A cyclist leads the Bike Out the Vote rally down Osborn toward 15th Ave on Oct. 17. The ride, hosted by Rush-hour Resistance Rally, looped around midtown Phoenix as part of the No Kings Day get out the vote effort. (Photo by Kiera Riley/for the Arizona Mirror)
In a virtual “rally” call held by Arizona Republican hopefuls obtained by the Arizona Mirror, Republicans voiced concerns over their prospects on Election Day.
“I have to say, after we had a gangbusters start to the week, the drops today were quite less than I was hoping for,” Alexander Kolodin, a state lawmaker who is running for Arizona Secretary of State, told those in the call about early ballot returns. “Now, we can still get to an R+10, which is what we need in order to sweep the executive branch. But today’s drops, they’re not going to get us there.”
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The call included Kolodin and other candidates for statewide and federal offices. Other participants included Andy Biggs and Sine Kerr, who are running for governor and lieutenant governor; Warren Petersen, who is the party’s nominee for attorney general; and Jay Feely, the Republican in the hotly contested bid for Congressional District 1, which is widely considered Arizona’s most competitive district.
“But we need to bear down, or we’re not going to get there. So, I would say, whatever you’re doing, redouble your efforts, because this state, it’s here for the taking,” Kolodin said. “We can take back Arizona and restore competent conservative governance, but it is going to take a massive effort from now until Election Day…You know, I’m kind of known at the legislature for having no chill, and I just want this to be a no chill evening for us all. Now is not the time to relax. Now is the time to bear down.”
Kolodin’s sentiments were repeated by many of the speakers, all of whom urged those in attendance to get out the vote. A key tool in that, the candidates implored the GOP faithful, was to use a phone app that connects the volunteer’s contact list to a list of voters and alerts them to who has and hasn’t voted.
“But as (Kolodin) just said, we need to get the numbers up… Where we really need to be is an R+10,” Petersen said. “With the drop that just happened here, we’re at an R+1.2, and the real issue is that the Dems are front loading very well.”
Petersen told supporters that Republicans still outnumber Democrats — the final voter registration figures before the election give the GOP an edge of nearly 300,000 voters — but that won’t matter if they don’t show up to vote, and vote the GOP ticket. That’s crucial, he said, because independent voters have been consistently leaning more to the left this election.
“ A great way to help with turnout is using the Numinar app,” Petersen said, also urging the use of a Turning Point USA app. “We now have 700 people on the app. We want to hit 2,000 people, so that we can fully activate. I mean, we want to use it now, but also it’s a great tool on Election Day. The app tells you which of your contacts have not voted.”
Petersen said the goal is to make sure that they contact “every single person who is still in our phone by Election Day” who has not voted.
“We literally have races that are going to be decided with hundreds of votes every day, there are people we know that are not going to vote unless we nudge them to vote,” Petersen said. “About one third of the Republicans are not going to vote. That means a third of the people in your phone are not going to vote unless somebody nudges them or someone they trust helps get them out there and get them to the polls every day.”
Petersen also reiterated to attendees that they can’t rely on just Election Day votes to bring them a win.
“We don’t want to be so far behind that we need to just crush it on Election Day. We want to just go into Election Day where we can have a good Election Day, good turnout, and win,” Petersen said. “We don’t want to have to have a Herculean Election Day and win because we’ve let them get way too far ahead of us on the (early) vote.”
According to early ballot tracking by Democratic political consultant Sam Almy, more than 1.4 million Arizona voters have already returned their ballots. Republicans had a 16,600-ballot edge on Democrats through Oct. 28, though a higher percentage of total Democratic voters have cast their ballots, 43% compared to the 36% of Republicans who have already voted. Just 22% of independents and minor-party voters have voted early.
The point of making sure Republican voter turnout matches or surpasses Democratic turnout prior to Election Day was a key point from every speaker.
“It’s going to be really close, but we’re going to win. We’re going to win, I want you to know that,” Biggs said. “But we win when we get our voters to the polls, and you, so everybody’s a one-note piano tonight. I can tell you that because that’s how we win. I expect us to be up by a good number before Election Day, and then we carry it home on election day. But let’s get as many votes in the bank now, the next couple of days, as we possibly can.”
Polling has consistently shown that all of the GOP statewide candidates are trailing their Democratic opponents, including one published earlier this week that found Biggs trailing Gov. Katie Hobbs by 12 percentage points. That poll also showed Kolodin losing to Secretary of State Adrian Fontes by 11 points and Petersen down 11 points to Attorney General Kris Mayes.
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Courtesy of Arizona Mirror
