Vice President Kamala Harris is looking to win over "the McCain wing" of the Republican Party in the battleground state of Arizona, NBC News reported.
Jen Cox, senior adviser for the Harris campaign in Arizona, told the news outlet, "Talking with folks in the Maricopa County suburbs is really, really critical to our path to victory."
More than two-thirds of Arizona voters live in Maricopa County, where Phoenix is located and where Biden won by more than 2 percentage points against former President Donald Trump in 2020.
"What we've heard from Republicans who have come out in support of the vice president is that respect for the rule of law is a critical component of their support for her," Cox added.
Phoenix-based Republican consultant Barrett Marson told NBC News on Friday that Harris is facing a challenge in winning over the same moderate suburban Republicans that helped President Joe Biden win the state by less than 0.5% of the vote in 2020.
"The McCain wing of this party is a conservative group. It just isn't nuts," he said.
"It makes it hard to vote for someone like Kamala Harris, because she's the antithesis of a lot of things John McCain advocated for throughout his life," Marson continued. "But on the other hand, she doesn't want to overthrow the government."
He added that Harris "doesn't want to institute a dictatorship. She doesn't want to instruct the Justice Department to start arresting Republicans left and right. So the choice isn't a very good one for McCain Republicans, but it is also probably easier because of the actions of Donald Trump."