'I lost count a long time ago of the number of times I've said this election is unlike any that I have covered. This is presidential election number ten for me, and it just keeps getting less and less like anything that's come before it. I'm John King. And this is All Over the Map. And we're back in your podcast feed, following and listening to the voices of voters across the country. Because in case you haven't noticed, a lot has happened in the two months since we were last on the mic: an assassination attempt, a candidate swap, two conventions and one really big and really important vibe shift. At the moment we're recording this, this is as close a presidential race as it can get. And of course that means the electoral college system will come into play and this election will come down to a handful, maybe a half dozen critical swing states. There's Georgia, longtime Republican stronghold. It flipped the last time. Will it stay blue? Or will it go back to red? There's North Carolina, a state the Democrats look at and say, wait, we flipped Georgia. Demographics are the same. What is going on in North Carolina? Why can't we get you? Then this Wisconsin? There's Michigan, all important Pennsylvania, the so-called blue wall states. Yes, they tend to go blue, but they also have plenty, plenty of Trump supporters. There's Nevada. Not as many electoral votes in play there, but remarkably hard to predict which way Nevada will go. Still suffering from the Covid economy hangover. And then there's Arizona, a Sunbelt state. A border state. Yes, Bill Clinton did win it back in 1996. Ross Perot helped and Biden flipped it in 2020. But Arizona has gone for Republican candidates since Eisenhower in 1952, with those two exceptions. And when you look at the polls, look at the demographics, it is clear things are changing in Arizona. It's more diverse. It's more highly educated, it's more suburban. All the things that should help the Democrats. But it's incredibly competitive. And that's been borne out by the conversations we've had in our trips there to talk to voters over this past year. So Arizona is fascinating to me because of how close, how competitive is. And the big 2024 question, does it go back to red? Or does it stay blue? And that's why we started this series, so that we can go to the places and meet the people that matter. What do American voters think? What frustrates them? What motivates them? What gives them hope? What makes them mad? What makes them nervous when they sit down at the kitchen table at night and maybe do the bank account math? What sends them to the voting booth?

The working class. We need to be taken care of. Right? Because, you know, the majority of us are living one accident away from being unsheltered.

They'll do anything to win. And I just that scares me because I can't even imagine what that would be. When they have, like, a, like they call it a war chest of money.

We're going to introduce you now to two Arizona voters I've been talking to for the past six months. Two people who don't fit neatly into voter demographic groups or at least your traditional reflexive how you line people up. Two people who represent in their own ways why Arizona is, in fact, such a competitive political puzzle and a puzzle we're not going to solve until the very end of this race.

Really boring campaign. We don't have anything to talk about.

Nothing. I don't even know why you guys are here.

This is Melissa Cordero. She's 40, an Air Force veteran. She's also a transplant to Arizona, which is important. One of the reasons these Sun Belt states are changing is that so many new people are moving in. The metro areas, in Arizona, for example, Phoenix, or her neighborhood, which is Tucson, have been growing quite fast in recent years. Now, Melissa's interesting. She voted for Trump in 2020. She thought he was the candidate who would do the most to support the small business she owned back then. But when I first met her back in March, she was crystal clear she would not vote for Trump again. She called herself then a likely Biden voter, but she was open to third party candidates. Now she is excited and she is all in for Vice President Harris.

I feel this shift of energy in the places that I'm organizing in and fighting in. And I think that's what we need right now. I think this was a good move, and I appreciate that Biden stepped down.

Tell me more about that. The different groups are involved in sort of the then and now when Biden was still at the top of the ticket or now.

I'm with an organization called Common Defense, we're progressive veterans, AKA veterans against Trump. You know, a lot of that work has been focused on continuing to push the narrative that not all veterans are for Trump. Not all veterans are MAGA crazies, Second Amendment people. There are ones out there that truly believe in democracy. And, you know, we want things like our reproductive freedom. So we're just doing a lot of work around that. And we were doing some training in Phoenix, just talking about kind of the state of Arizona. And that's when, you know, everybody, the whole room just goes quiet. Everybody got their phone up and Trump was shot at and that just sucked the energy out of the room for everybody. I think all of us had this moment like this is it like this is something that's going to make this guy win. And then going from that to this new energy of I mean, it's kind of almost crazy that you don't even hear that being talked about anymore.

So you think it's better? You don't have any doubt that you have a stronger chance with the vice president at the top of the ticket?

I think this is the stronger chance.

Are there any conversations, I know where you are and you talk about the increased energy, but are there conversations, worries at all that is America ready for a woman and a woman of color as its president?

Man, I don't think our conversations have been based off of that. I think it's just this is the right candidate. For me, personally, I know there's, like, I want to see a woman president. You know, Mexico just elected a woman president. And I think that's great. So I'd love to see our country also do that with with the right and fit candidate, for sure. But I think a lot of the conversations that I'm still in is just who's who's best fit and not a whole lot about, you know, her being a Black woman. But I mean, I think it's important.

We're getting to the phase of the campaign where energy gets tested by how many people are willing to knock on doors, how many people are willing to show up to phone bank. How many people are willing to just ask, what else can I do? Do you see evidence of that that's different? You know, I guess, visual proof that it's different with her than it was with the president?

Yes. I mean, the amount of events that I've been invited to just since that has increased. I got to meet the main campaign manager for Harris, and that was like a little rally party that we had here in Tucson. And everybody in there was just motivated, you know, And it was to get people to sign up, to volunteer, to host other events and then doorknock and canvass and all that other good stuff. So that wasn't really happening before.

So just yesterday, Kari Lake wins the Republican Senate nomination. She's going to go against Ruben Gallego. She's obviously very well known. She still thinks she won the 2020 election that she lost. This place, this state, where we have it all over the country, but this state has become almost a test laboratory for election denial. Is that still as prominent? Is it still bubbling as much as it was in 2020? Has it faded?

You know, Kari is right in the line of those characters. You know, Trump, Vance, I put Kari there too. This is somebody that's called on for people to get a Glock. You know, so there's wild, wild people. It's amazing that they're even still relevant. I think our focus where I'm sitting is on Ruben, right? And all the things that we, you know, him, again, being a veteran and the things that he believes in, protecting reproductive rights, taking care of veterans, making sure they're not deported. And again, it just aligns with what's most important to me. And then also the organizations that I'm with.

How are things here from where we were here months ago? Economy, inflation, the things that, for most people, if especially not politically active and committed to a certain party, you know, the things that make the people in the middle think, okay, I want to stay the course. And it's all different now with the new candidate. But how do you what's your sense of how people are feeling?

I think what I'm feeling is, you know, we have the working class. We need to be taken care of, right? Because the majority of us are living one accident away from being unsheltered. You know, so focusing on who we're electing at the local level and and how that how that trickles up to that level. I think it's just important that we're taking care of how we're struggling and we're focusing on that jobs, money, rent caps, all the things that cause a lot of stress. Every election is important, but there's a lot of things coming from that, from, you know, Trump's camp that would just completely change life as we know it. You know, reproductive rights, trans health care, all this stuff. I mean, a lot of people would be affected immediately. And we just have to stay motivated around that.

On a scale of 1 to 10, ten being your certain, one being not so much. Would Biden win Arizona? Where would you have been?

Man, What was it? 1 to 10?

1 to 10.

Six.

What about Harris?

I think Harris is going to win.

Is that a ten? Is that a nine?

It's ten. Yeah.

That's a ten, you're that confident?

I'm feeling, I'm feeling confident. And I guess I'm basing that off of what I'm willing to do for it and what I think others are, too.

Well, thank you.

You're welcome.

'When we come back, a former double hater, somebody who was deeply unexcited about a Biden-Trump rematch who says, yes, the big switch does make the race more exciting, but he still doesn't know how he's going to vote.

Welcome back. I first talked to Ray Flores in the spring at the bar at El Charro, a century old Tucson restaurant his family owns. Ray is a true independent. Yes, that's how he's registered to vote. But when you spend time with him, you listen to him. You realize, an independent, well, that's who he is.

There are people in both parties that I trust. There are people in the middle that I trust. There are people that don't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out and I trust. That there are people on the top of the hill that I don't.

'He wasn't actually willing to tell us who he voted for back in 2020. He was frustrated by his options in the presidential race and our first conversation, it was still Biden-Trump, two leading candidates that Ray thought had done little or nothing to make his life or his business any better in the four years each had the opportunity to govern. And at that point, Ray thought both were too old to be expected to do anything different, any better, if given another chance.

I'm a little bit lost.

The race has changed. But Ray's frustration has not.

'As an independent, I've been getting texts from, kind of, both parties for some reason, or I'll get messages and, like, the word "humiliate," let's humiliate the other one. Let's destroy the other one. It's not, hey, let's win. It's humiliation. It's destruction. I just wish we had a little less of that in our political system. I also don't understand why we have to make them be superheroes. And if you do that, you think that they're infallible and then you either are let down or you're disappointed and then you create animosity. Why can't we just look at them as people? And I think that's gone. So do you - if you can't vote for a person, are you voting for this superhero that's going to fix everything or destroy everything? That's movies. Cartoon books. That's what we have those for. It shouldn't be in our system, but it is. So it makes it hard for someone like me who just goes wait a minute. I don't ever go to see Spider-Man and go, that could really happen. I mean, one day if I got bit, I could be climbing up that mountain, you know, and or that building with webbed fingers. But somehow, our parties have done that. I just, I have such a hard time wanting to pick either one of those.

So if I handed you a piece of paper right now that had Harris, Trump, Green Party, Libertarian Party, maybe 1 or 2 other third party candidates, could you it or...

Who's the Libertarian Party right now?

So, they haven't nominated anyone yet.

Yeah. I probably pick that one.

You'd probably pick the Libertarian Party?

Yeah.

So if you had to vote today, you'd probably vote third party?

I think so.

Ray talks a lot about his simple lack of trust in the people who run the political machine in this country. He did concede there are politicians he does know and he does trust. They tend to be local and that's why. He knows them, therefore, he builds the relationship. Democratic Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona is one. Kelly's wife, the former Democratic congresswoman Gabby Giffords from Tucson, is another. So is, interestingly, a Republican representative Juan Ciscomani, whose district includes the suburbs of Tucson, where Ray lives, but where the personal connection stops. That's where the trust issue comes in. The party leaders, to Ray, especially in faraway Washington, too unknowable, too ambitious, too calculating, in his view, to be trusted.

They'll do anything to win. And I, just, that scares me because I can't even imagine what that would be. When they have, like, a like they call it, a "war chest" of money. So, I just can't get out of my own head that I think, well, no matter what, no matter who wins, I'm still going to have to make payroll every week. I'm still going to have to make sure we pay rent. I'm still going to have to do good in my community. I'm still going to have to be a good father and son, and I have to be as honest as possible. But I'm not willing to do anything to be the best restaurant, which could mean setting fire to the other restaurant down the street or calling health department into the middle of night frivolously to do so just to get them a bad rap or hiring a shill to put bad stuff on the internet. I'm not willing to do that. I'm not willing to be that person. I'm not willing to win at that cost. And I don't know that now our system isn't just designed to do that. And the people that work in that system that make their living, that create that content aren't designed for that. So how do we ever really know now? And that concerns me to say that I can, that anything I do could change that now, especially just one vote.

'So help me solve that in the sense that your skepticism is real, you can see it of both parties. You can see it and you can feel it when you talk. What does it take to break it? What does it take for you to say, I trust that person, or at least I think I might be able to trust that person. So I'm going to - I'll take the risk.

'It's probably no different than a tale of Spider-Man, really. It's probably a comic book of unreality that I won't get to speak to them. I work with my mayor. I'm involved with our city. She's a Democrat. I work with her because this is the mayor of my city. I work with people on the other side that work with other issues. I work with development services that have multiple political parties because I can talk to them. I don't know how do we - you said at the beginning what you liked about this was that we could create a narrative and talk to each other. And I would sit in a room with many people to talk to them. That's not being taught anymore and it's not being popularized anymore and it's not being monetized anymore. And that's where it's failing. So how do you, I don't know? How do you - how do we do that? Maybe this is it. And maybe the next one you do is a room full of different people and you try and do that. But does that pay the ticket? Does that incite the advertisers to fund the machine? I don't know.

'I'm fascinated by this moment, having done this for a long time, that there are a lot of disillusioned people who are vibrant, contributing members of their community, yet have this wall that I don't trust those people anymore. I don't see that, I don't - for all the things you do, all the things you do, here's another opportunity to be involved in something but you've made a decision that it's not worth it. Because I don't trust them. I don't like them. I don't think they're in it for the right reasons.

'Well, I don't know that it's worth it? I think that's actually - that's not true, that it's not worth it. You know, I have to trust, if I go into a doctor and he cuts me open and he tells me, I have to trust that. Because I'm opened up and he's going to work inside my belly or something. So I have to have sort of a blind, reasonable level of trust. But I can read a lot about the vitamins in the food that I eat. So I'll start there. I'll start on the small stuff that I can control. I can control with what I'm going to put in my body. I control what vitamin or what I might eat. But I probably can't control if I'm on the operating table. The problem we have now is that even what we eat or fed or read about may not be what we are actually getting. That's difficult for me. I just don't know that I can trust that when I'm sitting down now on the operating table with the big parties that I'm going to get the truth anymore. Because it's been cooked and it's been cooked for a bigger, for a win, like you must win. Maybe we should stop talking about winning and accepting losses because there is always going to be a loss.

Is there? I guess I'm trying to crack the code. I don't know that there is a code.

For me?

Yeah. If you don't trust, you don't trust the two parties. So is it, you know, when you get when you get closer to the election and.

'I - there's people in both parties I trust. You know, there are people in both parties that I trust.

They're just not running for president.

They're not just running. No, they're not running for president. There are people in both parties that I trust. It's not like it's easy to just fit in the column that are, oh, you're in that column? I will blindly trust you. That's not going to happen for me.

It's always, there, when you get closer, is there something we talked last time about the inflationary pressures on your business and the difficulty in finding good workers and retaining workers, whether that's just because of the local economy, whether it's immigration issue, all of the above. So it's a complicated, ongoing, multilayered, when you get closer, will you set the names aside and at least look at what they say they would do? Or you don't believe that?

'Absolutely. I mean, I, I do think that the bar has been broken for a long time, and I think both parties have probably benefited from that somewhere. I think, as I've said to you before, if - it doesn't make sense to me that I couldn't hire somebody and get a worker visa for them, but some tech company could. Just imbalance. To me, there's an imbalance there. Maybe I don't understand why, but on its surface seems imbalanced. I don't think that everybody that has made it through the border or come across the desert are bad people. Do I think that some bad people are coming through? Sure I do. Because why wouldn't that? It's in the nature of the beast. There's an 80/20 rule that everything for me as a small business like I would I worry about, for instance, is, I have a friend of mine right now and he's building a new facility to outfit his stores. And he's a good year behind schedule and just pulling his last remaining hair out of his head over frustrations with the government process. That needs to be fixed. Because when he does take all of that effort and all that risk and he goes to open those jobs created, may keep that person off the street or may keep that person from doing something that puts them in a negative spiral down. All this man wants to do is open his commissary. We really should help him. What party is going to do that better? I don't know.

'As you get deeper in the campaign, Trump was speaking to a National Association of Black Journalists, and he said that Kamala Harris just turned Black, that she used to promote herself as Indian-American, and now she's Black American. His running mate has been in this controversy because of things he has said, some of them several years ago, but some more recently, that people with children are higher value citizens than people without children. Any of that stuff matter to you?

My ethnicity is kind of a mixed bag in the world of, you know, let's call it the Mexican population in the southwest United States, which, we're 60 miles from the border. There's a term called "pocho." Pocho means, like, you're you're Mexican, but you're not because you don't really you know, you don't speak fluent Spanish, Spanish as your first language. So, we've had some of that or a coconut, you're brown on the outside, but you're really white on the inside. We've had those things come up before. I've dealt with that before. I was told once by somebody that I dated, his father that said I don't like you dating my daughter because you're Mexican. So I've had that before. But I kind of laugh about it, right? Because I think to be an American, you're truly a mutt. I thought that was the, that was the best part in line in Stripes, right? Like, we're all mutts. I thought that was the cool part. And then it became an issue to divide us. And then it became an issue to get popular, to gain some votes, to win some money to bring it there. Then it became like this thing that we could use. And I just disagree with both sides of it.

When you get into the last couple of months, you just kind of do this organically and figure it out. You told me last time your wife says you have to vote. So.

Oh yeah.

I assume you're assuming you're still listening to her.

Yeah, I think there will probably a point where one night I'll wake up and feel it. You know, I really do think our country would do better to focus a lot more on local issues. Start with the small things. Let's do that. And then maybe we can make the big decisions better. But maybe that's impossible now. I don't know.

Allie Malloy, our senior producer for All over the Map. Lover, trust me, of a good plate of chimichangas from El Charro in Tucson. Well, here we are again.

Here we are again. Nothing's changed since the last time we were here.

Except everything.

John, there's been this overarching theme from a lot of our voters the exhaustion, the exasperation, the dissatisfaction with the political system and the state of politics. I don't know if anyone exemplifies that more than Ray Flores. What's different about what you're hearing from people like Ray?

Ray, to me, is exhibit A of the price of polarization. In the sense that here's somebody who runs a business, he's got a teenager, he's a pragmatist. He wants to get stuff done. He has to get stuff done. And yet, he wants nothing to do with our political system because he doesn't think it can get anything done. He doesn't think people will go into a room and have a common sense debate and then, just, what's the math? Cut the best deal, try to move forward. And if you get it wrong, raise your hand and say, I got it wrong. Let's come back and do it again tomorrow. He's just disgusted because he sees nobody trying to do the things he has to do every day in his life to keep his business afloat, to keep his family afloat. He's thinking about voting third party because he can't find a home on the biggest decision a country makes: who is your leader? It's like, I don't want any part of it, it frustrates me. And it's a shame. And you find it everywhere. And you find it a lot among people in the business community.

Yeah.

You have to do stuff every day. You have to compromise every day. And the fact that he is thinking about going third party because he feels a civic responsibility to vote and he's honest, his wife tells him he has to vote. Now, the Harris change does intrigue him. You see that. You see it in his eyes. He has a little spark, a little curiosity. And that's where you say you're in a 50/50 race in these 50/50 battleground states. So that's an opportunity for Harris, a true independent voter. And the middle, it's a shrinking middle from when I started doing this almost 40 years ago, but the middle settles the close ones, the people who are moderates, the people who are independents, the people who go back and forth, they are the voters who settle the close ones, if you can get them off the sidelines.

If.

If.

Let's back up a little bit and talk about Arizona as a swing state. It's pretty fascinating how close it's been. And I think a lot of people don't realize Biden only won by .4% and Trump beat Clinton, I believe, by almost 4 points. So what's going on in Arizona?

'That's the question. Was it a blip or was it a flip? The blip, you know, just a one-off and it happens? Or is Arizona trending? Is the map changing? And so, again, this is the birthplace of Barry Goldwater. You know, this is a conservative icon. And who was the disciple of Barry Goldwater? Well, that was John McCain. This was a Republican state. We're out west. We're different. We want to do things our own. Leave us alone, Washington. We came west for a reason. Now, that was years and years ago, but a lot of people still adopt that in their heads.

Mentality.

'We're special. We're Frontier. We're out there. But then, look what's happening. Look at what's happening every time we visit Arizona. I mean, I've been taking trips there for 40 years and it's night and day. But even now, you go back six months later and there's new construction on the roads. There's a new restaurant here. There's a new housing development there. Arizona is exploding. It's way more suburban than it used to be. It used to be much more rural. Way more suburban, more higher education, more diversity, the demographics that in recent years favor the Democrats. And you see that again in state politics. And then you see it in that Biden 10,000-vote victory. And so to me, 2024 in Arizona is a giant question. Is the map really changing? Or is it is it going to be one of those states? Is it trending blue? Is it purple? Or is it really red and it just had a one-off in 2020? 2024 won't definitively answer that question. Takes a few cycles, but it's a giant piece of that puzzle.

Immigration is obviously such a critical issue in this election. But what I was fascinated about on our trip to Arizona is how different they talk about immigration and being we visited some border towns and actually being there and talking to those people. And Tucson's not that far away either. What did you make of how people discuss immigration in Arizona?

They're normal. They're nuanced. They're sensitive. They're respectful. They're everything in the national debate about immigration is not. And that's why they're so disgusted with the politicians leading that debate, because they live in bilingual communities down in the border areas. You'll meet Republicans and you'll meet Democrats say, of course, we need more border security. But in this case and other people we've met, they say, can we also have a guest worker program?

Right.

'Can we also have a sane system that says, if I need a dishwasher or a line cook or a waitress, I can find that person just like the big high-tech companies who have a lot more money and a lot more political influence? When they want an engineer, somehow they can get an engineer into the country from overseas, but he can't get workers? In Ray's view, this feeds into his idea that the political class is broken, that the machine is all about money and access and influence. So, they're much more pragmatic, they're much more practical, but they're much more respectful. And they keep seeing these politicians pop up and saying things that they just don't believe. Now, Trump's tone infuriates Ray about immigrants, but he also has great suspicion when it comes to Harris that, does she mean it? Does she mean it? Will she really do the border security piece? That's the part you get from these true independents or people who have just become so disaffected. They just don't believe it. They don't believe it. They just think politicians are going to say something to get my vote and then walk away with not a moment of remorse.

So, John, on the other end of Wray, we have Melissa. She kind of just also defies stereotypes in a lot of ways, but in a very different way. She's a veteran. She voted for Trump in 2020, but now she is all in on Harris, which is fascinating because six months ago she was very "meh" on Biden. But one issue she just can't get away from is reproductive rights. Is that something that's going to move the needle for Harris in this election?

'It could. That's part of the challenge. And that's why, Melissa, I think is so important. When you think about the puzzle. We were just talking about Ray Flores, a true independent. His vote would matter if Harris can get him in. If Harris can win his vote, people like Ray can be decisive. But challenge number one for Harris was reviving and re-energizing the Democratic base. And that's where Melissa is so critical. When we first met her, she was kind of a flatline, I'll probably vote for Biden for policy. She doesn't like Trump. So it was a negative vote. I don't want Trump. I'm not going to vote for Biden. Now she is just fired up. Reproductive rights. Arizona is one of ten states, at least ten states where there'll be a ballot initiative on reproductive rights. And Democrats are hoping it gins up turnout. And the suburban people who might have been, might be Republican or Republican leaning or might be mad at Biden or mad at Washington will say, I'm coming out to vote for this. I want to vote yes. Energy and enthusiasm, especially positive energy matters in a close competitive race. This is as close a race as I have ever covered. So in that environment, every vote matters. In a state won by 10,000 votes last time. Every vote matters. And one of the ways you get more people to turn out to vote is with energetic activists who are working extra hard. And the energy we saw in Melissa in our last conversation compared to the first conversation was night and day. And that is a critical building block. You cannot get to Ray Flores, the votes of the independents in the middle don't matter if your base stays home.

Yeah.

And that was Joe Biden's problem. Harris has the potential to turn them all out. And if she does, then she has to reach into that pot in the middle where Ray Flores is and win enough votes. So, Melissa is the building block. And then voters like Ray, they decide.

This podcast version of All Over the Map is a CNN Audio production. This episode was produced by Dan Bloom and Allie Malloy. Our editor is Graelyn Brashear, and our senior producer is Haley Thomas. Dan Dzula is our technical director and Steve Lickteig is Executive Producer of CNN Audio. Support from Nicky Robertson, Jacqueline Kalil. Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, Jon Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. Special thanks to Wendy Brundige. I'm John King. Thanks for listening.