Harris, Walz Hold Rally in Arizona; Trump Visits Montana

Vice President Kamala Harris and her new running mate held 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. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., 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.

Harris in Arizona

Vice President Kamala Harris paused during a campaign rally in Arizona to directly address Gaza protesters who interrupted her remarks.

"Hold on a second," she said Friday at Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale.

Harris said she has been clear that "now is the time to get a cease-fire deal" to end fighting between Israel and Hamas that has caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people in Gaza. The Democratic presidential nominee said she and President Joe Biden "are working around the clock every day to get that cease-fire deal done and bring the hostages home."

Harris added, "I respect your voices, but we are here to now talk about this race in 2024."

She responded differently earlier this week when Gaza protesters interrupted her during a Detroit-area rally. She talked over the protesters.

Trump in Montana

Trump's plane was diverted on its way to Bozeman, Montana, due to a mechanical issue but landed safely in nearby Billings, according to a staff member at the Billings airport.

The former president was heading to Bozeman for a Friday night rally in support of Sheehy, who is challenging Democratic Sen. Jon Tester.

Trump's campaign posted a video of him upon landing in which he said he was glad to be in Montana but did not mention anything about the landing.

Voter Registration Restrictions

National and state Republicans are trying to get the Supreme Court involved in a fight over voter registration restrictions that Republicans enacted in Arizona in 2022 following Biden's narrow 2020 victory in the battleground state. In an emergency appeal filed Thursday, the Republicans want the justices to allow provisions to take effect requiring the rejection of some voter registration forms that don't have proof of citizenship, while a lawsuit plays out.

The move came after a lower court blocked a requirement that called for state voter registration forms to be rejected if they are not accompanied by documents proving U.S. citizenship. A second measure, also not in effect, would prohibit voting in presidential elections or by mail if registrants don't prove they are U.S. citizens. Federal law does not require proof of citizenship either to vote in federal elections or cast ballots by mail, though voters have to attest that they are U.S. citizens.

The high court is not expected to act before late August.

McConnell on GOP Candidates

Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell is expressing confidence that the GOP will be able to win a majority in the November elections because the party has avoided nominating the kinds of weak candidates that have lost tough races in the past.

"What is the key in winning a Senate election in a competitive state? Candidate quality," McConnell told conservative voters Friday at "The Gathering," an annual convocation hosted by influential radio host Erick Erickson.

"I'm not going to mention names," McConnell said, "but over the course of 10 or 15 years, in four or five instances, we have not had candidates that appeal to a competitive state."

The Kentucky Republican was alluding to candidates like Herschel Walker, the controversial 2022 nominee who lost to Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in a year where Republicans swept all other statewide elections in the state.

Republicans need to net just two additional seats to command a majority in January, and it's widely presumed that they already will pick up West Virginia, where Democrat-turned-independent Joe Manchin is retiring. Democrat Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Jon Tester of Montana are running in states Trump won twice and is expected to win again.

"We need to take the Senate as an insurance policy against what these people will do to the country," McConnell said. The longest-serving Senate leader in history, McConnell is stepping down from his leadership post in the new Congress that will convene in January.

Pence Won't Vote

Vice President Mike Pence confirmed Friday that he's sitting out the presidential race this November. But he explained his decision with a complex mix of praise and criticism for Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump — and made clear he is not remotely interested in supporting Democrat nominee Kamala Harris.

"I cannot endorse President Trump's continuing assertion that I should have put aside my oath to support the Constitution, and act in a way that would have overturned the election," Pence told an assembly of conservative activists hosted by radio personality Erick Erickson.

Trump has argued that Pence should have used his power presiding over the Electoral College to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

"President Donald Trump was not only my president, he was my friend," Pence said, adding that is "part of what made the way our administration ended much more difficult."

Pence said multiple times that he was proud of the Trump administration's accomplishments, and he lauded Trump for his reaction to being nearly assassinated.

But the former vice president was critical of the direction the Republican Party has taken under the former president in his comeback bid. He was especially critical of GOP support for tariffs, a more isolationist U.S. role on the world stage and the move away from calling for a national ban on abortions.

"The fact that we have a platform that made no mention of the national debt, advocated massive taxes at our borders, and abandoning commitments we have to our allies around the world is troubling," Pence said, explaining the current GOP identity as "a populism unmoored to conservative principle."

DeSantis on Harris-Walz

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, once viewed as Trump's most threatening GOP presidential primary rival, says Democrats are manufacturing Harris' and Walz's candidacy "out of whole cloth."

"This is all manufactured," DeSantis said at "The Gathering."

DeSantis, who regularly complained about the national political media during his failed White House bid, reprised the approach Friday, arguing that "corporate media" are exaggerating Democratic enthusiasm since Biden ended his campaign and endorsed Harris.

"They're trying to create a cultural phenomenon around this candidate and for her running mate," DeSantis said.

He offered an especially harsh assessment of Walz, panning his fellow governor as a leftist who is posing as a man with Midwestern, heartland values.

DeSantis mocked Walz's quip about conservative opposition to abortion rights and LBGTQ civil rights. "This from the guy who set up a COVID snitch line encouraging Minnesotans to tattletale on their neighbors."

Republican elected officials and conservative commentators have in recent days hammered Walz for how he governed during the pandemic.

For all his criticisms, though, DeSantis does not think running mate choices — Walz or Sen. J.D. Vance for Republicans — will affect the outcome in November.

Kemp: Will Support Trump

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp insists he's not getting bogged down by 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.

"This big storm came through the state this week — and now we're dealing with Tropical Storm Debby," Kemp said at "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.

"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.

Close Encounter

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 Harris landed with her new running mate Walz for their first campaign stop in the state, Republican vice presidential nominee 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.