On Lisa Hoberg’s phone, the group chat with what she calls her “mom friends” is a politics-free zone. In the political hotbed of suburban Phoenix, it seemed safer that way. Why risk ruining 15 years of friendship by bringing up Donald J. Trump?
That meant that some of Ms. Hoberg’s closest friends had no idea she, a lifelong active Republican, had gone through a major political transformation — one that surprised even her sometimes. It meant her friend, Jill Aguirre, a 59-year-old mortgage officer, had never mentioned her worries that immigration was leading to crime at her daughter’s college campus. And she had no idea how strongly Debbie Samartzis, a 57-year-old interior designer who was a registered independent for much of her life, felt about abortion rights.
But it’s hard to hold back in an election year.
When Ms. Hoberg, 50, asked her mom friends to discard the informal politics ban and sit down to talk, they readily agreed to fill up their wine glasses around her table and let a reporter listen in.
Their conversation could have consequences. These are women poised to play a critically important role in this year’s election, a contest that may be remembered for its historic gender gap. They are the sort of women — college educated, suburban, moderate — that Vice President Kamala Harris is counting on in overwhelming margins, hoping their turnout will swamp that of working-class men who favor Mr. Trump.
They are voters Mr. Trump has, in fits and starts, tried to win over. And they explained clearly why his overtures weren’t working.
With a bit of chagrin, Ms. Hoberg says voted for Mr. Trump eight years ago because he “had not offended me a fraction of the time that I am offended by him now.”
“How can this person possibly be what we’re trying to teach our children to emulate?” Ms. Samartzis asked her friends, though she was not really expecting an answer.
Ms. Aguirre wearily smiled as she thought of her boyfriend, a devoted Trump supporter who finds the former president entertaining and bold. “With him, it’s not worth arguing,” she said.
“Why did they have to go so extreme?” she later asked of Republicans. Her friends shrugged and nodded in agreement
Shaken by the Court
After filling their glasses and serving themselves pasta, the three women sat down at Ms. Hoberg’s dining room table, surrounded by years’ worth of photos of her son, who was in kindergarten when they all met at the local elementary school.
They slipped into easy shorthand forged over years of ups and downs. Nobody needed to ask what made 2016 so excruciating for Ms. Samartzis — Mr. Trump’s election paled in comparison to her husband’s death. Each of them knew that one of Ms. Hoberg’s prized possessions was a signed photo of Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, prominently displayed in her living room.
Yet, they had never sat around and talked about abortion. None of them had ever considered getting one, they said, and they did not know friends who had. They all expressed ambivalence about just how accessible abortion should be.
Even in the spring of 2022, when the Supreme Court ruled to overturn Roe v. Wade, they were not exactly alarmed. But their understanding and frustration crept up in months later.
Ms. Aguirre remembers being shocked when another friend told her last year that she would need to travel to Nevada for a dilation and curettage, a procedure used both for abortions and after some miscarriages, after her doctor advised her that her pregnancy was not viable.
“Thankfully she had the resources, so she could do it, but there aren’t very many people who can just fly to get that done,” she said, remembering that as the moment she started to realize how much she cared about the issue. “That’s awful. You really have to have empathy.”
The women all agreed that they had taken legal abortions and access to birth control for granted, never really factoring that issue into their political choices. As a leader in the local Republican Party, Ms. Hoberg said she was more focused on taxes and education, unaware of just how much other activists were pushing to overturn federal abortion rights.
In fact, her views and education, she realizes now, were not shaped so much by religion or her parents, but by Gen X ethos and pop culture. She noted that her first understanding about abortions came from “Dirty Dancing,” the 1980s blockbuster that included a dramatic scene about an illegal abortion.
“Then, to me, my forever view has just been: Do I like the idea of abortion? No,” she said. “But do I want women going and getting unsafe abortions and dying? No, I really don’t love that.”
All three women had concerns about an Arizona ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution and override a state court decision to reinstate an 1864 law that banned nearly all abortions. What if it was too easy to get the procedure? They puzzled over exactly what constituted a viable pregnancy or a threat to a woman’s life. They quickly returned to their consensus: Even if some hypothetical abortions made them uneasy, the decision should be left to a woman and her doctor.
“If I have to decide between a full 1800s ban and, you know, what some people may consider to be a little too far — you all don’t give me much choice,” Ms. Hoberg said.
Scoffing at Trump as Protector
On another major issue, the women, particularly Ms. Aguirre, felt pulled in the other direction.
“I don’t think that abortion is necessarily on the top for me — I’m conflicted because I think that we need tighter border control, I really do,” she said. “It’s not even just the Mexican immigrants coming in or trying to come in illegally. They’re coming from all other countries now. And, you know, we don’t have the resources to have them come in and take care of them.”
Ms. Samartzis nodded. “It is an issue here in Arizona,” she said. “The money has to be funded to put more border security and all that kind of thing.”
They each said they wished Ms. Harris would talk about their concerns more explicitly.
Ms. Aguirre, who raised her daughter largely on her own and now cares for her aging parents, said she worried about drugs, especially fentanyl, coming in over the border. Though she did not know anyone personally struggling with addiction, she said it felt like a constant looming threat in the area. And she is convinced that waves of illegal immigration are to blame for thefts at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where her daughter is a sophomore.
“I mean, honestly, I think that that’s something with the Biden administration,” Ms. Hoberg said. “And quite frankly, my early views of Kamala were very shaped by that because from what I understood it, she was kind of tasked to that.”
At that, Ms. Aguirre again nodded vigorously.
They were all vaguely aware of federal legislation on the border that Mr. Trump helped block. But they were not all that interested in the back and forth. And they did not have specific policy solutions in mind.
They also had not heard about Mr. Trump’s explicit pitch to women like them on this matter: He could “be their protector,” he said at a recent rally. As they watched a video clip of the speech, they shook their heads in disbelief.
“I wouldn’t want to be in a room alone with him,” Ms. Samartzis said.
At that, Ms. Hoberg’s husband, Troy, wandered into the kitchen to pour himself a glass of wine as he watched a Dallas Cowboys game. Like a majority of men, Mr. Hoberg plans to vote for Mr. Trump.
“Babe, I’m just going to vote for Trump and then I won’t even need you,” Ms. Hoberg called out sarcastically. “Because he’s going to be my protector. You don’t need to be my protector anymore.”
Mr. Hoberg laughed. He had married a committed Republican more than 20 years earlier. Now, they just agreed to disagree, often by teasing each other.
“That’s really rich,” Ms. Hoberg said as Mr. Trump’s comments ended, rolling her eyes and taking another sip.
Rating Harris
While Ms. Hoberg voted for President Biden in 2020, she did so without any enthusiasm — almost on the flip of a coin. It was not until the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol that she became a “full blown Never Trumper,” she said.
All three women remembered sitting on their couches watching in disbelief as scenes of chaos unfolded on television.
In 2022, Ms. Hoberg publicly criticized her party’s candidates for Senate and governor. The local Republican Party officially censured her for it last month. By then, she had made a cameo in a local advertisement for Ruben Gallego, the Democrat who is now leading Ms. Lake.
Still, she says, she does not identify as a Democrat.
“My views haven’t changed, but what it means to be a Republican locally has changed,” she said.
Over the years, Ms. Hoberg has played a game with her friends, asking them to rate their opinion on any given topic — Covid mandates or travel plans — on a scale of one to 10, a playful way of quantifying their views.
The political version of the exercise began with, “How enthusiastic are you about voting for Ms. Harris?”
Seven, Ms. Aguirre said.
Seven, Ms. Samartzis agreed.
Three or four, Ms. Hoberg said.
“Nothing had ever impressed me about her, ever, until the debate,” she said. “Quite frankly, it is more a vote against Trump than it is for anyone else.”
The post These Arizona Women Are Keeping Kamala Harris’s Hopes Alive appeared first on New York Times.
