President Donald Trump is heading back to Arizona on Monday and his two stops offer a window to the narrow route the embattled candidate must take to win the state again.
At noon, Trump is scheduled to appear at Prescott Regional Airport for a mini-rally in a hangar. Later, he flies to Tucson for a 3 p.m. gathering at Tucson International Airport.
He’s skipping metro Phoenix, as he did in August when he opted for a visit to Yuma instead.
Trump has bombarded the Phoenix airwaves with ads and has made several stops in the state’s population center, along with Vice President Mike Pence and many members of the president’s family and administration in recent months.
But as the presidential race is winding down and as polls suggest a dwindling path for Trump’s re-election, he needs to dominate rural Arizona, as he did in 2016. He also seeks to neutralize the Tucson area, which has increasingly become a problem for Republicans running statewide.
It is in microcosm a scenario playing out across the country, and not just for Trump.
