Donald Trump to rally at same Glendale arena where Kamala Harris drew thousands
Donald Trump will hit the campaign trail in Glendale on Friday, holding a rally at the same venue where Kamala Harris drew a crowd of 15,000 people earlier this month.
It’s the perfect opportunity for a crowd size comparison.
“If you show up to a location, he’s going to show up to that location,” said Chad Heywood, the former executive director of the Arizona Republican Party.
The Republican former president is under pressure to upstage Harris by packing Desert Diamond Arena with a huge crowd. It’s a comparison of his own making: Trump has been disputing the size of Harris’s fired-up campaign crowds lately, even falsely claiming she used artificial intelligence because her sea of supporters was so large at a recent event.
The event marks Trump’s first large-scale campaign event in battleground Arizona since Harris became the Democratic nominee. Trump had a comfortable lead over President Joe Biden in the state, but the race has tightened now that Harris is his opponent.
“Until Kamala Harris took the top of the ticket, Trump was known for throwing the better party,” said Stacey Pearson, a Phoenix Democratic political consultant.
The size of a rally is not an indicator of who will win an election, but a campaign crowd can provide a peek into how enthusiastic voters are about a particular candidate. That’s notable in Arizona, where Biden had struggled to get voters excited to turn out before he left the race.
Still, Trump turned out larger crowds than Biden did four years ago, when Democrats largely campaigned virtually due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Trump narrowly lost the race anyway.
“If crowd size was the only indication of success, he would have won in Arizona in 2020,” Pearson said.
Democrats have been eager to fight back in the campaign crowd battle. Former President Barack Obama poked fun at Trump’s focus on crowd size during his speech at the Democratic National Convention stage in Chicago.
“This weird obsession with crowd sizes,” Obama said. “It just goes on and on and on.”
Some 92 miles away in Milwaukee, the vice president held her own rally at Fiserv Forum on Tuesday night, the same venue as the Republican National Convention. She made a point to pack the house.
Back in Glendale, Desert Diamond Arena holds some 19,300 people, according to ASM Global, which manages the property. The Trump rally there is co-hosted by the conservative groups Turning Point Action and Turning Point PAC, which are based in Arizona and are working to turn out Trump voters.
Confirmed speakers at the Arizona rally include Turning Point chief Charlie Kirk, GOP Senate nominee Kari Lake and Reps. Eli Crane, Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar. Congressional candidate Abe Hamadeh also will speak, along with Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, who lost to Lake in the GOP primary.
Arizona is a crucial campaign stop for both political parties because it is one of a few states that are expected to decide the presidential election. Trump lost Arizona to President Joe Biden by fewer than 11,000 votes in 2020.
Trump will be in Arizona as part of a two-day campaign swing in the state. He will travel to Cochise County on Thursday for an immigration event near the U.S.-Mexico border.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Trump in Arizona: Former president to rally at Desert Diamond Arena
