LAS VEGAS — Standing in the searing Nevada heat at her job as a construction flagger shortly after Vice President Kamala Harris entered the presidential race in July, 38-year-old Sarah White was skeptical: “I don’t think I would ever vote for a woman to be president,” she said bluntly. “Women are kinda all over the place.”

White, an independent, voted for Donald Trump in 2020 but misses the era when Bill Clinton, a Democrat, was president because “there was none of this chaos and scariness and people rioting.” She believes Trump, running again this year, is “brave” and would “fight to keep us safe” at a time when she is unnerved by the number of non-English-speaking immigrants entering the country.

But she cannot stomach Trump’s divisiveness, his felonies and legal dramas, and feels “embarrassed for our country” when she hears him speak.

A woman working in a male-dominated industry, she nonetheless found herself struggling in a recent follow-up interview to envision how Harris would fare as the first female commander in chief. “She seems pretty tough. I don’t know, though, if she’s breakable,” White said. “Women — we have emotions, we have compassion and we have all these other feelings that men don’t have. You know?”

Around the world, many other democratic countries, from those in Europe to South America to Asia, have elected women as leaders for decades. Yet 40 years after Geraldine Ferraro became the first female vice-presidential nominee of a major party and eight years after Hillary Clinton became the first female presidential nominee of a major party, White and thousands of voters like her are grappling with the question that still bedevils the nearly 250-year-old nation: Is America ready and willing to elect a female president?

The answer, according to polling and more than two dozen interviews with voters, experts, campaign strategists and operatives, is yes — but. Yes, the country is open, in some cases even eager, to a elect a female president — but she faces myriad hurdles her male counterparts do not, and with far less room for error.

“My answer is yes, America will elect a woman,” said Christina Reynolds, senior vice president of communications for Emily’s List, the influential political group that backs female candidates who support abortion rights. “But are there challenges they face? Yes, sure.”

An incomplete list of the common challenges: The likability tightrope — where a woman must constantly demonstrate she is strong enough to be commander in chief, but she can’t appear too tough for fear that she will come off as unlikable.

The résumé bar — where it is often enough for a male candidate to have potential, but his female counterpart must have already met hers.

The motherhood bias — where if a female candidate has young children, voters question how she will care for them while serving.

And the ethical pedestal — where women candidates are believed to be more honest and trustworthy than their male counterparts, but if they’re knocked off the pedestal, it’s often harder for them to climb back up.

At the same time, Harris could also lose for any number of reasons having nothing to do with her gender — from being unable to shake unpopular policies of the Biden-Harris administration to the liberal positions she took in the 2020 primary to voters agreeing with Trump’s dystopian portrait of America under Democratic governance. A loss could also be a mix of several factors — a rejection by some voters uncomfortable with her gender and by others opposed to her agenda.

The question of a female president is both a general one about progress and feminism, but also a specific one. Like Clinton in 2016, Harris is asking the nation not just to support a woman, but to affirmatively choose her — a Black and Indian American woman; a former prosecutor and attorney general and U.S. senator; a stepmom (“Momala”); a female politician with an unapologetic laugh; and the Democratic nominee for president who chose as her running mate a high-school-teacher-and-football-coach-turned-Midwest-governor Everyman named Tim Walz.

She is a woman, and she is also Kamala. If Harris does not win in November, it may be difficult to disentangle just how much voters were rejecting a woman as president vs. a particular woman as president, and just how much that distinction really matters.

In the eight years since Clinton unsuccessfully ran for president, the nation has changed, too. It witnessed a Women’s March on Washington in 2017, the #MeToo reckoning and historic numbers of women being elected to higher office across the country. The 118th Congress features a record number of women — 25 senators and 126 House members for 151 total, or roughly 28 percent, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. And during the 2020 Democratic primary cycle, at least six women, including Harris, appeared on the debate stage at various points — the first time in U.S. history that more than one female candidate was onstage during a presidential debate.

But in interviews with The Washington Post and in focus groups, many voters expressed subconscious bias and outright sexism, worrying that a female president will be too emotional, or that she will be weak and get rolled by male leaders on the world stage. Some even said they couldn’t imagine handing the nuclear codes to someone who they fear may become moody while menstruating. Democrats say the challenge for Harris is real but hard to quantify.

Dean Johnson, 60, who works in heavy machinery in Las Vegas, said he thinks the United States is ready for a female president. “But not her — she’s a puppet,” he said.

Asked what concerns he’d have about Harris as commander in chief, Johnson laughed: “She won’t be the commander in chief, so I have nothing to worry about. I’m telling you, it won’t happen.”

Former president Barack Obama recently tackled the question of gender bias among Black men directly when campaigning for Harris in Pittsburgh. Saying he wanted to speak to “the brothers” and “men directly,” he said some of the resistance to Harris “makes me think that … well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that.”

The Trump campaign rejects the notion that Harris’s gender is a factor in the election.

“This race has nothing to do with race and gender, and everything to do with contrasting track records of success and failure,” Trump senior adviser Danielle Alvarez said. “Kamala Harris has failed on the economy, inflation, open border, and global chaos. Clearly, Kamala and her camp see the writing on the wall and are trying to lay the messaging groundwork ahead of her loss in November.”

And there are women like White, whose home state, Nevada, is among seven critical swing states that the Harris campaign is bombarding with ads. Though dismissive of Harris at first, the more White has listened to the vice president speak, the more she finds herself considering voting for her.

“I’ve actually found I respect her,” White said over a recent lunch at a Carl’s Jr. after a construction shift in the 103-degree heat.

Harris’s ads, White said, have directly spoken to her concerns about housing costs and how hard it is for Americans to build wealth.

“I do like the things that she stands for, and I like the way that she talks and carries herself,” White explained. But, she added, Harris’s gender still worries her: “Are people going to respect her? Are people just going to think we’re a joke now?”

‘A man’s job’

Political operatives say it is virtually impossible to quantify how much sexism or unconscious bias will factor into the outcome in November, in part because voters who hold those views are often reluctant to express them.

In January, Gallup found that 93 percent of Americans said they would vote for a well-qualified woman from their preferred political party, similar to the 92 percent who said this in 2015. This level has held steady since the 1980s, when 78 percent to 82 percent said they would support a qualified woman from their party.

But Americans are also more likely to see Harris’s gender as an obstacle to being elected than they did eight years ago when asked the same question about Clinton, according to a poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research conducted in mid-September. And 30 percent of registered voters said they believed Harris’s gender will hurt her chances in November, according to a Pew Research Center poll conducted in late August and early September. Forty percent said it would help and 30 percent said it would not make much difference.

Sexism also transcends political party, as well as the gender of the person expressing it. Earlier this year, during the Republican primary season, Sarah Longwell — an anti-Trump Republican strategist who runs weekly focus groups with voters — released an episode of her podcast featuring New Hampshire voters who had twice supported Trump, talking about whether they were open to voting for former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley.

“I don’t feel as though a woman belongs in the presidential seat,” said one woman in the group, adding that women “think with our heart, mostly, over our mind, and that’s not what we need right now.”

A male voter in the group was even more blunt, calling the presidency “a man’s job.” “They’ve got to make tough decisions that can’t have any emotions involved,” he said, adding with a chuckle that he wouldn’t want a female commander in chief in charge of the nuclear codes if she’s “having a bad day, or that time of the month, or whatever.”

In many ways, it’s not surprising that some voters would express skepticism about a female candidate based solely on gender stereotypes. After all, women in nearly all fields have long grappled with misogyny and double standards.

Amanda Hunter, executive director of the Barbara Lee Family Foundation, a nonpartisan organization that seeks to increase women’s representation, said that in 25 years of research, her foundation has consistently identified several major hurdles for female candidates. First, she said, men are assumed to be qualified, whereas women have to repeatedly demonstrate that they are — while also trying to balance strength with likability.

“We say men can tell and women have to show,” Hunter said.

Harris has faced an onslaught of ads from outside groups and the Trump campaign portraying her as weak, ineffective and unserious. One notable new Trump ad shows fictional leaders from China, Russia, Hamas and Iran watching clips of Harris dancing on their television screens as ominous music plays in the background. “America doesn’t need another TikTok performer,” a narrator intones. “We need the strength that will protect us.”

Former senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri said that, with Harris, she senses echoes of the question she was repeatedly asking about Obama in 2008: Was the nation ready for a Black president?

“It was interesting to me because so many of the people who were most doubtful if the country was ready were Black Americans, and the same thing is probably somewhat true now, that women are somewhat more skeptical about it finally being time than some of the men are,” said McCaskill, a Democrat.

Women are roughly equally divided on whether Harris’s gender will help or hurt her, according to the Pew survey. Thirty-eight percent said it will help her with voters, 33 percent said it will hurt her and 29 percent said it will not matter much, the survey found.

Some women interviewed by The Post did indeed express skepticism about a female president. Diana Arvizu, 34, a real estate agent in Yuma, Ariz., said she just doesn’t believe women have the skills needed to run the country.

“A male should be the head of the home and of the family and of society,” she said. “It takes a really good man to really step up and be a good role model for society and to protect us and provide for us.”

Lynn LaVerdi, a 60-year-old lifelong Republican, brought up her opposition to a woman president unprompted while chatting with a Post reporter as she waited in line with her family to attend Trump’s August rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. “I don’t think a woman should hold the presidency,” she said. “Women are more moody. … We get rights and stuff, but I wouldn’t want to be on the front lines in a war.”

LaVerdi’s niece, Alea Scarantino, was standing nearby in a shirt attacking Harris with a gendered slur: “Say No to the Hoe.” Scarantino, who is in her mid-30s, said she agreed that women should not be president. “When I sleep at night, I want a man running our country,” she said. “Men are stronger. Women are hormonal.”

Hunter said that “women are expected to hit the ground running. Everything has to be flawless, and if it’s not, people tend to use that as an excuse to say, ‘See, she wasn’t ready.’ The standard is excellence.”

‘Why not us?’

On the flip side, there are legions of voters — both women and men — who are thrilled at the prospect of electing the first woman president. Mark Stone, a 65-year-old magician from Summerlin, Nev., said that he has been regularly phone canvassing for the campaign and that none of the undecided voters he has called have raised the vice president’s gender as an issue.

“Old White guys have just not gotten the job done — including the current one,” Stone said as he waited in line at Harris’s rally in Las Vegas. “If you ask somebody who’s truly informed, they’ll tell you that we need more women in government, because they seem to be the levelheaded ones. Less testosterone in government. Okay?”

Christian Bargados, a 50-year-old customer service representative from Clark County in Nevada, pointed to the example of other female leaders across the globe who have made tough decisions, including former Israeli prime minister Golda Meir and former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

“We have seen that this works across the world, so why not us?” he asked. “I think that this is a stupid, sexist point of view that once a month, she’s not going to be able to make decisions. Please.”

Bargados was skeptical of Harris at first but said she inspired him during the Sept. 10 presidential debate with Trump. “As soon as Trump attacked her — like they said, she looked like she was ready to take off her earrings — and then I saw the real passion of this woman,” he said. “She knows that she needs to stand up for a country that needs her at this moment.”

A CBS News-YouGov poll conducted in early October found that for a quarter of women backing Harris, her gender is a part of their decision-making, while for 10 percent of men supporting Trump, the fact that Harris is a woman is a factor.

Unlike Clinton, Harris has deliberately steered away from playing up her gender and her potential to make history, instead letting surrogates and supporters gin up excitement about that prospect. Allies say this is particularly important for a female candidate, where they have to work harder to clear the “presidential” bar but also need to show a certain humility about it.

Many experts and operatives also say that Clinton’s failed bid nearly a decade ago is an inapt comparison for Harris.

John Anzalone, a Harris campaign adviser and pollster, who also worked on Clinton’s 2016 bid, said it would be a mistake to compare the women because they have different personalities and backgrounds.

“Hillary Clinton was a White woman who everyone knew and had a certain view on,” he said. “Kamala Harris is a Black and Indian American woman who people are getting to know at a different level, and those people who are still left are giving her a real look.”

Kelly Dittmar, an associate professor of political science who is the director of research at the Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics, said the impact of gender is complicated.

“We have no evidence that on Election Day gender is prohibitive for women, because people will vote primarily by party,” she said. “But it absolutely can shape how she has to navigate different hurdles and expectations on the campaign trail.”

To that end — and perhaps because she is facing a candidate who goes to great lengths to project a macho, strongman image — Harris has carefully walked the tightrope that other female candidates have long navigated.

She has sought to convey her toughness by speaking about the crimes she prosecuted as a district attorney and attorney general — noting during her debate with Trump that she was “the only person on this stage who has prosecuted transnational criminal organizations for the trafficking of guns, drugs and human beings.”

She spoke at great length about foreign policy during her convention speech — promising that should would ensure America “has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.” And she has frequently said one of the dangers of putting Trump back in the White House is that he is easily flattered and manipulated by dictators — saying during the debate that Russian President Vladimir Putin “would eat you for lunch.”

During a recent forum with Oprah Winfrey, Winfrey said she was surprised to hear Harris owned a gun: “If somebody breaks in my house, they’re getting shot,” Harris replied.

McCaskill, the former senator, said the challenges female candidates face are not easy, but they are also not insurmountable.

“It’s an exhausting tightrope, but having said that, if you’ve been walking that tightrope for years and years, you get used to it and I think she has figured out that she can be herself,” she said.

‘I wouldn’t tell anybody’

With 17 days left until the election, White, the Nevada construction worker, is still weighing her options, which include staying home on Election Day. Many people in her family, including her mother, are firmly backing Trump.

But little by little, Harris has been winning her over.

When asked how she would cast her ballot if the election was imminent, White said she’d really have to think about it.

“I’d probably vote for Kamala,” she said. “But I wouldn’t tell anybody that.”

Parker reported from Washington. Abbie Cheeseman, Hannah Knowles, Marianne LeVine, Lizette Ortega and Sabrina Rodriguez contributed to this report.

DETROIT — Sen. JD Vance’s event here chugged along like a typical campaign rally. He attacked his rivals, painted a grave picture of life under the Democratic Party and warned Republicans against complacency. Members of the audience nodded, clapped and cheered.

Then an aide handed a microphone to journalists. And things got raucous.

A Detroit Free Press reporter was booed as she identified herself and her employer ahead of a question about protesting the November election outcome. A student journalist was similarly heckled for asking Vance about how he would ensure safety from gun violence on college campuses. A Black reporter asked why Black voters in Michigan should cast their ballots for Donald Trump, and the mostly White crowd shouted back answers. The audience’s attention bounced back and forth from Vance’s podium to the media risers as if watching a tennis match, with many offering mostly negative feedback to the reporters.

The unusual scene has become a signature feature of Vance’s campaign stops in a race in which the two sides have accused each other of hiding from the press and the public. The strategy has put the Republican vice-presidential nominee, who was largely unknown to the public before his national run, at center stage. Politicians don’t usually hold news conferences in front of crowds of their fans, but on the trail with Vance, the traditional question-and-answer session with journalists — a staple of democracies — morphs into campaign theater.

The questioning in public, which has been a feature of most of Vance’s campaign events in recent weeks, offers Republicans an opportunity to highlight the much lighter media engagement of his Democratic opponent, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. It’s also where Vance often makes news, recently calling a $500 million federal grant for a Michigan electric vehicle plant “table scraps” and proposing an overhaul of the Affordable Care Act’s insurance markets for chronically ill patients. The tactic has allowed Vance to put his and Trump’s opinions on the record about some of the issues that are most important to voters — and it offers his supporters a chance to see him vigorously defending their concerns.

The back-and-forth between the candidate and reporters animates the audience, which rarely sees this type of interaction up close. The performance often generates the crowds’ most vocal reactions, causing some of those facing Vance to pivot toward the back, where reporters are stationed.

Vance, who was once a combat correspondent in the U.S. military and then a media-friendly senator, mostly smiles when the crowds jeer and has characterized their reactions as an exercise of their free speech rights. He has also at times criticized the media, complaining at a recent stop in Charlotte about the number of questions he got about embattled North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson (R). Robinson has a long record of inflammatory comments made in full public view.

“I really cannot believe that the American media is so much more focused on this than the struggles of their fellow citizens,” Vance said to cheers from the crowd.

More infrequently, Vance has vouched for a reporter or a question he appreciated. In Phoenix, members of the crowd jeered when CNN producer Kit Maher introduced herself. Vance cut them off.

“Kit is one of the good ones, but she won’t be able to go back to CNN after I just said that,” Vance said, before the reporter asked how a Trump administration could prevent school shootings.

A reporter with the Traverse City Record-Eagle got heckled before he could even ask his question when Vance visited Northern Michigan. But once he was able to ask about how the GOP ticket would make housing affordable, Vance acknowledged the question’s credibility.

“We’re having fun,” he said. “You’re allowed to ask your question. They’re allowed to tell you how they think about it. That’s okay. This is America.”

Vance offered a similar take Tuesday in Detroit when a reporter was jeered for asking what evidence he had to accuse the Biden administration of misappropriating hurricane relief funds. Vance promised that his crowds, while vocal, were not violent: “The First Amendment goes in both directions … not a single person here is going to harm you. They’re just going to speak their minds.”

Standing toward the back of the venue where Vance spoke in Traverse City, Michael and Judy Smith were stunned when he concluded his remarks by inviting questions from the media. The Trump supporters had not seen a candidate interact with a reporter before, and they expressed appreciation that Vance was able to hold forth on various issues, including housing and debate plans.

“He has guts,” said Michael, noting that he had previously held some reservations about Trump’s running-mate selection.

In Detroit, Trump supporter Jackie Barton recorded a video on her phone of reporters asking questions and Vance’s responses, interspersed with her own heckling.

“Climate change is bulls—,” the 62-year-old shouted when a reporter asked Vance how he could appeal to voters who worry about the environmental consequences of manufacturing more gas-powered cars. But Barton carefully listened to and appreciated Vance’s response blaming China and India for greater carbon emissions. The campaign volunteer said she will repeat Vance’s answers when she faces similar questions.

“Knowing this information helps me to be able to say, hey, listen, I heard it coming right out of his mouth,” she said. “This was so awesome to be able to really hear something and not have it mixed up and whitewashed.”

WALLACES CORNER, Va. — He didn’t mention it in his mailers or campaign brochures. It was absent from a slew of recent television ads. And here at a synagogue in this far-flung D.C. exurb, Yevgeny “Eugene” Vindman did not bring up the reason the worshipers breaking their Yom Kippur fast had first learned who he was.

Most of those digging into plates of noodle kugel said they knew Vindman — a political novice running for Virginia’s battleground 7th Congressional District — for the supporting role he and his twin brother played in President Donald Trump’s first impeachment.

That high-profile backstory had propelled him to the Democratic nomination for this open seat and played up in his fundraising efforts, which have drawn a whopping $14 million — much of it coming from small-dollar donors outside Virginia.

But as the congregants at Temple Beth Sholom stood up to shake his hand and take photos, Vindman made no mention of the episode. “We’re looking at the issues,” he told one man who asked about it.

Compare it to the approach taken by his Republican opponent, Derrick Anderson, and it’s a sign of how the first impeachment has played out in Virginia’s most competitive congressional race — just not quite in the way that might have been expected.

Incumbent Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), a popular moderate who won this sprawling swing district in 2022, declined to seek reelection to run for Virginia governor next year instead. Her exit opened up a race that will be key to determining control of the House, where Republicans have a single-digit majority.

With those high stakes looming and Trump himself at the top of the GOP ticket, Anderson — not Vindman — has become the one emphasizing how the Democrat’s name and face became known to the public: The former Army colonel helped his identical twin brother raise concerns about a phone call between Trump and Ukraine that ended up at the heart of the impeachment inquiry.

“For Anderson, he can simultaneously try to paint Vindman as a partisan as a way to appeal to independents while energizing Trump voters,” said Erin Covey, who analyzes House races for the Cook Political Report. The nonpartisan site had previously rated the 7th District as one that “leans Democratic” but recently reclassified it as a “Toss Up.”

Yet, on Vindman’s end, she added, “the fact that he was involved in such a high-profile, highly polarizing issue gives him a more partisan sheen.”

In another corner of Stafford County, Vindman’s cameo in the national spotlight seemed to be a top priority on Anderson’s mind as he addressed a crowd of supporters late last month.

Flanked by a who’s who of Virginia GOP politics — including the governor and several state lawmakers, all of them holding gifted red polo shirts to match his own — the former Army Green Beret boomed into the microphone inside a makeshift stage at a parking facility as he called Vindman a “rubber stamp” for liberal policies.

“My opponent is focused on his past … and his revenge tour against Donald Trump,” Anderson said. “While me and my campaign, we’re focused on your future.”

The crowd, in biker jackets and U.S.A. hats, let out a cheer.

‘Not my focus’

Look at Vindman’s blitz of fundraising appeals to his supporters, and you’d be forgiven for thinking the impeachment probe is still his central talking point on the campaign trail.

As many of those near-daily emails recount, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a national security official, had been listening in on a call in which Trump pressured Ukrainian leaders to dig up political dirt on Joe Biden.

He went to his brother Eugene Vindman, an ethics lawyer also working at the White House, and they brought their concerns up the chain of command. After Alexander Vindman testified during impeachment hearings, both men were ousted from their jobs.

Their actions did not directly spark Trump’s impeachment — separate whistleblower reports were filed regarding the call — but the Vindman campaign has blasted out no less than 40 such pleas to supporters for donations explicitly tying him to the probe, sometimes twice in one day.

“Because we did not let Trump’s abuse of his office stand, he was impeached — and his vengeance cost us our careers when we were fired in retaliation,” Vindman wrote in one mid-September message.

It is a tactic that appears to have reaped dividends: As of Sept. 30, he had raised nearly $14 million for the election cycle — more than any other House candidate except for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), and a record for House candidates from Virginia. The vast majority has come from donors outside Virginia and those contributing less than $200.

That strategy could not be more different from the tone he has taken publicly in the district since July, especially when addressing crowds of independents and moderates. In contrast to primary ads, in which he says he “exposed Trump’s corruption,” his recent television spots spotlighted his wife, Cindy, emphasized abortion rights and sought to tie Anderson to “Project 2025,” a conservative think tank’s road map for a second Trump administration.

The impeachment “is just not my focus and frankly it’s never something that I’ve defined myself by,” Vindman said in an interview after a campaign stop last Saturday in Culpeper, a more conservative, rural part of the district. “Primarily, my motivation is my family and my kids: I want to make sure they have access to the American Dream like I had.”

The shift may also be a response to House Democratic leaders, who have privately fretted that Vindman’s link to the impeachment probe will hurt him in a purple district that favors independent-leaning legislators like Spanberger, according to two people familiar with the race who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy. The Vindman campaign referred a request for comment to Spanberger, who said in a statement that Vindman would be a “commonsense legislator who will work across the aisle to deliver results.” She added: “I can see that he’s already earning trust in our communities.”

Lauren C. Bell, a political scientist at Randolph-Macon College, said such a pivot was unavoidable in the general election. “He’s got to lean into appealing to independents or right-leaning centrists who might be skeptical,’” she said. “You downplay the things that are going to make you less appealing to the other side.”

Yet without that backstory — plus no record in elected office and shaky personal ties to many areas in this geographically diverse district — others point out that Vindman may struggle to win over parts of the electorate less familiar to him.

Outside a Latino supermarket in Woodbridge last month, Vindman followed Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who is running for a third term, as they hobnobbed with small business owners who had set up stands in the parking lot. Both candidates approached Komi Koutche, a native of Benin, at a booth for his urgent-care clinic.

“The senator is very, very close to the community, and that is a good thing,” Koutche remarked afterward.

What about Vindman? “I didn’t know who that was,” he said.

‘Revenge tour’

Despite Anderson’s stark financial disadvantage, the 7th District is very much a competitive race.

The Republican had as of Sept. 30 raised about $2.5 million — a fraction of Vindman’s war chest — with just over $1 million still on hand. Vindman has attracted about $1.35 million in outside spending, but Anderson has slightly surpassed him on that front, with $1.42 million mostly coming from the GOP-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund.

The political makeup of the 7th District, which stretches from D.C. suburbs to more rural areas in the Piedmont, slightly favors Democrats, particularly in a presidential election year: Biden won the seat by about 7 points in 2020, according to a Washington Post model, and Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to have long coattails at the top of the ticket. Yet Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) won the area in 2021 by a similar margin as Spanberger did the following year.

Multiple independent political analysts have in recent weeks shifted the race to a “toss-up,” a move they attributed to the fact that even Vindman’s eye-popping fundraising over the summer had not appeared to tip the scales — at least, not yet.

Some observers suspect that is because the Anderson campaign’s attacks have been working. Both candidates have been targeting the other’s transparency and authenticity, trading barbs on Vindman’s military rank and combat record, and Anderson’s home outside the district as well as a family photo-style image that Anderson, who does not have kids, took with a friend’s wife and children.

But only Republicans have been repeatedly invoking the impeachment saga, often without many details, as a way to paint Vindman as a liberal partisan. “It’s not like he’s going after Vindman’s role itself,” Covey said. “It’s more that he saying he’s too focused on it.”

At one candidate forum, Anderson looked over to Vindman and said, “his entire, entire campaign is a revenge tour against Donald Trump.” He used the same line at least twice during a debate this month, while Vindman did not bring up Trump at all.

They continued sparring over their main policy priorities: Vindman vowed to protect IVF and voting rights and preserve jobs for the region’s federal employees. Anderson said he would tackle inflation and cut taxes while strengthening border security.

Near the end of the event, Vindman pointed out the lopsided dynamic that had played out. Only Anderson, he said, had mentioned the former president’s name.

Marianna Sotomayor in Washington contributed to this report.

SUPAI, Ariz. — Rep. Ruben Gallego arrived at the bottom of the Grand Canyon barefoot, shoes in hand, after crossing a stream during a 2,000-foot descent.

The 44-year-old Marine Corps veteran, five-term Democratic congressman and U.S. Senate candidate had started the eight-mile hike in darkness. Now, under the midday sun, he was approaching a Havasupai village that is only accessible by foot, mule, horse or helicopter.

Arizona is home to 22 federally recognized tribes, and Gallego, who is acutely aware that Native voters helped deliver this closely divided state to President Joe Biden in 2020, is trying to visit all of them in the final stretch of a race that could determine control of the Senate.

The Havasupai were 20th on Gallego’s list. When he reached Supai village on the morning of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, trailed by 15 reporters, aides and tribal liaisons, he was embraced by Felicia Siyuja, a tribal council member, who made clear she was happy to see that he had opted to skip the chopper ride.

“You walked in our people’s shoes when you hiked down,” another tribal council member, Juanita Wescogame, later told Gallego.

Perhaps no swing-state politician in America has made more of an effort to reach out to tribal communities than Gallego, who faces former local TV host Kari Lake, a Republican ally of Donald Trump, in November’s election.

His trek demonstrates how critical both major parties now believe the votes of people in Arizona’s tribal communities, who make up 4.5 percent of the state’s population, could be in a close race. The parties have invested time and money in trying to win their votes, with the Republican National Committee sending GOP staffers to meet with Navajo representatives weekly, among other outreach efforts.

In his seven-hour visit to Supai, Gallego danced with tribal members, ate their fry bread tacos, toured recent flooding damage and listened to their concerns about the impact of uranium mining on their land and people.

Gallego’s tour of the tribes began more than a year and a half ago, when he made the Navajo Nation one of his campaign’s first stops. In an interview Monday, Gallego said tribal voters “always do feel that Democrats only show up for the last two weeks, and I wanted to make sure that we were here from Day 1.”

Native Americans have long felt overlooked in electoral politics and disillusioned with both parties. In Supai, far from the vote-rich Phoenix area, the feeling can be even more pronounced.

“I want them to know that there’s actually people living in the bottom of the Grand Canyon,” Armando Marshall, vice chairman of the Havasupai Tribe, said when asked for his message to the outside world.

Attention undoubtedly increased after the 2020 election, when Biden won Arizona by just 10,457 votes.

“When you’re talking about [that margin] being the difference between victory and not, you can’t afford not to hike down to Supai,” said Clara Pratte, who was the Biden campaign’s tribal engagements director.

Gallego arrived in Supai, on a reservation that is home to about 200 people, according to the 2020 census, weeks after flash flooding devastated the community. It caused the evacuation of scores of hikers, among the thousands who flock to the area annually to see the idyllic waterfalls from which the Havasupai Tribe — “people of the blue-green waters” — gets its name. Hikers can wait years to land a coveted permit to hike to the falls.

On the trail, there were few obvious signs of the flooding, and Gallego was struck by how quickly workers were able to make the route passable again for the tourists who power the village economy.

Tribal leaders were far more concerned about a longer-running issue: the uranium mining that they say threatens the spring-fed creek winding through their village.

When Gallego entered the village, he was greeted by a large red sign with a radioactive waste logo, reading, “NO! URANIUM MINING.” He later joined hands with tribal members in a circle and danced to a uranium mining protest song.

The community has long opposed the Pinyon Plain Mine, outside Grand Canyon National Park, and although Biden moved last year to protect the area from additional mining, they remain focused on the existing mine and the risk of water contamination.

Addressing Gallego and his group at the center of Supai, Siyuja rattled off all the things that the water allows the tribe to grow — cherries, grapes, apricot, corn. Visitors, she said, have told her they could find all the salad ingredients they would ever need in the village.

Wescogame pleaded with Gallego to “find a loophole” to stop the mine.

“The uranium mining does need to be halted,” Gallego said during a speech at the center of the village. “It is much too dangerous for the Havasupai people.”

As the tribal leaders recognized Gallego for aligning with them against the mine — “so far,” one specified — they offered support for his Senate bid.

“I’m not a Democrat. I’m not a Republican. I’m independent, but I do vote, and you have my support,” Marshall told Gallego inside the council chambers.

Marshall, in an interview earlier, lamented that Lake was “more Trump-style” and more focused on the border in her campaign.

Lake’s campaign says it considers the Native vote “of critical importance.” Mike Woestehoff, chair of Native Americans for Kari, said in a statement that the campaign is working to show tribal communities “they have real options, and we won’t take their vote for granted.”

Lake has made several trips to reservations in her campaign and organized at least two roundtables on Native issues. After an August visit to the Navajo Nation, Lake gained the endorsement of the tribe’s former vice president, Myron Lizer.

Lizer is a Republican, though he said Lake had to earn his support. She made her case to Lizer and his wife over a 30-minute phone call, during which Lizer admonished her for missing a major Navajo parade when she was running for governor in 2022. He said he would only endorse her if she came to the nation — and she did, attending a rodeo in June.

“I’ve seen us voting Democratic for five decades, and nothing’s changed in Indian country,” said Lizer, who is also starring in radio ads for the Arizona GOP. “I want to give Republican leadership another opportunity to enhance life here.”

In the presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign has hired 22 organizers for tribal outreach in this state alone, with plans to add nine more before the election, according to the campaign. Among its top surrogates to tribal voters is Peggy Flanagan, Minnesota’s lieutenant governor, who is the highest-ranking Native woman to hold executive office in the country.

Minnesota’s governor and Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, visited the Phoenix area this month to meet with tribal leaders, predicting that a “Native wall” in Arizona and other states would deliver victory for her this fall.

The Democratic National Committee says it is spending more than ever this election targeting Native voters. It marked Indigenous Peoples’ Day by announcing a six-figure ad campaign aimed at tribal communities in Arizona and three other states. The Harris campaign also on Monday announced TV and radio ads “in and around” the Navajo Nation.

In their messaging, Democrats are emphasizing their broad commitment to tribal sovereignty, while Republicans are looking to tap into concerns about the economy.

Republican staffers meet with Navajo voters on a weekly basis, according to an RNC spokesperson. The RNC, working with Donald Trump’s campaign, has sent staff and volunteers to events on reservations such as flea markets and rodeos.

Trump himself has made personal appeals to Native voters, giving a shout-out to Tanya Lewis, chairwoman of the Yavapai-Apache Nation, during a rally Sunday in Prescott Valley, Ariz. Lewis helped show Gallego around when he visited her reservation in the spring.

Bernadine Jones, chairwoman of the Havasupai Tribe, told reporters she has heard “nothing at all” from Trump or Lake and did not personally know any tribal members supporting them.

While the Native vote tends to lean Democratic, some communities have long been skeptical of both parties. Jaynie Parrish, the founder of Arizona Native Vote, said she did not register to vote until her late 20s, thinking politics was just “a place for greedy White men.”

Biden’s 2020 margin in Arizona was a turning point, Parrish said, but so was what he did next: pick Rep. Deb Haaland (D) of New Mexico to lead the Interior Department, making her the first Native American Cabinet secretary in American history.

Parrish now cites the 2020 numbers to tell reluctant voters: “Look at them: Your vote mattered.”

“There’s definitely a vying now,” Parrish added.

Pratte, the former Biden campaign tribal outreach director, said that as the election nears, in addition to consistently showing up, candidates need to be mindful that tribal members tend to be “day-of voters.” Among other things, she noted, they value the communal experience of in-person voting.

Gallego’s visit was somber at times, such as when the tribal leaders shared their frustrations with government. But he also happily obliged when they showed off the natural beauty of the reservation. The congressman was among the first in his group to reach the base of Havasu Falls, peeling off his shirt and jumping into the misty waters.

Drying off afterward, Gallego quipped to reporters, “My next town hall is going to be so disappointing when you cover it.”

On the way out Monday, Gallego and his crew opted for a helicopter ride, sparing themselves the uphill climb.

Karin Brulliard contributed to this report.