Trump Owes My Hometown Money

(Image of Saguaro National Park, which is located in southern Arizona, on either side of the city of Tucson. The park is named for the large saguaro cactus, native to its desert environment. Photo by Chiara Salvadori, via Getty Images.)

Donald Trump will descend on Arizona today in a last ditch, Hail Mary effort to try and convince anyone left in the Old Pueblo, who didn’t decide who to vote for months ago, to vote for him. While he will be visiting Prescott, Arizona, a town that is known as one of those typical Republican suburban strongholds he loves to brag about, he will also be going to Tucson for an afternoon MAGA-fest that is sure to bring out an exceptional collective of retirees, racists and flip-flop sandals.

Here’s the deal: Trump owes my hometown money. Tucson Mayor Regina Romero confirmed in a letter to the city Friday afternoon that the Trump Campaign still owes Tucson taxpayers $80,000 from a rally that was held at the Tucson Convention Center in 2016. Romero adds that today’s events are expected to add another $50,000 to his tab so that his security will be ensured and the public safety response is handled appropriately.

(My mother and I sit on a rock in Sabino Canyon, after she made me hike all the way to the falls, while we watched people take the bright yellow trams, that cost too much money, up the canyon trail. This is circa sometime in the 80’s based on my shoes and my mother’s hair. Photo by me, via my Kodak Disc camera that I got for Christmas.)

Originally, Trump was scheduled to campaign in Tucson on Oct. 5, and then hit the Flagstaff area on Oct. 6, but his visits were postponed after he tested positive for COVID-19 earlier this month. Arizona is a state that has been particularly hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic, due in large part to the refusal by Arizona Governor Doug Ducey to employ any common sense restrictions on businesses or mask ordinances. It is a state with an extremely high population of at-risk seniors and in Spring, when the pandemic hit the Navajo Nation, the death toll was astronomical due to the social and economic inequalities and lack of resources.

For the past year I have kept a closer watch on the state of Arizona than my own current location of Washington, DC. Everyone I love most is there, and I am always in charge of distributing information and instructions. “You can not go out today” and “I don’t care if it is not an ordinance yet, you have to have a mask” were common phrases for me in the early days as I tried to keep my friends and family safe. This drive only increased after I contracted and eventually resolved Covid-19. I had to keep drilling it into my loved ones that it didn’t matter that I had asthma — this thing was taking down really fit, young people and how it seemed to hit the lungs and heart was unpredictable.

(Image of myself and my best friend at Tucson’s Miraval Resort and Spa, where I worked for several years while I attended the University of Arizona. After practicing law for a few years, I returned and we both experienced the resort as guests. Photo by Amee Vanderpool.)

My mother thought she had coronavirus no fewer than four times. Over the span of the last seven months I have sent her every medication, medical device and sickness accessory I could think of to make sure she was prepared. My best friend, who still lives in Tucson, was laid off from his management job in hospitality fairly early on, due to the pandemic. In some way this was a relief for me, because he was at such high risk working in hotels. He now works for state unemployment, which had an enormous hiring wave when the virus hit and the unemployment claims started flooding in — he works from home now, and this keeps me sane.

So now Trump is about to roll into town owing more money in security costs than I ever did in college loans to the University of Arizona, which is impressive considering how many years it took me to graduate. My level of animosity has been on a steady, ever increasing trajectory since November 2016, but this special combination of rage and a general achey-breaky heart thing today is intense. I haven’t been home in over a year and a half due to the pandemic — despite already having Covid, I still don’t want to risk infecting others or contracting it again. Trump does not share any of my concerns or limitations.

(Graduation night at Amphitheater High School in Tucson, Arizona. I am not going to tell you the year or name my friends seen here, but I am the one on the far right, who is no doubt talking while the picture is being taken. Photo via my mom.)

Tucson is not the only city that is owed a lot of money by Donald Trump and his campaign. The Center for Public Integrity has calculated that as of April of this year, the Trump Campaign owes a total of fourteen cities a collective $1.82 million. This number has no doubt increased — this was only the beginning of his campaign season. Last August, I wrote about Trump’s trip to El Paso in the wake of yet another shooting in America, despite owing the city $470,417.05 in reimbursement fees from a Trump rally earlier that year. Trump felt no shame in heading to a distraught town, still reeling from the grief of another recent shooting tragedy, just so that he could get a photo op in a hospital with survivors.

At least in that sense, Trump could have argued that he was somehow operating in his capacity of Commander in Chief and in some way, was carrying out official presidential duties. Today he heads to Tucson, another city complete with its own distinct flavor and traditions, to attempt to suck out whatever energy he can from the community to feed his own precariously dwindling vanity tank. He does this knowing he will rack up more expenses that he intends to never pay, served by his own addiction to self-admiration. He is chasing the swing-state dragon, trying to reclaim those instances when Arizona was still a lock for Republicans and firmly in the red category.

(View of the sunrise from our family home, where I usually drink coffee with my mother early in the mornings and we talk for hours until the sun comes up and it gets too hot outside.)

I don’t know if it’s the quarantine or the fear of dying during the worst episodes of my Covid experience, but I have started to miss home on a completely new level. I always love going home for a few days, but to me, seeing the people I love is like being home — I don’t always need go to Arizona to get that feeling. Now I am missing the desert and everything that goes with it, an environment that previously only irritated me and made me feel out of place. I need to see my mother and my dearest friends and I need to see them in a place I have always run from…maybe Trump can blow them a kiss for me — not that they would ever be watching, or want to catch it.

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Amee Vanderpool writes the SHERO Newsletter and is an attorney, published author, contributor to newspapers and magazines and analyst for BBC radio. She is also a proud graduate of Amphitheater High School in Tucson, Arizona. She can be reached at avanderpool@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @girlsreallyrule.

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