“I think he’s gonna win,” said Jasand Brown on Election Day, referring to former President Donald Trump. Brown had knocked doors for Kamala Harris for the previous 45 days in Arizona’s most populous county, Maricopa — which includes Phoenix. Brown was still at it when he made his prediction hours before the polls closed.
He noted that many voters saw Trump as someone who could “change something or revolutionize something.” Brown said Trump’s larger-than-life persona led some to overlook issues like “his refusal to denounce racist groups, disrespect toward women and the lawsuits against him.”
Brown was one of more than a hundred paid canvassers for LUCHA (Living United for Change Arizona), a statewide community organizing group that campaigns for immigrant rights, and has recently lobbied the legislature on issues like housing and paid family leave.
This year, it launched a statewide door-to-door effort to win the votes of working-class voters for Democratic candidates, to defeat an anti-immigrant ballot measure and to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution. The group targeted infrequent voters, with the goal of building a larger progressive voting bloc in Arizona. The results fell far short of what LUCHA organizers had hoped for, however. Trump won the state with 52% of the vote and Maricopa County with 51%. This marked a reversal from 2020, when Biden took the state with a slim 10,000 vote margin and Maricopa County — a key target for Democrats — with a 2 percentage point win.
“It felt like an uphill battle the whole year,” said Cesar Fierros, LUCHA’s communications director, in a post-election interview. “I think the challenge was also that there were a lot of disenchanted voters, people that just were checked out and just stopped believing that their vote mattered.” Another challenge, he said: Voters were hurting economically and Harris didn’t deliver a clear argument that resonated with them.
Lisa Sanchez, an assistant professor in the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Arizona, said the Biden administration’s economic message “fell flat because it wasn’t what Americans as consumers were experiencing. It made his administration and, by association, Harris, seem out of touch,” Sanchez said.
Indeed, voters cited the economy as their most pressing concern both in 2020 and 2024. In both years, those who were hurting economically voted for the party that had been out of power, and this year, Trump reaped the benefits. This year, 42% of those who responded to a CNN exit poll rated the economy as poor, and of those, 89% cast a vote for Trump. In CNN’s 2020 exit poll, 51% rated the economy as not good or poor, and 84% of voters who did went for Biden.
LUCHA claimed wins in two other 2024 campaigns. The group urged voters to back Democratic Congressman Ruben Gallego, who narrowly defeated Trump-endorsed Kari Lake in a U.S. Senate race by a margin of just over two points and to support a measure that by a 23-point margin enshrines abortion rights in the state constitution.
However, the group suffered a crushing defeat on another of its key issues: immigration. Polls revealed that LUCHA faced headwinds in its fight against Proposition 314, a ballot measure that would require local police and sheriffs to enforce federal immigration law. The measure took a decisive 63% of the vote, despite a 12-year-old Supreme Court ruling that struck down most provisions of a similar law, Senate Bill 1070. The court found immigration was strictly a federal matter and could not be enforced by Arizona or other states.
Arizona voters identified immigration as their third most important issue, after democracy and the economy, in this year’s CNN exit poll. Paradoxically, the poll also showed a minority of of respondents — 42% — favored deporting undocumented immigrants while 54% preferred giving them a chance to legalize their status.
Knocking doors in a Phoenix apartment complex, Brown encountered one voter who remembered how Senate Bill 1070 had led to racial profiling. When she was a teenager, a police officer in southern Arizona demanded to see her mother’s “papers,” even though her mother was a U.S. citizen, and wasn’t required to carry proof of her legal status. Nonetheless, she said, her mom was tossed in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center until officials realized their mistake and released her a few days later.
Now, Fierros said much of LUCHA’s work going forward will be combating Prop 314 and its effects. The group will likely challenge its constitutionality in court and work to ensure that immigrant Arizonans know their rights if they are detained by local or federal authorities, especially in the face of President-elect Trump’s promise to conduct mass deportations.
In the process, the group will work toward its long-term goal of turning Arizona blue by increasing voter participation among disaffected and discouraged voters.
“We are going to be tasked with safeguarding our democracy,” Fierros said. “We have no choice but to stand firm against [the Republican] agenda that’s likely to inflict a lot of harm on communities.”
