Welcome to the online version of From the Political Bureauan evening newsletter featuring the latest reporting and analysis from the NBC News Politics team from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill.
In today’s edition, national political reporter Ben Kamisar discusses our latest focus group with Arizona Latino voters who disagree with Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Plus, senior political reporter Jonathan Allen looks at the message Nikki Haley is sending Trump after she said she would vote for him.
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How Arizona voters rate Latinos Biden and Trump at the border
By Ben Kamisar
A new focus group of Latino voters in Arizona illustrated why the border has become such a political mess for President Joe Biden.
Former President Donald Trump’s harsh words on immigration and the actions he took while in office did not come close to one-sided praise from the dozens of participants in our latest NBC News Deciders Focus Group series, produced in partnership with Engagious, Syracuse University and Sago.
The focus group specifically recruited participants who had a soft spot for both Biden and Trump, a key swing cohort in a critical battleground state.
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But from their vantage point, many saw clarity on Trump’s issue compared to Biden’s fight to control immigration. One participant called Biden’s border policy a “hot mess.”
“Even if we don’t agree with the way Trump handled specific issues with his border enforcement, at least he did something about it,” said Melissa G., 43, of Phoenix, who represents Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would support if given the chance, or Trump if not.
The RFK Jr. Factor: Overall, focus group participants were so turned off by both major parties’ nominees that more people said they would vote for Kennedy in a five-way race with Jill Stein and Cornel West than any other candidate. Kennedy has yet to qualify for the Arizona ballot, but the super PAC backing him says he has collected enough signatures to do so.
“I absolutely would not vote for Biden – he does not align with my beliefs,” said Nicole G., 39, of Glendale. She said she “had a very hard time voting for” Trump in 2016 and ultimately did so because he “supported a lot of our beliefs, morals and values as a family” and because she hoped he would run for office grow out.
“And then I felt ashamed as president for voting for him,” Nicole G. continued. “He is a reckless leader who should never be in leadership, so there is no way I can vote for him again.”
Abortion ballot measure: Arizona voters are also likely to decide this fall on an amendment that would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. Few focus group participants demonstrated a clear understanding of the state’s current abortion laws, but even those who said they were personally “pro-life” expressed concern that the government would restrict access to abortion.
“I’m going to teach my daughters what I think is right, and hopefully they’ll stick to it. But in the end they are going to do what they are going to do,” said Enrique M., 48, of San Tan Valley, who said he would vote for Trump.
“Do I want them to go to jail for violating that? Probably not,” he said.
Read more from the focus group here →
The message Nikki Haley sends to Trump
By Jonathan Allen
Donald Trump may take Nikki Haley – and most of her voters – for granted.
That’s the message Haley sent yesterday when she said she would vote for Trump, even though she claimed the opposite.
“Trump has not been perfect on this policy. I have made that clear many times,” Haley said after a speech at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC, in which she castigated Democrats for their wavering support for Israel and Republicans for their wavering support of Ukraine. “But Biden has been a catastrophe. So I will vote for Trump.”
Then Haley encouraged Trump to do exactly what he didn’t do to win her vote.
“That said, I stand by what I said in my suspension speech,” Haley said. “Trump would be wise to reach out to the millions of people who voted for me and continue to support me, and not assume they will just stick with him.”
But NBC News’ Vaughn Hillyard and Ali Vitali reported Thursday that Trump has not spoken to Haley since she dropped out of the race in early March. He didn’t have to call or write from a podium or say nice things about her. Haley had nowhere else to go if she wanted to maintain her political viability.
She called Biden a “catastrophe.” By using her speech to detail the danger she believes he has brought to the US, she did more than just create a consent structure for her voters to rally behind Trump. Her condemnation of Biden was so harsh that she almost begged them to fly MAGA banners from the flagpoles on their manicured lawns.
This should come as no surprise to Trump, who — after hiring her as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations — correctly predicted she would fall in line. Nor should it have shocked Biden, whose campaign is well aware that the vast majority of voters retreat to their partisan corners in a general election.
But in each of the last two elections, the outcome was determined by tens of thousands of voters in a handful of states. If this episode plays out the same way, every vote will matter.
So even if Trump can take Haley and most of her voters would be self-evident, it would be a mistake for him to ignore them completely. There is a segment of Haley’s base, including those who voted for Biden last time, that Democrats will be fighting for between now and November.
Trump doesn’t need to convince Haley of anything, but he will have to counter Biden — perhaps using the same talking points Haley raised yesterday.
That’s all from The Politics Desk for now. If you have any feedback – like it or not – please email us at politicsnieuwsbrief@nbcuni.com
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This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
