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Hailey Guerra had never bothered to attend a presidential campaign rally before Friday afternoon — but Kamala Harris’s visit to the Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale seemed different.
“Everyone’s just like, at least it’s not another old white man,” Hailey Guerra told The Independent, referring to President Joe Biden, who announced last month that he would not seek re-election and instead endorsed Harris.
Guerra’s friend Charlotte Dirige attended with her, clad in a shirt with Harris’s image and the declaration, “Say it to my face,” a nod to the vice president’s challenge to former President Donald Trump after he initially backed out of debating her.
“I was definitely gonna vote for [Biden] still, because it seemed like the lesser of two evils, but I’m actually way more, like, motivated to go out and vote,” Guerra told The Independent. Dirige said Harris’s campaign team had helped her sign up to volunteer.
As Harris hopes to build momentum going into November, these women who are taking an active role in politics for the first time will be crucial to her success.
There’s a palpably different energy at Harris’s rallies than at Biden’s previous campaign stops. Whereas Biden could barely fill a high-school gymnasium in Philadelphia for a Black voter outreach event, Harris’s event in Arizona with her newly announced running mate Tim Walz featured people dancing, doing the wave, and blasting music in English and Spanish.
On Friday afternoon, the Desert Diamond Arena, which is just outside of Phoenix in the must-win state of Arizona, blasted the music of Charli XCX, the singer who declared Harris “brat,” and young women showed up in lime-green shirts, a nod to the color scheme of the artist’s album on Friday. The event was the second-to-last installment of the Democratic duo’s tour across battleground states.
Amanda Johnson sported a Biden-Harris shirt that had Harris’s first name taped over Biden’s and Walz’s name taped under Harris’s last name.
“It was like a collective breath,” she told The Independent of Biden stepping aside. “I still think Joe would have won, but I think to have all of this energy and momentum is absolutely amazing.”
Johnson, like many other women interviewed at the rally, said that she had not previously volunteered for a campaign, but would for Harris. Many women at the rally said this was the first time they had been to any political event but were motivated by the new ticket.
Rebecca Griefer said it was her first presidential event since she saw Bill Clinton speak as a college student.
“I would say people are much more positive,” she said. “It’s a tremendous uplift in energy, kind of like soaring energy.”
“People who are immigrants themselves, that have come from other countries that are here now they're deeply concerned with foreign affairs,” she told The Independent. “They want to know, what is the attitude and agenda of the Democrats?”
A poll by Highground Public Affairs, one of the top consulting firms, shows Harris ahead of Trump, though still within the margin of error.
While polling specifically focused on young women is scarce, a survey by John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Institute of Politics, with Won’t PAC down — a Democratic super PAC that focuses on youth turnout — found that Harris is doing best with female voters, voters between the ages of 18 and 24 years, college students, and Black voters. Politico first reported the poll.
Few would have expected Harris’s current momentum a few months ago when she had low approval ratings and was often relegated to the background in the Biden administration. That does not mean that Harris does not face headwinds: During the rally, she was confronted by pro-Palestine protesters, the second time that’s happened at an event this year.
But if Harris winds up holding Arizona for the Democrats, it will be in no small part because of the women in her crowds.
