'Scared stiff': What's on Arizona voters' minds as presidential race heats up?

Jessica Jakel recently registered as a Republican after eight years of being a Democrat. It was the issue of immigration that changed her mind.

“There is virtually no border right now,” Jakel said in an interview at Senate candidate Kari Lake’s recent campaign event in Cave Creek.

Jakel, a veteran, highlighted a topic that recently has gained traction among conservative lawmakers. The VA has a policy, continued through multiple Democratic and Republican presidential administrations, of contracting with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to process certain medical claims reimbursements.

Some Republicans have made efforts to end that agreement, arguing that it cuts into care for veterans, despite the VA's insistence that's not true.

“I have to go to community care as a veteran to get care because the VA is so backed up. And now (President Joe Biden) is saying illegal immigrants can come to the VA for care?” Jakel said. “I have to wait for appointments already.”

Jakel said of the Democratic Party: “They want to give everything away. They want to let everybody in. And then they want to lie about it.”

Arizona Republicans and Democrats will vote Tuesday for their preferred White House candidate. But because Biden and former President Donald Trump clinched their parties' nominations a week ago, the battleground state already is looking ahead to general election.

Arizona is among the most influential states in the 2024 election cycle. The state has potentially majority-making races in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, and it could single-handedly tilt the presidential race to one party or another.

That means public opinion in the state will have an outsize influence in national politics.

According to the secretary of state's most recent numbers, 35% of registered voters in Arizona are Republicans, 34% are independents, and 29% are Democrats.

Arizona voters’ priorities vary widely depending on their partisan identities. Republicans overwhelmingly express concern over immigration, followed by the economy while Democrats’ concerns tend to be spread across many different priorities, with economy the leading factor, recent polling suggests.

George Khalaf, a Republican pollster, said that the intensity of immigration has ticked up in recent years.

“Immigration is usually led by registered Republicans and independents,” Khalaf said.

Overall, he said, “it’s never not a top issue. But it hasn't been this intense in a while, where it’s number one by a 15 or 20% margin.”

Claudia Storey, another attendee at Lake's campaign event and descendant of Norwegian immigrants, said her biggest concern as a voter is the “invasion of our country at the border.”

“For my parents, it was all about, we don't speak Norwegian, we speak English. Because we're all Americans,” Storey said. “We need to know who's coming here. And what their motivations are.”

Arizona Democrats tend to be motivated by a different suite of issues, such as abortion access or a concern for U.S. democracy, Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg said.

Denise Skalon has become a part of the coalition of organizers in Arizona working to reelect Biden, which she supports by hosting weekly events in her home with her husband, Martin. After hosting a pro-Biden event on Sunday, she listed her top issues as women’s rights, the economy, the environment and education.

The overturning of Roe vs. Wade in June 2022 galvanized Skalon's activism.

“The thought of them not getting the same rights (as me),” she said about her seven granddaughters. “The government should not be telling us what we can or cannot do.”

Evie Pletenik, who already cast her ballot for Biden in Arizona’s presidential preference election, is not concerned about the economy or immigration, two top issues for many voters this election season.

“The economy is shaping up,” she said. “I’m not fearful of people coming into this country. The country was built on immigrants.”

Instead, “nothing to me is more important than democracy,” Pletenik said at the Sunday Biden campaign event in south Tempe. “Everything takes a backseat to democracy.”

Likewise for Mark Budwill, a 72-year-old registered independent who lives in Mesa. He considers himself progressive, in the likes of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

“I am scared stiff of the possibility of Trump being elected again. I am fighting for the preservation of democracy,” Budwill said.

He is disconcerted by reports about the GOP’s “Project 2025” plan, a policy playbook for the next Republican presidency which would consolidate executive power in the presidency, among other sweeping reforms.

“That’s nuts. That’s un-American. That’s not the country I learned about when I was in grade school and high school,” Budwill said.

Budwill says he likes how Biden has handled the economy, naming key pieces of legislation on infrastructure and climate change.

“Wages went up, and manufacturing was being brought back. The job situation was just phenomenal,” he said. “The word is not getting out about how much benefit the Inflation Reduction Act has been. And for all the time he was squawking about infrastructure, Trump never did anything about it.”

Not all voters’ preferences are so straightforward. Cortney Morris, a Trump voter who describes herself as an independent, raised abortion as an issue that’s top of mind for her this year. Morris suggested she is sympathetic for continuing access to abortion, but says she plans to vote Republican, the party that is leading efforts to restrict abortion rights. She said the Democrats go “too far” on the issue.

“I think that a woman’s health is important to her, and women have been shamed for years and years and years on issues like that,” she said. “Do I think that abortion at nine months is correct? No. But again, that’s my feeling on it.

“I’m not against abortion … but I think there needs to be a limit to that,” Morris said. “At the end, no matter what, if you vote Democrat, it’s your choice. You can still make your choice.”

Tye Robinson, a software engineer who lives in Queen Creek, summarizes his political calculus: “kill less people, secure the border, and stop inflation.”

“I tend to support whoever’s least likely to start a war, and then, next, is who’s least likely to screw me financially,” Robinson said.

He ticks through a laundry list of errors that turned him against former presidents. President George W. Bush launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; President Barack Obama oversaw military intervention into Libya; the list goes on.

Robinson voted against Trump in 2016, because there was no way of telling whether he would follow through on his campaign promises. He voted for Trump in 2020 because "he didn’t start any wars, the border was fairly secure, and he didn't screw me financially like the Democrats have every time they've been in office."

This time around, Robinson says he is deciding between Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent presidential candidate, saying that he approved of the economy under Trump, and both candidates are “what you see is what you get.”

"I’m probably going to vote Trump, but if he does something stupid between now and then, which, knowing him, isn’t completely out of the realm of possibility, maybe I’ll vote for RFK," he said.

Republic reporter Morgan Fischer contributed to this report.

Laura Gersony covers national politics for the Arizona Republic. Contact her at lgersony@gannett.com or 480-372-0389.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: What's on Arizona voters' minds ahead of presidential race?