What does it take to host a presidential campaign event?
A West Valley city has been busy with political events this election cycle.
GLENDALE, AZ (AZFamily) — Throughout the 2024 presidential race, there has been a lot of campaign action in Arizona, but especially in the city of Glendale.
After hosting several campaign events for both parties this year, city representatives said putting on events like these at its venues takes fast and in-depth planning.
City Manager Kevin Phelps said the city only gets a few days to make sure it and its venues are ready and secure for a campaign event. Phelps said this puts a lot of pressure on the city to get the job done.
“We would spend two years planning a Super Bowl, and sometimes we’re given four or five days to plan for a Vice President or a former President to show up,” Phelps said. “In the case of when the Vice Presidential candidate Vance showed up to Arizona Christian University several weeks ago, we were at a venue that we had not had this type of an event at before. We don’t own obviously the venue at Arizona Christian University, so that added a different layer of complexity of how we do it.”
The process to host a campaign event in the city starts with the campaign filling out an inquiry stating it’s considering hosting a visit, town hall or rally in the city, Phelps said. Included in the inquiry will be a requested date, time and venue.
Once it’s confirmed, the Secret Service is in charge of what goes on inside the venue, and the city is in charge of supportive services from transportation to public safety outside the venue.
In four to five days, the City has to provide enough EMS, SWAT officers and more to secure the area of the event. Phelps said going into incident command mode and assigning public safety agencies to manage the event puts the biggest strain on the city.
“It requires a lot of manpower,” he said. “If we didn’t have the partnerships with our other West Valley agencies, it would be really difficult for us to not have some level of reduction of services for our citizens during events like this.”
On top of the protocols the City has to follow to make sure the area is ready, campaigns also have protocols to follow if they want to host an event. Phelps said the main protocol campaigns must agree to is its payment requirement in order to assure quality services at the event and for the city’s residents.
“Whatever that gap is, which is the difference between what we’re able to put on the table, what our other agencies are able to provide, we then provide a billing to the campaigns, and there is an expectation that they pay for those services, and they have done that,” Phelps said. “As a city, we’re apolitical. Our job is to provide core services to our citizens and so we want to be able to ensure our residents that we’re not reducing down services in our parks, in our libraries and maintenance on the streets.”
This has required a lot of extra days and overtime for city employees to commit to making these campaign events happen.
Phelps said the City is proud of how it’s handled these stops so far and said both campaigns have expressed interest in hosting at least one more event in Glendale before the November general election.
The City of Glendale is on standby for official confirmation for those potential campaign stops, and Phelps said details of when and where they would be will be up to the campaigns.
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