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If you haven’t used your however many free reads at The Nation already this month, scoot on over there and enjoy this nice longread by Sasha Abramsky with the aspirational title, “Will Arizona Be MAGA’s Last Stand?” Unlike a lot of article titles that end with a question mark (“Did Ancient Aliens Build the Mall of America?”), the answer isn’t an automatic no.
As Abramsky surveys the all the political ferment in the state — Arizonans love a good craft beer as much as anyone! — the state has a hell of a lot of potential to be the swingin’est of swing states this year. Abramsky counts the ways:
If the Democrats win its 11 electoral votes, Biden’s path to reelection suddenly gets much easier; it will give him a cushion for the potential loss of, say, Michigan. If Biden loses Arizona, Trump stands on the threshold of a return to power. If progressive Democratic Representative Ruben Gallego wins the US Senate seat that is being vacated by Kyrsten Sinema, the Democrats have a narrow path to retaining control of the upper chamber in an election that many pundits predict will leave them with a minority. If the GOP candidate—most likely former gubernatorial hopeful and election denier Kari Lake—wins the seat, that path all but disappears. Meanwhile, there are two toss-up congressional seats that could allow the Democrats to regain control of the House. As for the state Legislature, winning two seats in both the state House of Representatives and the Senate would give Democrats control for the first time since the 1960s—placing Arizona on a par with its neighbors Nevada and New Mexico, which have gone from being red to generally blue in recent years. In sum, just about everything is up for grabs in the Arizona desert.
I lived in Arizona from high school (1976) through getting my PhD from the University of Arizona in 2000. It was a very red state, and good practice for my eventual move to Idaho. Arizona has had its share of Democratic governors (Hi, Bruce Babbitt! Hi, Rose Mofford — who because of her hairdo was occasionally mistaken for Ann Richards! Hi, Janet Napolitano!), but the state House has been run by Republicans since 1967, with the state Senate only briefly coming under Democratic control three times.
This year, with continued voter anger simmering over the state supreme court’s ruling that put in place an old abortion ban from 1864 — passed by the Territorial Lege, decades before statehood! — it probably isn’t too wacky to dream that voters might go ahead and flip just two seats in each house to the D column. If so, that would give Arizona a Democratic trifecta for the first time since 1966. (Gov. Katie Hobbs was elected in the 2022 midterms, in case you’ve come unstuck in time. Many of us have.) The law was eventually overturned, but it’ll be replaced at the end of the summer by a still-shitty 15-week abortion ban.
And as Abramsky makes abundantly clear — Read the whole thing!™ — a ballot measure that would add constitutional protections for abortion rights has greatly improved the likelihood of high turnout by supporters in November. Many of the people who have been knocking on doors to get signatures to put the amendment on the ballot are now planning to transition right into canvassing for both the ballot measure and for Democratic candidates, and some of the more extreme MAGA Republicans in the Lege have been helping out by insisting that the 1864 law was good and just and maybe not harsh enough.
State Sen. Anthony Kern, for instance, who’s currently in an ugly primary fight for the Republican nomination to a congressional seat, isn’t satisfied with simply worshiping with the cult of the holy fetus, but also insists that
pro-choice politicians “are willing to abort a baby at nine months as it’s coming out of the birth canal, and even 30 days after.” Kern is convinced that post-birth “abortions” are commonplace in California—which he calls “the death state”—and that they would become commonplace in Arizona, too, if the Democrats won control there. “They think by shedding innocent blood, that’s their path to victory,” he says. “Everything they touch turns to death.”
WONKETTE FACTCHECK! It is illegal to kill newborn babies!
That’s exactly the kind of rhetoric that turns off lots of independents (about a third of registered voters) and even many old-style John McCain Republicans, even though they’re hated by the MAGA wing of their own party.
With that, let’s remind you to enjoy the whole article, but also to check out the fundraising page for “Flipping Arizona,” which sadly does not feature Holly Hunter, Nic Cage, or John Goodman, but does have the lovely slogan “Let’s make Arizona democracy’s next trifecta (and make sure Michigan stays trifect-ed)” and a URL that ends in “Make-Arizona-the-Next-Michigan-and-Keep-Michigan-Michigan” too.
If you can, send ‘em some money. We love blue trifectas, because they get shit done!
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