By james art ALBUQUERQUE, NM (AP) — Donald Trump is traveling to New Mexico and Virginia in the final days of the campaign, taking a risky detour from the seven battleground states to spend time in places where Republican presidential candidates haven’t won in decades.
The former president campaigned in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Thursday. Trump is also scheduled to appear in Arizona with conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson at the Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale late tonight.
The former president was also scheduled to visit Salem, Virginia, on Saturday. Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance will be in the East Valley on Saturday. He is scheduled to speak at a rally at Dillon Precision in Scottsdale
Trump’s team is optimistic, based in part on early voting numbers, and believes he can be competitive with Democrat Kamala Harris in both states — particularly New Mexico — if he wins Nevada and Arizona. That hope comes even though neither New Mexico nor Virginia has been carried by a Republican candidate for the White House since George W. Bush in 2004.
In particular, the battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — have seen a steady stream of candidate visits over the past few months, and residents have been bombarded with political ads on billboards, televisions and smartphones. In the past two weeks alone, the presidential and vice presidential candidates have appeared 21 times in Pennsylvania, 17 in Michigan and 13 in North Carolina.
In the other 43 states, a candidate’s visit is exciting news.
Trump retains fervent support even in states that vote overwhelmingly against him, and he can easily fill his rallies with enthusiastic supporters.
He has made other recent departures from swing states, holding rallies in New York’s Madison Square Garden and in Coachella, California — states that are even more solidly Democratic than New Mexico and Virginia. Those events satisfied Trump’s long-held claims that he could win both states, but were also aimed at garnering maximum media attention as his campaign seeks to reach voters who don’t follow political news closely.
Trump also appeared in staunchly Republican Montana, and both Trump and Harris campaigned on the same day last week in Texas, where Democrats last won in 1976.
These trips have had other purposes, such as highlighting issues important in a state or supporting candidates for the House or Senate.
Trump said in Albuquerque that he could win the state as long as the election was fair, repeating falsehoods about rigged past elections.
“If we could bring God down from heaven, he could be the vote counter and we could win this,” Trump said. He added that he is visiting New Mexico because it is “good for my credentials” with Hispanic voters.
Trump’s strategy carries risk.
After losing to Trump in 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton was criticized for going to Arizona at the end of the campaign rather than spending time in Wisconsin, Michigan or Pennsylvania, states that ultimately decided the election. Arizona is now a battleground state, but it wasn’t considered particularly competitive eight years ago, when it voted for Trump by a 4 percentage point margin.
“I don’t think there’s any strategy,” said Bob Schrum, a longtime Democratic political consultant who has worked on multiple presidential campaigns and now directs the Center for Political Futures at the University of Southern California. “I think he insisted on doing it. It makes no sense.”
The stop in New Mexico brings Trump to a border state
The planned visit to Albuquerque brings Trump and his immigration stance to a border state with the nation’s highest concentration of Hispanic voters, underscoring the campaign for Hispanic supporters.
About 44% of New Mexico’s voting-age population identifies as Hispanic. Many have centuries-old ties to Mexican and Spanish settlements, while the state has a lower share of foreign-born residents than the national average.
At the same time, federal and local authorities in New Mexico are dealing with a surge in migrant deaths along the US-Mexico border.
Trump’s visit has ramifications for a congressional district stretching from Albuquerque to the Mexican border. It is now held by a Democrat as Republicans seek to hold on to their narrow majority in the House of Representatives. Immigration was a major issue in the race.
Also on the ballot, Democrat Sen. Martin Heinrich is running for a third term against Republican Nella Domenici. She is the daughter of the late Republican Sen. Pete Domenici, who served six terms from 1973 to 2009 and was the last New Mexico Republican elected to the Senate.
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. remains on the ballot in New Mexico, and campaign roadside signs for Kennedy appeared in the capital city of Santa Fe in late October, about two months after Kennedy withdrew from the race and endorsed Trump.
New Mexico voters have twice rejected Trump at the polls, and Democrats hold every statewide elected office, all three congressional seats and majorities in the House and Senate.
“He’s just taking us back to what America should be,” said Leandra Dominguez, 45, of Albuquerque, before Trump spoke. “It just fell apart. We just need someone to save us.”
Virginia was once a battlefield
While Virginia was considered a battleground state back in 2012, it has swung Democratic over the past decade, especially in the densely populated suburbs of northern Virginia.
Trump lost the state to Clinton in 2016 and to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. This year, Democrats and their allies in the presidential race have spent nearly twice as much as Republicans on ads in Virginia, data shows, though that pales in comparison. spending in battleground states.
“We have a real chance,” Trump said while addressing a rally in the Richmond area on Saturday.
While in Virginia, Trump is likely to talk about Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling upholding a voter registration purge that the state says is aimed at stopping non-US citizens from voting.
The Supreme Court, with three liberal justices dissenting, granted an emergency appeal from the Virginia Republican administration led by Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
Speaking to Fox News’ Bret Baier on Wednesday night, Youngkin said from what he’s seen on the ground, “Virginia is a lot more competitive than any of the pundits would have you believe.”
He noted that two years after Biden won by 10 percentage points in 2020, he won as governor.
“Virginians are ready for power back in the White House,” he said.
Susan Swecker, chairwoman of the Virginia Democratic Party, said Trump’s planned visit to Salem on Saturday would only extend Harris’ lead in the state.
“Kamala Harris will win Virginia in a landslide, as he knows, and any visit from this deranged lunatic will only widen the gap,” Swecker said.
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Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in New York, Morgan Lee in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Olivia Diaz in Richmond, Virginia contributed to this report.
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