Ohio Sen. JD Vance, former President Donald Trump’s running mate, is continuing his tour of western states with a stop in Arizona on Wednesday.

Vance is set to hold a rally in Glendale, outside of Phoenix, giving the vice presidential candidate an opportunity to introduce himself to voters in a state that Trump lost by less than 11,000 votes in 2020.

“Vance doesn’t have a lot of connections to Arizona,” Samara Klar, a Professor at the University of Arizona School of Government and Public Policy, told Spectrum News. “I think his name is probably brand new for a lot of Arizonans. I wouldn’t say he has a lot of name recognition here, he has no ties to the state.”

His visit to Arizona comes a week before Vice President Kamala Harris and her soon-to-be-announced running mate are set to make an appearance in Phoenix, and one day after the state’s primaries, which saw one of Trump’s biggest acolytes, failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, advance to the general election to challenge Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego for U.S. Senate. That race is one of several in November that could determine control of the upper chamber of Congress next year.

The event also comes as Vance continues to be dogged by comments he has previously made about childless women and families, which has emerged as a line of attack from Democrats and Harris’ campaign.

A member of Vance’s own Senate Republican conference, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, joined the growing chorus condemning his remarks, calling them “offensive to me as a woman.”

“Women make their own determinations as to whether or not they're going to have children or cats or dogs or how many kids kids they're going to have,” Murkowski told reporters at the Capitol on Wednesday.

Klar told Spectrum News that Arizona voters care about issues like abortion — another one that Democrats are hammering Vance on as out-of-touch, hard-right and “anti-woman” — and immigration, which is an issue the Ohio lawmaker and his fellow Republicans are using to attack Harris.

To that end, Vance is set to visit the U.S.-Mexico border in Cochise County, Arizona, on Thursday.

At one of his rallies in Nevada on Tuesday, Vance said of Harris that “during her first failed run for president, she told everyone exactly what she wanted: to decriminalize illegal immigration, to tear down Immigration, Customs and Enforcement and open up the floodgates, while giving everybody who came here free healthcare at your expense.”

Vance, Trump and other Republicans have focused on Harris’ role in the Biden administration’s border policies, often exaggerating the responsibilities she was given by President Joe Biden and the impact those policies have had on U.S. citizens. On Tuesday, Vance falsely claimed Harris plans to give undocumented immigrants the right to vote, a policy she does not and never has supported.

“She is not going to stop until every illegal immigrant has the right to vote, which is going to destroy your voice in your own country to make room for people who shouldn't even be here,” Vance said, before he was interrupted by chants of “USA, USA, USA!”

He went on to contrast the Biden-Harris administration’s policies with Trump’s plan for a second term: “To all illegal aliens, President Trump and I have a different message. If you are here against the laws of this country, pack your bags because you're going home in six months.”

Spectrum News' Joseph Konig contributed to this report.