Former President Barack Obama is making an eleventh-hour trip to Arizona in an effort to boost Democrat candidates a week ahead of the November 8 midterm elections.
Obama is headed to Phoenix on Wednesday for a Get Out the Vote Rally with the state’s Democrat nominees for governor and U.S. Senate, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ). Obama, Kelly, and Hobbs are all slated to speak at the event, which will be at a location still to be determined. Both candidates have been losing steam in the polls to their Republican opponents, both of whom are endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump. Obama’s last-minute effort establishes a proxy war of sorts between the 44th and 45th presidents.
The GOP’s nominee for governor in the Grand Canyon State, Kari Lake, leads Hobbs in eight of the last nine polls shared by FiveThirtyEight and the Democrat has received significant blowback from Democrats and Republicans for refusing to debate. Lake, a former Fox 10 Phoenix anchor, has proven to be a highly skilled communicator throughout the primary and general elections, as she repeatedly challenges adversarial media in a head-on fashion reminiscent of Trump’s.
Kelly’s opponent in the U.S. Senate race, Blake Masters, has made substantial strides in the polls in recent months and is now in a statistical dead-heat with Kelly, according to some of the latest polling. A Democrat source close to Kelly’s campaign recently told Politico the race should never have been perceived as “safe.”
“We believe this is a race that’s within a point in either direction, and there’s still a good chance that we would lose,” the source added. “And it’s important people understand that.”
As Breitbart News noted earlier this month, Obama will be in southern Nevada on Tuesday to campaign for vulnerable incumbent Democrats Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) and Gov. Steve Sisolak (D-NV). Both candidates are in highly competitive races with their opponents — Attorney General Adam Laxalt, who is the republican nominee for U.S. Senate, and Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, the GOP nominee for governor.
The 44th president was busy over the weekend as he visited Michigan to campaign for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) in her tight race against Republican Tudor Dixon. Later in the day, he headed to Wisconsin to stump for Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who is trying to unseat Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI).
Dixon appeared on Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Saturday over the weekend and told host Matthew Boyle that it was “too little, too late” for Obama to rescue her opponent’s campaign.
“Now they’re bringing in Barack Obama. They brought in Kamala Harris. They brought in Joe Biden. Most people are running from Joe Biden; Gretchen Whitmer is bringing him in. It’s just marrying her more to those radical policies,” Dixon said. “They believe that Barack Obama can bring this back to her, and I think it’s too little, too late.”