Donald Trump will be stumping in Tucson on Thursday, and this time, his campaign has paid the city in advance for the campaign stop.
Meanwhile, the $80,000 the city says it was never paid for a Trump campaign rally at the Tucson Convection Center in 2016 was never paid, and has since been wiped from the city books, a city councilman says. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign also did not pay the city $44,000 for a campaign event held a day before Trump’s 2016 stop in Tucson.
This time, Trump’s campaign paid a $145,222.70 deposit upfront to use the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall for his rally Thursday, says Lane Mandle, chief of staff for the city manager’s office. That covers the use of the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall and the estimated cost of security provided mostly by city police.
More than $115,000 of the total cost is going toward added Tucson police presence for things like protection, crowd control and police K-9 security sweeps, according to a license agreement signed Monday by a representative of the Trump 47 Committee Inc. joint fundraising committee.
“In accordance with City of Tucson policy implemented after the 2016 campaign visits of then candidates Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, we now require users at the TCC to pay all costs associated with public safety response, so that taxpayers do not have to shoulder these expenses,” Mandle said in a statement to the Star.
Tucson Mayor Regina Romero, who made a prime-time appearance on the first day the Democratic National Convention, declined to comment on Trump’s visit Thursday or the unpaid 2016 bill.
Tucson City Councilman Kevin Dahl said Tuesday that it’s his understanding that the city wrote-off Trump’s 2016 debt, “so it’s not on our books.”
“And you know, we learned our lesson,” Dahl said. “They’re requiring money up front, which we’re doing. So I’m satisfied with that.”
The city attorney’s office at the time chose not to pursue legal action for the debt left by the Trump and Sanders campaigns. Instead, the city council changed city policy for the use of city facilities to require users to “deposit the City’s estimated amount of public safety response” and usage of the facility in advance of any event, Mandle said in her statement.
On Thursday, Trump plans to talk about what he calls “the struggling economy and the rising cost of housing,” according to a campaign news release.
Doors for the Thursday’s rally open at 11 a.m. The former president is set to speak at 2 p.m.
Trump’s rally will be his first visit to Tucson since October 2020, although the Republican presidential nominee visited the U.S.-Mexico border last month in Cochise County. That October 2020 rally held at the the Tucson Jet Center would have cost the city an additional $50,000, Romero said in a letter to the Trump campaign at that time.
Tucson Airport Authority spokesperson Austin Wright could not be reached at the Star on Tuesday. But, as reported by the Tucson Sentinel last month, “Wright said he was not aware of the status of any costs from the October 2020 rally.”
Tucson isn’t the only city stiffed by the Trump campaign, according to an April 2020 report published by the Center for Public Integrity. At the time, the report showed a combined $1.82 million worth of public safety-related debt connected to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign rallies, the Star previously reported.
Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff, husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, will also visit Tucson Thursday. Emhoff’s visit is part of the Harris-Walz campaign’s “New Way Forward battleground tour,” a news release said.
The time and location for the Emhoff campaign event has not been announced.
