PHOENIX — More than a decade after the housing market tanked in the Great Recession, taking with it their dreams of running their own business, Irene Montoya and Jason Hemphill were on the verge of rebuilding what they lost.
Montoya, 44, who has a penchant for fixing up old cars, had invested in an auto dealership. Hemphill, 48, an avid toy collector since he attended the original “Star Wars” premiere in 1977, was selling action figures and vintage toys online. The couple also launched other small ventures with the hopes of hedging their bets, including an auto rental service through the car-sharing app Turo and an Airbnb management company.
“We had all these kinds of things going on,” Montoya said, “really thinking we had ourselves covered this time.”
But nothing could prepare them for the pandemic that quickly triggered the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. Now voters here are increasingly finding themselves on opposing ends of a precarious and bifurcated recovery that has President Trump at serious risk of losing a state he won in 2016. For some, Trump’s boasts of his “beautiful” pre-coronavirus economy — and pledges that it will soon roar back to life — are clashing against cold reality.
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