President Joe Biden will visit the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona on Friday as Democrats make a push to keep the Native vote in their court.
The visit marks his first to a Native community since becoming president. He is expected to discuss his administration’s achievements with tribal communities.
“The President will discuss the Biden-Harris Administration’s record of delivering for Tribal communities, including keeping his promise to make this historic visit to Indian Country — his first as President,” the White House said in a statement.
Biden is expected to travel to Phoenix on Thursday and stay in the area overnight. Friday morning, Biden will visit the Gila River Indian Community for the speech. The community is largely bordered by Phoenix and Chandler. The president will fly from Phoenix to Wilmington, Delaware, later on Friday to spend the weekend there.
His visit to the community comes less than two weeks before the election. Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), her running mate, visited the Gila River Indian Community this month.
Democrats in Arizona are trying to increase voter turnout in the state’s many tribal communities. There are over 300,000 Native Americans living in Arizona. In the Navajo Nation, the state’s largest tribal community, with 67,000 eligible voters, Biden is estimated to have 60% to 90% of the vote, according to Vox. Most precincts covering the Tohono O’odham Nation, which overlaps with Maricopa, Pima, and Pinal counties, voted above 90% for Biden, according to a precinct map analysis by ABC15 Arizona done in 2020.
Gila River Indian Community Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis said the tribal vote could make a difference in the election next month.
“The whole country is focused on the blue wall, but I want to remind everyone that there is also a tribal wall of voters that is made up of large tribal populations in five of the swing states. Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada, North Carolina, and Michigan all have substantial tribal populations,” Lewis said when Walz visited the community earlier in October.
“The tribal vote has never been more important,” he continued.
Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), who is running for Senate in the state, has said he wants to visit all 22 tribal communities in the state. He has visited 20 so far.
Gallego recently embarked on an eight-hour hike into the basin of the Grand Canyon to visit the most remote tribal community in the continental United States, the Havasupai. The only way in or out of the area is by mule, helicopter, or on foot.
“This type of outreach is the kind of thing that matters,” Gallego told NBC 12 News on the hike. “Especially if you want to govern.”
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The 500-member tribe has inhabited this land in the canyon for more than 800 years, according to anthropologists. Just 152 people in Supai, Arizona, registered to vote in 2020, and 62 cast a ballot in the last presidential race, according to the Coconino County Recorder’s Office. Biden won the village with 57 votes, and former President Donald Trump received five votes.
“They deserve to be heard,” Gallego said.