CHANDLER, Ariz. (CN) — Vice President Kamala Harris highlighted the stark differences between herself and former President Donald Trump in what may be her last visit to Arizona before the 2024 general election.
“This election is about two very different visions,” Harris said to a crowd of nearly 1,000 in the Rawhide Event Center on the Gila River Indian Community Reservation. “One is focused on the past. The other, ours, is focused on the future.”
Harris was the first vice president in history to visit the sovereign tribal nation last summer.
In a roughly 30 minute speech Thursday night, Harris positioned herself as the underdog just 26 days from what both she and Trump’s campaign have called “the most consequential election in our lifetimes.”
“We have some hard work ahead of us, but we like hard work,” she said to thunderous applause from the crowd. “And with your help in 26 days, we will win.”
Trump leads Harris by just more than a point in most recent polls of the swing state.
Harris focused on the economy for much of her speech, promising to aid first time homeowners with down payments, aid entrepreneurs starting small businesses, stop corporate price gouging and expand Medicare to cover home health for seniors.
“Donald Trump will give billionaires and corporations massive tax cuts,” she said. “Cut Medicare and social security.”
She added that he plans to end the Affordable Care Act, which he has criticized since before he became president in 2016.
“He has no plan to replace it. He’s got ‘concepts of a plan,’” she said, quoting him in their September debate. “He is an unserious man. And the consequences of him ever being president again are very serious.”
The crowd chanted “we aren’t going back,” for nearly a minute before Harris resumed.
Finally, Harris condemned Trump for selecting the some of the U.S. Supreme Court justices who helped overturned Roe v. Wade, calling abortion bans without exceptions for rape and incest, like the ban in place in Arizona, “immoral.”
“One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree that the government should not be telling her what to do,” she said to the loudest applause of the evening.
As she’s done before, she painted Trump as a danger to democracy calling him out for a social media post in 2022 in which he called for the “termination” of constitutional rules in his failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election results.
Arizona welcomed a flurry of campaign movements this week. Harris’ visit to Chandler came just one day after her vice presidential candidate and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz spoke to veterans and their families at a Veterans of Foreign Wars event in Chandler. A few hours prior, Republican vice presidential candidate and Ohio Senator JD Vance addressed likely Trump voters in Tucson.
Harris’ husband, Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff, visited Mesa Tuesday evening, where nearly three dozen “Republicans for Harris” voters gathered at a private residence to declare their support for Harris and Walz.
“There is nothing more conservative than putting country over party,” Emhoff said.
Voters said after the event that Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric and questionable morals are what pushed them across the fence.
“We have to vote character over policy,” Mesa City Council member and Republican for Harris Julie Spillsbury said Tuesday. “I don’t have to give up my morals.”
Spillsbury said many registered Republicans fear retribution for denouncing Trump, but she hopes that her public support for Harris will encourage others to do the same.
Former elementary school teacher Annie Lewis said she can’t support any MAGA candidates like Trump or U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake, but she’s hopeful that the Republican party can return to the way it was before Trump entered the political sphere.
Trump is scheduled to host a rally in Prescott Sunday afternoon.
Thursday marked Harris’ seventh campaign visit to Arizona in 2024. Her most recent visit in Douglas on Sept. 27 was also her first visit to the U.S.-Mexico border.