Dianna M. Náñez

The Arizona Republic

PHOENIX — Zena Mitchell got up at 4 a.m., fastened a blue “Trump 2016” button to her red and white scarf and rushed to meet a friend driving the duo from their retirement community to the Trump speech.

She didn’t want to be late. It might have been her only chance to see the man she planned to vote for in November.

Standing in an hourlong line isn’t as easy as it used to be, but Mitchell said she still feels younger than her age, a number she declined to reveal.

“I live in a retirement community,” she said, smiling. “Let’s leave it at that.”

Mitchell saw only a handful of fellow African Americans at the Prescott Valley Event Center, where Donald Trump made a campaign stop Tuesday, his sixth in traditionally Republican Arizona. Mitchell noticed a few Hispanic Trump supporters. She wished more people of color had shown up to support the Republican candidate for president.

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After hearing Trump speak, Mitchell was even more committed to seeing him elected. On this day, even in a mostly white crowd, Trump had spoken directly to people like her.

“I think more African Americans and Hispanics are for Trump than people think,” Mitchell said, clasping her hands over the Trump buttons she had fastened to her sweater.

The buttons read: “Trump for president.” “I like the Donald.”

CHEERING AS LOUD AS SHE COULD

Mitchell is a minority within her minority group.

Nationally, 2% of registered African-American voters back Trump, according to an August survey by the Pew Research Center, which included third-party candidates. About a quarter of registered Hispanics said they back Trump.

By contrast, 85% of African-American voters and half of Hispanic voters said they support or lean toward Hillary Clinton.

Mitchell cheered as loud as she could when she heard Trump speak directly to African-American and Hispanic voters.

In Prescott Valley, he repeated comments he’s recently made in other cities. To a cheering, mostly white audience, Trump said that minorities are languishing in inner cities amid crime, poverty and subpar schools.

He called on Hispanics and African Americans to consider his candidacy an alternative to the status quo he believes they would see with Hillary Clinton

“To those African Americans and Latinos suffering in our country, I say very simply, ‘What in the hell do you have to lose? Vote for Donald Trump. I am going to fix it,’ ” Trump said, lifting his hands out to the crowd as he spoke.

Mitchell said she is active in local Republican Party politics in Prescott, where she lives.

The retired teacher and speech and language therapist said she spent much of her younger years voting Democrat. She remembers volunteering to help elect Jerry Brown the first time the Democrat won the California gubernatorial seat in the late 1970s.

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Soon after that election, she turned away from the Democratic Party.

“I’ve voted for Republicans every year since Ronald Reagan,” she said.

Mitchell believes Trump can reform the failing public-education system. She backs the candidate’s stance on doing away with Common Core programs.

CRITICIZING DEMOCRATS' PLATFORMS AS STALE

She railed against what she considers Democrats' stale platforms, adding that she believes the party has enabled people of color, making them dependent on social-welfare programs.

“When someone has to hold their hand out and ask for help, it degrades their self-respect,” she said.

Mitchell’s friend Becky Simerly, 63, chimed in.

“It’s like Jesus said, if you give someone a fish, they eat for a day. If you teach them to fish, they eat for a lifetime,” Simerly said.

Mitchell nodded her head, adding that she thinks many people of color continue to vote for liberals because “it’s in their genes.”

“They vote Democrat because their mom did, their grandparents did, their great-grandparents did,” she said. “They’re not making a choice. They’ve inherited a party.”

Mitchell did not vote for President Obama.

“He wants to turn this country communist,” she said. “He’s a globalist. I Googled it. That’s all you have to do if you want to see which politicians want a one-world order.”

Mitchell knows people have called Trump a racist. She disagrees.

Trump’s supporters are overwhelmingly white, 87% white, according to the Pew survey. Clinton’s supporters are 58% white.

Mitchell shuns the statistics.

She said she remembers what it was like growing up in America at a time when racism was rampant. Even today, she says she faces a subtler, but just as painful, racism in her retirement community.

“I’ve seen prejudice,” she said. “Trump is not prejudice.”

HISPANICS FOR TRUMP

Mercy Stika and Nancy Poindexter agree. The women said they are Hispanics and “Bible-believing Christians” who voted for Trump in the primary and will vote for him again in November.

“We’re here to support Trump and we believe he’s going to make history,” Poindexter said. “Everybody’s ready for a change. We believe Trump is going to be that change.”

Stika said this is the second time she’s seen Trump speak in Arizona.

“I wanted to see him again,” Stika said, laughing. “So we drove up here early. Go Trump!”

They showed off their Trump buttons and their red Trump/Pence shirts with the now-famous campaign tagline: “Make America Great Again.”

Poindexter said that any talk of Trump being racist is “just politics.”

“He has given jobs for every race,” he said.

“Whether we’re Hispanic, we’re black, I’ve talked to many African-Americans who are Bible-believing Christians who are voting for Trump,” she said, “because we know that the only time the politicians come and the Democrats come and say, ‘We want your vote,’ is during voting season, but when it’s over nothing gets changed.”

Poindexter said she was born in California and her dad is from Arizona. She supports Trump’s plan for a border wall.

“We have people that are coming into our country, we don’t know where they came from, what they’re about and they are just here to harm us,” she said. “They’re not here to want to learn our culture or beliefs. They’re wanting to change America, change us and want to make it like theirs. Well, if that’s what they want, they need to stay where they came from and we need to secure our borders.”

Stika, nodding emphatically, added: “They want to take over.”

Before Stika and Poindexter headed inside the event center, they stopped to check out pro-Trump buttons and apparel a man was unloading from his car to sell at the rally.

Kevin McCray has made a business out of traveling America selling his goods at the GOP presidential candidate's events.

He flew in from Ohio for Trump's rally. McCray lined up buttons with Donald Trump and Melania Trump's likeness, and T-shirts and hats with Trump campaign slogans.

One of his newest T-shirts reads: "Deplorable Lives Matter," a spoof mixing the Black Lives Matter movement with Clinton's comment characterizing some Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables.”

McCray said he's voting for Trump because "he'll run the country like a business, and that's a good thing."

When people ask him why an African-American such as himself would vote for Trump, he says: "Look in the mirror and ask yourself what Trump can do for you and what you want in a candidate. That's what really matters."

FACING OFF

Protesters arrived early for a chance to criticize Trump and his supporters. Police had cordoned off an area for protesters across the street from the event center.

From time to time, the two sides would clash.

One woman yelled, “Racists! Racists!” She was soon drowned out by the thousands of people in line waiting to hear Trump speak.

“Shut up!” “What do we want? Trump. Trump. Trump.”

Alyssa Vigil joined protesters, many of whom are students at nearby Prescott College.

"Donald Trump represents just a part of the racism in this country," she said. "We are here to make it abundantly clear that Donald Trump is not welcome in Yavapai County."

Devin Davis, a representative of the Black Student Union at Prescott College, spoke before the crowd as well.

"Donald Trump will not only lose this election but will also lose Arizona," Davis said.

Not everyone agreed.

Rosa Moreno stood in line for hours to see Trump. The Mexican immigrant said she came to Arizona on a student visa nearly four decades ago.

Now, she’s an avid Trump supporter and member of the Republican Women of Prescott.

Dressed with a "Legal immigrants for Trump” shirt, she was enthusiastic over her support and encouraged other Latinos to follow her lead.

“I support all Mexicans and I ask them to support Donald Trump because he will protect us, he will make more jobs for them, but they need to come legally and they have to follow a process.”

Still, she said she doesn’t think those immigrants in the country illegally should be deported, one of the hallmarks of Trump’s campaign. Nonetheless, she’s steadfast in her support.

“They should give him a chance, because Mexicans and Latinos have nothing to lose,” she said, echoing one of Trump’s messages toward minority voters. “He’s not a politician, he’s a businessman."

Sitting in the hallway of the events center, Zena Mitchell fussed with her Trump buttons, making sure they were just right.

She said she knows some people of color who consider Trump's rhetoric divisive and prejudiced may ask how she can support the GOP candidate.

She made her own appeal to minority voters.

“I do think Afro Americans and Latinos are often taken for granted when it comes to election time,” she said. “It’s rather obvious that those politicians don’t care about us. They don’t come to our communities until they want votes. They make the same promises over and over again.”

Then, she got up slowly, holding her balance so her knees wouldn't give out. She picked up her Trump sign. And as a woman with a Trump yard sign passed by, Mitchell asked for one.

"We're all out," the woman said.

Contributing: Jerod MacDonald-Evoy and Rafael Carranza, The Arizona Republic