Second gentleman Doug Emhoff to visit Arizona for a White House event, NCAA Final Four

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, will visit Arizona on Monday.

Emhoff will host an event focused on “lowering costs for Americans,” and he will attend the NCAA men’s basketball championship game at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, the White House told The Arizona Republic.

His announcement means that the president, vice president and their spouses all will have separately visited Arizona since the beginning of March –  a sign of Arizona’s paramount importance in President Joe Biden’s re-election effort this year.

In 2020, Biden defeated his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, in Arizona by less than half a percentage point.

Biden visited Arizona in mid-March to mobilize Latino voters and announce a multibillion-dollar grant for technology giant Intel Corp. under the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act.

Shortly before that, Vice President Kamala Harris delivered a speech in Phoenix to criticize Republican-led efforts to restrict abortion.

And first lady Jill Biden visited Tucson in early March for another event centered on abortion.

That’s on top of other surrogates, including Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a co-chair of Biden’s re-election bid, and Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the ranking member of the influential House Oversight and Accountability Committee, who have both visited Arizona recently to campaign on behalf of Biden.

It’s not Emhoff’s first visit to Arizona during the current administration. In 2023, he visited the state with Harris and met with military veterans from the Gila River Indian Community in Laveen Village. And in 2021, Emhoff and Jill Biden toured a pop-up COVID-19 vaccine clinic in Phoenix to encourage people to get vaccinated.

Emhoff’s event focused on the cost of living comes at a moment when polling suggests the public’s confidence in Biden’s economic leadership remains low to middling.

During the pandemic, inflation soared to 13% in metro Phoenix, which at the time was the highest of any major U.S. city. Voters nationwide tend to say they have less confidence in Biden to helm the economy compared with Trump, his Republican opponent in the November election.

Biden’s advisers have been eager to point out that inflation has fallen steeply since its peak during the pandemic, faster than in most of the U.S.’ economic peer nations, and that consumers’ confidence in the economy appears to be rising.

There’s debate among economists whether Americans’ current negativity towards the U.S. economy is warranted. So far, Biden has sought to validate voters’ skepticism even while arguing he has made progress on the issue.

“I inherited an economy that was on the brink. Now our economy is the envy of the world!” Biden said in his recent prime-time State of the Union address. He continued later in the speech: “And there’s more to do to make sure you’re feeling the benefits of all we’re doing."

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: Doug Emhoff to visit Arizona for White House event, Final Four