Donald Trump vs. Kamala Harris: Who drew bigger crowd to Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale?
Former President Donald Trump’s Glendale rally set up a perfect opportunity for a crowd size comparison with rival Vice President Kamala Harris, who two weeks ago drew 15,000 people to the same venue.
Turning Point Action, the Trump event organizers, put the capacity Desert Diamond Arena crowd at 17,000. The Harris campaign on Friday didn't dispute that head count.
Arizona Democrats invited the crowd comparison. On Thursday, the day Trump appeared at the U.S.-Mexico border in Cochise County, the state party called the stop a "stunt" and said "Donald Trump is visiting the border to take attention away from Democrats hosting one of the largest political rallies in our state's history and a Democratic Convention where Arizona Democrats solidified our status as the future of the party."
Trump's allies in Arizona were happy to compare the crowds on Friday and claim bragging rights.
“We have more people than Kamala had — outside,” Tyler Bowyer of Turning Point Action said, referencing the long line outside the arena. The arena seats 19,300 people, according to its management company.
There were approximately 12,000 to 13,000 people inside Desert Diamond Arena as of 3:30 p.m. on Friday, according to a police officer monitoring the crowd. That number will go up, he said, because a long line of Trump supporters were still waiting to get into the building.
“Someone who wants to be president had an event here and she had to partition all this off," Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk said. "We draw a bigger crowd than Kamala Harris, don’t we?”
State Rep. Justin Heap, who is running for Maricopa County recorder, echoed Trump claims that Harris is using artificial intelligence to inflate her crowd sizes.
"You don’t need to use AI to make it look like the seats are full,” Heap said.
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. In Arizona, a crucial battleground state, President Joe Biden had struggled to get voters excited to turn out before he quit the race.
For its part, the Harris campaign counterprogrammed Trump with a news conference focusing on support for abortion rights and organized labor.
"We must show up on Election Day to enshrine the right to abortion in our state constitution. But let’s be clear: no one in Arizona would be safe from attacks on reproductive health care if Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans make their way back to the White House,” Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said in a written statement.
“The truth is, Vice President Harris and Democrats have an economic vision to run on that soundly beats Trump and the MAGA Republicans,” said Bill Ruiz of Southwest Mountain States Carpenters Union Local 1912. "Trump and Vance are siding with the wealthy and the big corporations, and we are siding with the working people of Arizona."
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Trump vs. Harris in Arizona: Who drew the bigger crowd in Glendale?
