How Donald Trump, Kamala Harris will try to appeal to Arizona voters in presidential debate

Programming note: KTAR News 92.3 FM will air Tuesday’s presidential debate live starting at 6 p.m. Outspoken with Bruce and Gaydos will host a special reaction show afterward.

PHOENIX — One Valley political analyst predicts the two presidential candidates will dive into several issues critical to Arizona voters during Tuesday night’s presidential debate.

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris will square up in their first, and possibly only, debate with less than two months to go until the Nov. 5 election.

Chuck Coughlin, the CEO of HighGround Consulting, Inc., told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Arizona’s Morning News he expects Harris and Trump to dive deeply into the top three issues Arizona voters care most about.

Those are inflation, immigration and affordable housing, according to a recent poll from Noble Predictive Insights (NPI). In fact, affordable housing knocked abortion out of the three most pertinent issues to Arizona voters.

“It’s not just an issue in Arizona,” Coughlin said of affordable housing. “It’s an issue across the country.”

Candidates’ positions on inflation, immigration, housing affordability

Coughlin expects both Trump and Harris to use the presidential debate as an opportunity to flesh out their stances on these issues.

“Harris has talked about a subsidy for first-time homebuyers on their down payments,” he said. “Another thing that’s gonna help with that … is, hopefully, an interest rate cut. That should be coming here in the next month.”

The Federal Reserve is expected to cut its interest rate when it next meets Sept. 17-18, the Associated Press said.

However, he expects Trump to go hard and heavy when it comes to immigration. It’s one of his top campaign issues. In fact, the former president visited the Arizona-Mexico border in late August to condemn border-related crime. He’s also returning to southern Arizona on Thursday, when he will campaign in Tucson.

“I would imagine Trump voters are going to be very fired up about the border discussion about the failures of the Biden Administration and the 3.5 million people that have been entered into the country under parole circumstances,” Coughlin said. “I’m sure he’s going to want to talk a lot about that.”

In response, he expects Harris to strike back with a jab of her own by mentioning Trump’s sabotage of the bipartisan immigration bill.

“I think people in Arizona that pay close attention to that probably believe that narrative,” Coughlin said. “We saw both Sen. [Kyrsten] Sinema and Sen. [Mark] Kelly supporting a bipartisan bill, which would have provided a ton of resources to the border.”

Presidential debate between Trump, Harris is historic

It’s unclear if future debates are in store or if this will be their one and only debate.

This election cycle’s timeline has been accelerated since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris in July.

This will also be the first time Trump and Harris will meet in person, according to the Associated Press.

“I think it’s going to be fascinating to see who gets the upper hand,” Coughlin said.

The debate will take place in Philadelphia at the National Constitution Center.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.