Journalists’ Roundtable discusses JD Vance’s Arizona visit & more

Sept. 6

This week’s Journalists’ Roundtable topics included:

JD Vance’s visit to Phoenix and Mesa
Michael Way
Jimmy McCain
Purging voters lawsuit
What’s different about this election in Arizona?
Arizona Open Primary initiative battle goes on and on

JD Vance’s visit to Phoenix and Mesa

Mary Jo Pitzl: “Arizona is becoming a purple state. It has been moving in that direction for four or five campaign cycles, and as everyone probably will remember from 2020, we were very pivotal in the presidential race.”

Jeremy Duda: “We saw JD Vance try to blunt some of the effect of a member of the McCain family coming out in favor of Kamala Harris and evoking John McCain’s name and saying he would be in favor of supporting Kamala Harris. It say’s a lot about the state of the race here in Arizona that Vance, Walz, we’ve already seen Trump and now Harris coming here recently. We’ll probably see more of the same with a little over a month to go before voting.”

Camryn Sanchez: “I think it is important for them to have a lot of facetime in the swing states, and it is nice to have that swing state charisma because it is flattering and it makes people feel like they want our vote.”

Jimmy McCain

Duda: “I think the McCain family still has some sway here. Of course, John McCain was regarded very highly here in Arizona. We haven’t heard from Cindy McCain yet. I think her endorsement of Joe Biden in 2020, you would be hard pressed to find people who don’t think that helped move the needle a little bit with some of those swing voters.”

Pitzl: “In the case of the value of it, it does say these are Republicans, or in the case of Jimmy, recently departed Republicans, who are giving people permission to vote for Harris. It might make a couple other people pause and think, especially for those members who stay in the Republican Party to say that you can still be a Republican if you vote for a Democrat this time around.”