Trump to visit Ariz. today

The president is scheduled to speak to crowds at airport hangars in Prescott and Tucson today. It will be his sixth visit to Arizona this year. He is courting the voters who helped him win four years ago.

President Donald Trump is scheduled to make his sixth visit to Arizona this year, speaking to crowds at airport hangars in Prescott and Tucson on Monday.

The president’s previous stops sought to reach out to Hispanic voters and to show how the nation is rebounding from the new coronavirus pandemic.

This time Trump is talking directly to the people who helped him win the White House four years ago: his base. The first event is at noon in Prescott. Trump visited that part of the state in October 2016 as part of an effort to run up big vote margins in rural Arizona.

That strategy worked, giving him an extra 104,000 votes that erased Democrat Hillary Clinton’s advantage in urban Maricopa and Pima counties combined.

Trump’s other stop, in Tucson, takes him to a part of the state he hasn’t visited since March 2016, just ahead of the Republican presidential primary.

It’s an area of the state that has voted in lopsided numbers for Democrats in several races in recent years, and Trump’s stop could help the GOP fare better, even if he still loses the county overall.

While Pima County is a strong Democratic outpost, nearby Cochise County went heavily for Trump in 2016. Trump will need to boost turnout there as well to offset his losses in Pima and, perhaps, in Maricopa County.