President Trump will make a campaign stop here Monday, with a rally scheduled for 6:30 p.m. at the Tucson International Airport.
The Tucson stop is part of a two-day, two-city trip as Trump looks to boost support in a state where some polls show him trailing Democratic nominee Joe Biden despite winning Arizona in 2016. Trump also will hold a rally Tuesday at 6 p.m. in Flagstaff at the Flagstaff Pulliam Airport.
Trump edged Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by 3.5 percentage points in Arizona in 2016. Polling compiled by FiveThirtyEight suggests that Biden is leading Trump by nearly 4 percentage points here just one month before Election Day.
Trump has made five other trips to Arizona this year, stopping in Phoenix and Yuma, the latter to tout construction of the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Trump will attempt to drum up support in Arizona’s second-most populous county, which has grown reliably democratic in recent years. Clinton garnered a 13 percentage point advantage in Pima County votes in 2016.
This will be his first stop in Tucson this cycle, although he held a rally at the Tucson Convention Center back in 2016. The administration still owed the city more than $80,000 for the event that required roughly 180 police officers to provide security, as of 2019.
Pima County has been particularly hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic, with more than 25,000 cases and 600 deaths since March.
While the rally will exceed the 50-person limit on gatherings set forth by Gov. Doug Ducey’s executive order, it does include exceptions for “constitutionally protected activities such as speech,” according to the order.
In a statement, Pima County Health Director Dr. Theresa Cullen encouraged anyone attending “any gathering of any kind” to practice physical distancing and wear a mask when they otherwise can’t, as is required by the county’s resolution regarding the pandemic.
The visit to Tucson comes on the final day for Pima County residents to register to vote in the Nov. 3 election.
It’s just two days before the Pima County Recorder’s Office is set to mail out a record 472,717 ballots. Pima County has topped 600,000 registered voters for the first time.
