Ruben Alvarez is upfront about the choices he has made in his own life. But he is not surprised that others like him tend to lurk in the shadows.

After all, it’s 2016, and it takes some guts to be a proud Republican and a public Hillary Clinton supporter. Especially in battleground Arizona.



“It’s not so much that Republicans in Arizona are supportive of Hillary Clinton and her candidacy,” said Alvarez, a political consultant who has worked for two Republican governors in the state but will be casting his ballot for Clinton in November.



“They’re holding their support close to the chest, but come election time, they’ll vote for her,” Alvarez said. “It’s very closeted.”



Ruben Alvarez, a political consultant who has worked for two Republican governors in the state but will be casting his ballot for the Clinton in November. Photograph: Maria L La Ganga

There aren’t all that many people like Alvarez in the Copper State, where every statewide office is held by a GOP member, no Democratic presidential candidate has prevailed in the last 20 years and Trump is scheduled to make his sixth campaign appearance on Tuesday afternoon. (Clinton has been here once this election cycle.)



But RealClear Politics’ average of the latest Arizona polls – the most recent, from early September, came long before Trump’s disastrous debate performance – shows Trump and Clinton in a virtual dead heat. The Republican was up just 2.2 percentage points over his Democratic rival; the margin of error for the five polls ranged from 2.8% to 3.8%.



And just last week, the Arizona Republic shocked the political establishment by endorsing Clinton – the first time the paper has backed a Democrat in its 126-year history. The paper has since lost subscribers and received at least one death threat.



Phil Boas, the paper’s editorial page editor, derided Trump’s “complete disrespect” of this country and its institutions: “There will be no majesty to the presidency if you treat it like Animal House.” He said he “could not be more proud” of his paper and his publisher.

And he told the Guardian that he, too, is part of the 7.4% of Arizona Republicans that one recent poll showed support Clinton – the GOP’s favorite target for a generation.



“I have voted Republican my entire life,” Boas said. “This is the first time I will be voting for a Democrat for president. My parents were strong Republicans. My grandparents were Republicans.”



However, “you have a man who is so dangerous and so unfit for office that he has to be stopped,” Boas said. “The only way you’ll stop him is with Hillary Clinton.”



All of this happened before revelations in the New York Times this weekend that the real estate mogul may have avoided paying federal taxes for 18 years because of a nearly billion-dollar loss he claimed on his 1995 personal tax filing.



“It never ends with this guy,” said Grant Woods, shaking his head in disgust. Woods is an Arizona native. He was John McCain’s first congressional chief of staff. A two-term state attorney general. An influential force in Republican politics here for decades.



Today, he is part of Together for America, a group of more than 50 prominent Republicans who are helping the Clinton campaign reach out to independent voters and members of the GOP throughout the country.

Over coffee in downtown Phoenix, Woods was scathing in his assessment of the current Republican standard bearer.



“Arizona gave us Barry Goldwater, Sandra Day O’Connor, John McCain,” Woods said. “Straight talk works here. You’d have thought that Trump could have done well here, but his deficiencies are overwhelming.”



“He is the least qualified nominee in the history of the country,” Woods added.



That said, he continued: “It’s clear that the public is ready for change. The problem for Hillary Clinton is that she’s many things, but she doesn’t represent change.”





Demonstrators protest against Donald Trump during one of his Arizona rallies. Photograph: Ricardo Arduengo/Reuters

People like Woods, Alvarez and John Stubbs have their work cut out for them. Stubbs is co-founder of R4C16 (AKA Republicans for Clinton in 2016), a group of conservatives who say they want to rebuild their party in the optimistic mold of Ronald Reagan and believe that Trump could ruin the GOP.



Stubbs said polls show there are six million Republicans who say they could never vote for Trump, between 18% and 22% of those registered. But only 3.5% nationwide are willing to vote for Clinton.



“Our goal is closing that gap,” said Stubbs, whose group is not affiliated with the Democrats. “You either can live with Trump or you can’t. And if you can’t, you have to vote for her.”



Tell that to the Arizonans who ignored the rain on Sunday afternoon and headed out to the 2016 Pumpkin & Chili Party at Schnepf Farms in Queen Creek, a semi-rural enclave around 40 miles south of downtown Phoenix.



Mike Jones, a videographer who runs the festival’s pig races, says he hears lots of chatter from Republican friends who say they cannot stand Trump, but “I don’t know the reality of their commitment”. Jones is definitely not a Trump fan either.



“For the Republican side, we wanted someone Donald Trump-esque that would fight back,” Jones said. “Typically we have Republicans who don’t. When he decided not to pull punches, a lot of people got excited. I’m not one of them.”



On election day, he said, “I will probably vote more party platform. I’m voting for [GOP running mate] Mike Pence. That’s my wife’s only solace.”



On Sunday night, Betsy Boyer was eating barbecue with her family across the farm from the pig races. She is a former Chicago prosecutor who now lives in Scottsdale and is the major caregiver for her ailing mother.



Boyer started out as a Republican, but she now describes herself as an independent, like 34% of the Arizona electorate. Another 35% are registered Republicans; at 32% of registered voters, Democrats are outnumbered.



Boyer and her husband Tom, also a Republican-turned-independent, plan to vote for Clinton next month. Her 13-year-old son, Collin, would, too, if he could.



“I’m voting against Trump,” Boyer said. “I don’t think anyone else has a chance to beat him, so I’m voting for Hillary.”



Boyer does have a friend who is still a registered Republican but plans to vote for Clinton. Sitting at a picnic table, Boyer picked up her cellphone and dialed this elusive Arizona voter to see if the woman was willing to go public with her political views.



It was a short conversation.



“She doesn’t want to talk about it,” Boyer said. “She said there’d be too much bad language.”

