Maroc - RAWSTORY.COM - Raw Story - 28/Aug 13:05

Harris campaign focused on Arizona — here's why

Riding high on the recently completed Democratic National Convention and the enthusiasm that has propelled her to a lead in the national polls, Vice President Kamala Harris is launching a campaign to mobilize Generation Z voters on 150 campuses across battleground states. And Arizona is the tip of the spear in that effort, with the Harris campaign focusing its “Back-to-School” campaign kick-off in the Grand Canyon State, with U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost — the first Gen Z member of Congress — set to join students Wednesday at the University of Arizona in Tucson and then at Arizona State University in Tempe. “Young voters know the impact that this election will have on their futures, from the freedom to make our own health care decisions to addressing the climate crisis to being safe from gun violence to our ability to find a home and pay the rent,” Frost, a Democrat from Florida, said in a written statement. “The only way we will win is by organizing everywhere and it’s up to us to turn the energy we’re seeing into action to win in November. I am confident that we will see record youth turnout this November.” GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX SUBSCRIBE Long a group that rarely voted, and did so in small numbers when it did, young voters in Arizona have become a political force to be reckoned with since 2018, when more than one in every four voters under the age of 30 cast a ballot — more than two-and-a-half times the turnout among young voters in 2014 — setting a record for a midterm election. In 2020, 51% of under-30 voters headed to the polls, an 18-percentage-point increase over 2016’s youth turnout. And 2022 proved that the 2018 figures weren’t a fluke, with 25% of younger Arizona voters showing up at the polls. And because younger voters increasingly side with Democrats and back liberal policies — in 1998, young voters were evenly split between the GOP and Democrats, but in 2022 backed Democrats 63%-35% — higher turnout among young voters means more wins for Democrats. ‘Let’s fight for it’: Harris vows to chart a new way forward, defeat Trump In a swing state increasingly defined by close races, every vote counts. Katie Hobbs won the 2022 gubernatorial race by about 17,000 votes out of nearly 2.6 million ballots cast. The race for attorney general was even narrower, with Kris Mayes winning by just 280 votes. Not only are younger voters far more sympathetic to Democratic candidates, but Gen Z voters are more politically engaged than Millennials were before them. Earlier this year, ASU’s Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy polled Gen Z Arizonans and found that two-thirds say they plan to vote in November. About half of the Gen Z voters in that poll said they weren’t registered with a political party, and Jackie Salit, the center’s co-director and a professor in ASU’s School of Public Affairs, said that a potential uptick in Gen Z voter turnout this year would come from independents — driven in part by ballot measures to protect abortion rights and do away with partisan primaries. “Particularly striking was the finding that independent Gen Z voters who did not vote in 2022 were more likely than their Democrat and Republican counterparts to say that ballot initiatives on abortion rights, open primaries and funding for public education would motivate them to vote,” Salit said in June when a report on the poll was released. While Joe Biden’s reelection campaign was struggling to generate enthusiasm among many core blocs in the Democratic Party, including younger voters, Harris’ emergence as the party’s nominee has been met with a groundswell of excitement and turned things around for the party seemingly overnight. Among the enthusiastic backers of Harris are 17 leading youth organizing groups. The Harris campaign told the Arizona Mirror that young voters delivered critical margins to defeat Donald Trump in 2020 and maintain Democratic control of the Senate in 2022, and Gen Z will be essential in defeating Trump this year in Arizona and other battleground states. A recent poll of voters in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, and Wisconsin by Voters of Tomorrow found that Harris has surpassed Trump by 32 points among 18- to 29-years-olds. The campaign has tapped Frost, who was previously the national organizing director for March for Our Lives, the student-led gun control advocacy group, to be its chief surrogate with college-age voters. Frost will join Keep AZ Blue Fellow Grady Campbell and young and student voters at the University of Arizona and then head north to Tempe, where he’ll join Young Democrats of Arizona President Armonee Jackson, Keep AZ Blue co-founder Francesca Martin, ASU Young Dems President Isabel Hiserodt, and others. The Harris campaign’s “Back-to-School” push will feature on-campus advertising and social media outreach, including an ad with Harris speaking directly to students about what’s at stake in this election, from gun reform to reproductive rights. There also will be campus organizing and a college barnstorming tour over the next several weeks, as deadlines approach for registering new voters in many states. SUPPORT NEWS YOU TRUST. 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