The Latest: Harris and Walz to hold rally in Arizona, while Trump will visit Montana

Vice President Kamala Harris and her new running mate will hold a rally in Arizona as part of their tour of electoral battlegrounds, visiting a state where Harris passed over a prominent Democrat in favor of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and gun control advocate, had been a top contender for running mate.

Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump is visiting Montana for a rally in support of Republican Senate candidate Tim Sheehy. The former president hopes to remedy some unfinished business from 2018, when he campaigned repeatedly in Big Sky Country in a failed bid to oust incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester.

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Here’s the Latest:

Georgia Gov. Kemp calls Trump attacks ‘noise’ and says he’s still focused on winning

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp insists he’s not getting bogged down by Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump’s intraparty attacks over Kemp’s refusal to help overturn the 2020 presidential election.

The Republican governor called Trump’s recent broadsides at an Atlanta campaign rally and on the Truth Social platform “a lot of noise” and jokingly compared Trump to a tropical storm.

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“This big storm came through the state this week – and now we’re dealing with Tropical Storm Debby,” Kemp said at conservative radio host Erick Erickson’s annual conference, “The Gathering,” in the Buckhead section of Atlanta.

Kemp repeated his pledge to support the GOP nominee and renewed his warnings that Republicans should stop focusing on the 2020 election and false assertions that Biden won Georgia and nationally because of fraud.

“We’re going to use our political operation to win Georgia despite past grievances,” Kemp told Erickson, adding that the efforts would “help Republicans up and down the ticket.”

Of course, Kemp’s political operation is focusing on competitive Georgia legislative districts that are key to maintaining GOP majorities at the statehouse, meaning potential Republican voters in other swaths of the hotly contested state may not be reached by the Kemp organization before November.

Throughout the discussion with Erickson, Kemp did not say Trump’s name.

Democrats and Republicans descend on western Wisconsin with high stakes up and down the ballot

For a brief moment this week, the fierce competition for swing voters in swing-state Wisconsin converged on the tarmac of the tiny Chippewa Valley Regional Airport.

Minutes after Vice President Kamala Harris landed with her new running mate Tim Walz for their first campaign stop in the state, Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance arrived. He walked across the tarmac to check out Air Force Two, just missing Harris.

The close encounter of the political kind could be written off as a coincidence if it happened anywhere other than Wisconsin, one of a small number of states that will not only determine the winner of the presidential race but could also shape the balance of power in Congress. But it sent a much louder signal that both parties understand the importance of a region that could tip the balance of power in more ways than one.

Harris and Walz head to Arizona, where a VP runner-up could still make a difference

Vice President Kamala Harris and her new running mate will hold a rally in Arizona on Friday as part of their tour of electoral battlegrounds, visiting a state where Harris passed over a prominent Democrat in favor of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and gun control advocate, had been a top contender for running mate. He’s won two tough races in politically divided Arizona.

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In passing over Kelly, Harris may have also lost the chance to win over people like Gonzalo Leyva, a 49-year-old landscaper in Phoenix. Leyva plans to vote for former President Donald Trump, a Republican, but says he would have backed a Harris-Kelly ticket.

“I prefer Kelly like 100 times,” said Leyva, a lifelong Democrat who became an independent at the beginning of Trump’s term in office. “I don’t think he’s that extreme like the other guys.”

Trump heads to Montana in a bid to oust Sen. Tester after failing to topple the Democrat in 2018

With control of the Senate potentially at stake, Donald Trump is visiting Montana on Friday hoping to remedy some unfinished business from 2018, when he campaigned repeatedly in Big Sky Country in a failed bid to oust incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester.

Tester has tried to convince voters he’s aligned with Trump on many issues, mirroring his successful strategy from six years ago. While that worked in a non-presidential election year, it faces a more critical test this fall with Tester’s opponent, former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy, trying to link the three-term incumbent to Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

A win for the Harris-Walz ticket would also mean the country’s first Native American female governor

If Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are elected this fall, not only would a woman of color lead the country for the first time, but a Native woman also would govern a state for the first time in U.S. history.

Peggy Flanagan, the lieutenant governor of Minnesota and a citizen of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, is poised to serve as the state’s next governor should Walz step down to accept the role of U.S. vice president. Her rise to power has been watched closely by Indigenous peoples in Minnesota and across the country who see her as a champion of policies that positively affect Native Americans.