first-generation American, daughter of immigrants and a woman of color, Harris has an opportunity to engage with those voters in a way Biden could not, says Luis Acosta-Herrera, an Arizona Democratic consultant.
LUIS ACOSTA-HERRERA: I do think that there is a reinvigorating of that base and of people who maybe just didn't feel like Biden really represented them or felt like he just couldn't do it.
SCHUTSKY: The Harris campaign says they've recruited nearly 2,000 new volunteers in Arizona since Biden dropped out. Backers believe Harris' vocal support for reproductive rights will also mobilize voters in the state. She's already visited Arizona three times this year to talk about abortion access.
TANIA TORRES: Once you get the comadre circuit going, there's no stopping it.
SCHUTSKY: Tania Torres runs a Phoenix public relations firm specializing in community outreach and voter engagement. She says Harris' support for reproductive rights could ingratiate her with Latinas, and that Latina matriarchs like her can influence other voters in their families. And Torres says Harris' age - she's two decades younger than Joe Biden - is a big part of engaging younger Arizonans.
TORRES: You have to remember that Latinos in Arizona are young. Their medium age is about 29 years old. That's about 10 years younger than the overall Arizona population.
SCHUTSKY: Critics, meanwhile, believe Harris is vulnerable on another issue important to Latino voters - immigration and the border. Juan Ciscomani is a Republican who represents a southern Arizona Congressional district. He emigrated from Mexico when he was 11 years old and says his constituents hold both Harris and Biden responsible for the rising cost of living and what he calls a wide-open border.
JUAN CISCOMANI: So when I talk to my Hispanic community, like I said, in Spanish and English - and I do a lot of bilingual work on this - the perception is the same one. The same policies that we have to, you know, that we were making Joe Biden responsible for are the same ones that Kamala Harris is responsible for.
SCHUTSKY: Joe Garcia with Chicanos Por La Causa, a Latino nonprofit that provides social services in five states, also says that immigration and border issues hit home for many Latino voters. But when he spoke with Harris in Phoenix earlier this year, he warned her against thinking the 2.3 million Latinos in Arizona all share the same views about the border.
JOE GARCIA: I advised her not to fall into the trap of focusing only on the border. The border crisis was there before she came. The border crisis will be there after she comes 'cause the truth is the border crisis is there because we've never done anything to fix it.
SCHUTSKY: Though illegal border crossings are at the lowest level since Biden took office, the administration's handling of immigration has been criticized by both parties in the state. Even Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs said Biden needed to do more to secure the border late last year, but that didn't stop her from endorsing Biden, and later Harris, in this year's election. For NPR News, I'm Wayne Schutsky in Phoenix. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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