Trump campaigns in Arizona and Montana on 2nd day of Western swing to help boost GOP candidates

LAS VEGAS (AP) — President Donald Trump’s midterm roadshow to rally the GOP is stopping Wednesday in swing-state Arizona and a Republican-leaning U.S. House district in Montana.

The visits come as the Republican president works to bolster his party in Nov. 3 elections that will determine control of Congress, and they follow stops earlier this week in Ohio and Alaska.

In Bullhead City, Arizona, Trump will be rallying support for Rep. Andy Biggs, who is seeking to defeat incumbent Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs. Afterward, Trump is set to travel to Western Montana’s 1st District to try to boost Aaron Flint, a former aide to retiring Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke, who served as Interior secretary in Trump’s first-term Cabinet.

Trump has kept up a brisk pace of hour-plus-long rallies — new White House press secretary Katie Zacharia called it a “midterm blitz” — in his effort to stem expected Republican losses and fight a historical trend in which the president’s party typically loses seats in elections halfway through their term in the White House.

Arizona stands out as the lone swing state among the president’s recent stops, though the airport rally will be in an area of the state known as a Republican stronghold. His other visits so far in October have taken him into traditionally solid Republican territory — Alabama, Nebraska, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas — as he weathers low approval ratings, rising costs and the Iran war.

With under three weeks left in the campaign, the Western swing comes as Trump’s party has begun retreating from a handful of battleground U.S. House races and Democrats aim to raise money for candidates who seemed like long shots earlier this year.

The shifting money in the final weeks of midterm campaigns reflects an increasingly defensive posture by Republicans, who have already trimmed their expectations in U.S. Senate races, and new aggression from Democrats, who are trying to capitalize on Trump’s low public approval.

Trump twice won Arizona, in 2016 and 2024, but lost the state in 2020. Montana’s 1st District is slightly less Republican overall than the state, which voted for Trump by double digits in each of his three presidential campaigns.

Biggs, of Arizona, has been a stalwart ally of the president and assisted Trump’s attempt to block certification by the House of Trump’s 2020 election defeat. A one-time head of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, he’s represented a safe GOP seat since winning election in 2016.

He faces Hobbs, who narrowly defeated Republican Kari Lake in the governor’s race four years ago in a state that has increasingly elected Democrats to statewide office.

In Montana, Flint won the president’s and Zinke’s endorsement during the June primary. An Army veteran and talk-radio host, Flint assails progressive Democrats like Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani as part of his campaign.

Flint’s opponent is Sam Forstag, a Democratic labor union leader and Forest Service smokejumper, a specialized firefighter who gets to fires by aircraft and parachute.

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Catalini reported from Morrisville, Pennsylvania.