Trump in Phoenix: What to know about Donald Trump's upcoming event at Dream City Church

Former President Donald Trump will visit Arizona on Jan. 26 for the first time since 2022.

He will appear at a Republican-aligned megachurch in north Phoenix as part of the Arizona GOP’s “Freedom Fest” event.

The visit likely will be the first of many as the 2024 presidential race ramps up.

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The Arizona visit suggests Trump is focused on the general election

The Arizona Republican Party announced Trump’s visit just hours before the former president delivered a blowout victory in the Iowa caucuses, the kickoff contest in the GOP presidential nomination process.

Trump finished with 51% of the vote in Iowa even as he battles dozens of felony charges across four criminal trials, some accusing him of subverting American democracy.

Trump’s runaway victory in Iowa tempered speculation that his leading competitors, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, pose a serious threat to his candidacy.

If his winning streak continues, Trump likely will have sewn-up the nomination by the time Arizona’s March 19 presidential preference election happens. That means the real fight for Arizona will be the general election in November.

Arizona is one of just a few battleground states seen as up for grabs by both parties. President Joe Biden most recently appeared in Arizona in September.

“Clearly this demonstrates that the campaign has finally started in earnest, and that they're going to focus on especially the places where they need to be competitive,” Paul Bentz, a Republican strategist based in Arizona, said of Trump coming to Phoenix.

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In break from the norm, the Ariz. Republican Party is hosting Trump's event

While the Arizona GOP’s own rules prohibit the state party from taking sides in Republican primary races, it has strengthened its ties to the former president.

Jeff DeWit, the state GOP chair, worked as the top official for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign in Arizona and later worked for Trump’s national re-election bid in 2020. Trump in 2018 picked DeWit to serve as the chief financial officer of NASA.

Pro-Trump forces have grown influential within the state party over the past few years and promoted the Arizona Senate’s discredited “audit” of 2020 election ballots, an effort that Arizona Republic investigations found were encouraged, funded, and carried out by Trump loyalists.

The Arizona Republican Party’s bylaws compel the party to stay neutral in Republican primary races. Still, some counties have bucked those rules and endorsed Trump even while the presidential primary race is ongoing. The Arizona GOP did not respond to a question about how the upcoming event complies with its bylaws.

"There's still several declared Republicans running for president. So them sponsoring the event and basically giving Trump their endorsement is outside the norm of what we've traditionally seen from the party apparatus in the past,” Bentz said.

Why Dream City Church? Venue is Republican-aligned, with history of COVID-19 misinformation

The venue, Dream City Church, frequently hosts Republican-aligned events. That included a Trump rally held in June 2020, during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, when public health officials discouraged large, in-person gatherings.

The church came under fire for claiming ahead of the event that its air-purification system could kill 99% of COVID-19, a claim that contradicted federal agencies’ guidance and swiftly was debunked by scientists.

Bentz said that the choice of venue could be a sign that Trump plans to visit conservative strongholds, as he did in 2020, rather than aim his pitch towards swing voters in the middle of the electorate.

“It is so far a rehash of what they've done in the past, going to these familiar places to have the adoring crowds. Demonstrated in 2020, that was not an effective strategy,” said Bentz.

Trump carried Arizona when he was elected president in 2016. He lost the state to President Joe Biden in 2020 by a slim margin of about 11,000 votes.

Donald Trump over the years has campaigned often in Arizona

Arizona has been one of the former president’s more frequent campaign destinations. He visited the state seven times during his 2016 run for president, seven more times while running for president in 2020, and four times since he left office in early 2021, according to an Arizona Republic tally.

The last time Trump visited Arizona, he headlined a rally in Mesa to urge Republicans to support the GOP candidates he had endorsed in that year’s elections.

Trump's visit likely the first of many in 2024

As one of the few swing states, Arizona likely will remain a hotspot for White House hopefuls during the 2024 election cycle.

Biden has visited Arizona several times during his term, and Vice President Kamala Harris made a stop in Flagstaff in October.

Polls one year out from an election should be taken with a grain of salt. But averages amassed by the political analysis website FiveThirtyEight suggest that Trump may have an edge over President Joe Biden in Arizona, beating out Biden in several head-to-head matchups. Polling also suggests that most Arizonans rate Biden unfavorably.

Trump’s visit will occur three days after the New Hampshire presidential primary.

Laura Gersony is a national politics reporter for The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. Contact her at 480-372-0389, or by email at lgersony@gannett.com. 

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Donald Trump returns to Arizona for Dream City Church event