Pearl Hubbard picked up some yard signs for Kamala Harris at the vice-president’s speech in Phoenix, Arizona, on Thursday afternoon, but wasn’t yet sure whether she’d risk displaying them outside her home in a city that sits in some of the most hotly contested political territory in the country.
“I’m scared to put them up,” Hubbard said. “As I drive … I only saw one place that had a [Harris] sign. Just don’t see them. I think people are scared to put them up.”
After Joe Biden became the first Democrat since 1996 to win the state four years ago, Arizona’s capital and most-populous city, Phoenix, saw tense confrontations between local officials and Trump supporters who believed his baseless claims that the election was stolen from him.
With the 5 November presidential election days away, Trump still refuses to publicly acknowledge his defeat in 2020, and has already suggested that if he loses this year, he will once again claim fraud. The allegations have changed life for formerly low-key election offices and secretaries of state nationwide, as they regularly face threats, hoaxes and harassment, especially in the seven swing states that are expected to decide the election.
Nerves are particularly stretched in Maricopa, the county in which Phoenix sits, and which will likely decide whether Harris or Trump, who has a narrow lead in recent polls, wins Arizona.
After Trump’s loss in the state in 2020, his supporters staged demonstrations in Phoenix’s streets. This time around, election officials in Maricopa county plan to have a Swat team and mounted sheriff’s deputies ready at the building where they tabulate ballots. Last week, Phoenix police arrested a man for setting fire at a postal box that damaged some mail-in ballots, though said the suspect said his actions were not politically motivated.
At Harris’s speech in Phoenix on Thursday, the vice-president told voters to prepare for “one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime” and criticized the former president for saying he’d protect women “whether the women like it or not”. But the question of what the former president’s supporters would do if he loses was on attendees’ mind.
“I would say that I definitely worry about that since he hasn’t conceded the last election,” said Bethany Hagen, 34, as she waited for a ride in the parking lot of the amphitheater where Harris spoke.
While no one the Guardian spoke to predicted imminent violence, many acknowledged that life in a swing state made participating in, or even discussing, politics a fraught experience.
“It is hard to talk to people here,” said Hagen, a Colorado native who had moved to the state.
Stacey Stocks, a resident of Surprise, a conservative suburb of Phoenix, was nervous about door-knocking for Harris in her neighborhood, but met no trouble when she did go out. But Stocks, 53, remains concerned that Trump will say something to incite his supporters, and believes the best way to head that off is for Harris to win definitively.
“I really hope that most people were appalled by what happened in January 6 and really motivated them, maybe this time around, to get out and actually vote,” she said. “I’m hoping that this will be a landslide.”
Ruth Murphy, a state Democratic party committee member, said she’s started taking in the political yard signs she displays at home every evening, after someone stole an earlier batch. But she believes Arizona officials this year are better prepared for whatever the election might bring.
“I know it can happen, but I think with the experiences that we’ve had in the past, we will be more ready for it, if it happens,” she said.
