AMNA NAWAZ: Arizona is holding its primary elections tomorrow, where Republicans will choose a nominee to challenge the incumbent Democratic governor in November.

That is where we start tonight on this Politics Monday with Tamara Keith of NPR and Jasmine Wright, White House correspondent for NOTUS.

Amy Walter is away.

Great to see you both.

TAMARA KEITH, National Public Radio: Good to be here.

JASMINE WRIGHT, NOTUS: Great to see you.

AMNA NAWAZ: Let's start in Arizona.

We have got the Republican primary there for governor.

Representative Andy Biggs is the front-runner.

He's a former House Freedom Caucus chair.

He is endorsed by President Trump.

Representative Dave Schweikert is also running with a sort of competing vision for the party.

And the winner will take on Arizona's current Democratic governor.

That's Katie Hobbs, who is running unopposed.

So, Tam, no Republican has lost a statewide primary in Arizona with Trump's backing.

Does that bode well for Andy Biggs?

TAMARA KEITH, National Public Radio: It sure does.

And President Trump's backing, President Trump's endorsement in Arizona especially, but in -- basically in red districts, it's like a golden ticket.

And the president and his political team have at times worked to move people to even shift districts.

We saw that in Arizona, where a candidate was encouraged to move to a different district and then got the Trump endorsement running in that district, a district he doesn't live in.

Essentially, Trump and his team are moving the puzzle pieces, trying to set things up so that Trump-loyal candidates will get through the primary.

Now, whether they can win in a general election in a state where -- and especially in districts where the voters are quite moderate or where the composition of the district is quite moderate, that's another question.

TAMARA KEITH: The record isn't quite as strong there.

AMNA NAWAZ: Well, Jas, the primary is one thing.

The general is another.

Katie Hobbs barely eked out a win, less than a percentage point, back in 2022 against Kari Lake, who was also backed by President Trump and often repeated those lies about the stolen 2020 election.

Who do the Democrats want to run against here?

JASMINE WRIGHT: Well, Arizona has proven that they don't like putting folks who deny the election into higher office.

It's just something that time and time again we have been asked this question specifically about the state, because we have seen folks like Kari Lake and others who have taken the mantle, taken up President Trump's -- to get that approval, his positions on these things.

And time and time again, Arizonans have rejected them.

Now, Katie Hobbs has a kind of mixed track record.

She is viewed by a lot of Democrats as probably the most vulnerable Democratic governor going into the midterm elections.

But just in the last few days, we know that they moved that race from a toss-up to now lean Democratic.

And part of that is because of the success of Andy Biggs.

He is, for all intents and purposes, likely to get that primary spot.

But then, going into the general, that's a huge question, someone being so close to Donald Trump, particularly in an election where people are concerned about affordability and think that the president isn't focused on the real issues at hand.

AMNA NAWAZ: So let's turn now to Maine, because there's big news this weekend after Graham Platner was forced out of the Senate race.

Troy Jackson now seems poised to clinch the Democratic nomination to replace Platner.

Here's just a part of the campaign ad the Jackson's team posted last night.

TROY JACKSON (D), Maine Senatorial Candidate: We're not from the left.

We're not from the right.

We're from the bottom, and we're rising.

And I know what happens when working people decide that they have had enough.

When we do, we stand up, we lock arms, we fight back, and then we win.

(CHEERING) TROY JACKSON: Let's go and beat Susan Collins and send a working-class fighter from the North Woods of Maine to the United States Senate.

(CHEERING) AMNA NAWAZ: Tam, he once campaigned alongside Graham Platner.

Does that matter in this race and at this moment for Democrats?

TAMARA KEITH: Well, certainly, yes, there could be ads cut that show Troy Jackson and Graham Platner together.

That is something that could be done by Susan Collins and her team.

But I think that Democrats are eager to coalesce behind a candidate.

And in a lot of ways, Jackson is the candidate that Platner presented himself to be, which is to say he is very working class, he has strong union roots, he comes from the north of the state, all of these things.

Now, what he is not is a charismatic speaker like Graham Platner.

Platner really took people by storm with his ability to tell his own story.

Troy Jackson does not -- he speaks he speaks like the person who he is, which is to say not a slick politician in any way.

AMNA NAWAZ: Jas, how are you looking at this?

JASMINE WRIGHT: Well, I think the Democrats are a little bit encouraged that they're kind of over this last hump.

Obviously, the Maine politics took a little bit more attention than I think that they expected it to.

And I also think that they didn't perhaps expect Troy Jackson to be able to put that kind of coalition together as he is now.

He does have a couple more hurdles to get to before he is the nominee, but I think people are betting for him to move forward.

So at least you're having a more stable race at the moment.

Of course, the problem is going to -- when it comes down to Susan Collins.

She is a unicorn in that state and has managed to defeat all Democratic challengers to this date.

And people were hoping it was Graham Platner.

Now it's not.

The question is whether or not Troy Jackson can supplant that and take up that oxygen that Graham Platner was.

TAMARA KEITH: He certainly can take up the sort of populist messaging that Platner had.

It's an open question as to whether he can excite people in the same way.

AMNA NAWAZ: And he's working on a shorter timeline too.

TAMARA KEITH: Yes.

JASMINE WRIGHT: Exactly.

AMNA NAWAZ: We will see how that goes.

I do want to get both of your takes on the fallout from President Trump's speech late last week.

He worked to revive a lot of the debunked claims about the integrity of our elections, and he called for more restrictive voting laws that he's continued to push for ahead of the midterms.

Tam, I know you have been speaking with swing voters you have been following for a long time.

Now, what do they tell you?

Is this what they want to hear from the president right now?

TAMARA KEITH: You know, it was a real mixed bag, but almost all of them said, I wish he would have talked about the Iran war, or why is he doing this?

Why are we looking backwards?

Why aren't we looking forwards?

So, there was a whole variation of the same message, which was like, why exactly was this a prime-time address?

And only a handful of the voters were persuaded in any way.

The others just sort of treated it as the ravings of a president who continues to look back at the race that he lost.

AMNA NAWAZ: Jas, he continues to look back at the race.

He's also pushing for the passage of this SAVE America Act that would put more restrictions on the voting process.

Did he move the needle on that?

JASMINE WRIGHT: Yes, I think one of the things that have been most interesting to me in the post-days since that speech is the lack of push we have seen by the broader group of Republicans who are supportive of the SAVE America Act to bring up some of those claims, some of those perhaps false claims that the president said.

I think you are seeing some movement on the SAVE America Act.

We know that Speaker Mike Johnson in the reconciliation 3.0 bill that hasn't exactly been unveiled yet said that he's going to put $10 billion for states to -- who -- states could access that money if they adopt some of the measures in the SAVE America Act.

But that is very far from the bill that the president is pushing, very far from the priorities that the president is pushing, of course, when we're talking about proving citizenship, when we're talking about ending mail-in ballot, except for some very specific groups.

And so you're not seeing Republicans rush to do what the president wanted them to do, which was pass the SAVE America, and also spread around some of these claims and perhaps conspiracies in these classified documents that were declassified.

And so I think that that to me has been kind of the most interesting part about it.

TAMARA KEITH: And the thing is that this is an election about affordability and the cost of living and people's frustration with that, and relitigating an election or talking about the SAVE America Act, that's just not what Republicans want to run on.

AMNA NAWAZ: Tamara Keith, Jasmine Wright, great to see you both.

Thank you so much.