Arizona opened election polls Tuesday for Democrats to pick a presidential candidate as the state deals with a public health crisis that has crippled parts of the nation.

Pollsters agree the Arizona Presidential Preference Election on March 17 is Joe Biden’s to lose.

Arizona-based universities have increasingly focused on downtown Phoenix in the past decade, with all three state universities bringing satellite campuses to the area between Roosevelt and Van Buren streets.

As he lags in the polls, Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Garcia brought in progressive powerhouse Sen. Bernie Sanders to fire up young voters at rallies in Tucson and Tempe on Tuesday.

David Garcia says he's the same candidate he's always been, but political observers have seen him take a big left turn and embrace a more progressive message than ever before.

In his gubernatorial bid, David Garcia is running to the left of where he was four years ago when, as the more mainstream candidate in the general election, he garnered some Republican support.

The mantra of the day was “any blue just won’t do” and the event, which boasted speakers like Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, and Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, said the path for Democratic victory in conservative districts is to embrace progressive values and positions, not hide from them.

Democratic senators criticized a National Park Service plan to impose steep increases in entrance fees at 17 of its most popular parks, including the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Yellowstone and Zion, calling the proposed rates “arbitrary and unjustifiable.”

Businessman and former public school teacher Jim Moss of Globe announced Tuesday he would seek his party's nomination for the seat.

The revelation that alleged Alexandria, Virginia shooter James Hodgkinson was a Bernie Sanders volunteer whose social media postings were filled with anti-Trump and anti-Republican rhetoric brought a round of recriminations from some Arizona Republicans who blamed the “left” for the attack.