Since World War 2, Arizona politics have been dominated by the GOP. The Democrats have had a reasonable presence in the legislature, have succeeded in electing a few governors who have done a good job and under whom the state prospered. Two of them had their terms cut short because they accepted Federal appointments, Raul Castro and Janet Napolitano. At the federal level, after decades of not having a Democrat go to the US Senate, both senators are now Democrats as the same Republican, Martha McSally, was defeated twice after being appointed to fill vacancies. The prospects look very good at this point for another female Democrat, current Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, to claim the governor's office in 2022, with a very likely Democratic majority in both houses.
In the current state legislature, the Democrats are just one seat away from control of the Senate and two away from control of the House. Democrats have increased their numbers by in-migration of people from the Northeast and California, and by massively increasing the number of Latinos registered to vote. A decade ago, fewer than 30% of Arizona Latinos eligible to vote were registered, but growing opposition to the notorious former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio helped increase that number to 60%, and flipped the sheriff race, several house and senate districts in Maricopa County and the US Senate races. Only 22% of Latinos in Arizona voted for Trump in 2020, which was the narrow numerical difference in the margin by which Joe Biden won the state's 11 electoral votes.
It hasn't been a Republican lockdown by any means, mainly because the Republicans who get elected to office engage in activities which sabotage their ability to get re-elected. I often wonder, with all of the shenanigans, corruption, illegal activity, one former GOP governor impeached and removed, one who was sent to prison, about how partisan the political atmosphere must be. And now, the entire Republican contingent in the state senate has fallen for another scam.
Governor Evan Mecham
Evan Mecham dropped out of college to start an automobile dealership in the small mining town of Ajo, Arizona. As the copper vein there began running out, he moved his dealership to Glendale in Maricopa County He made multiple attempts to run for the state legislature and managed to get a term in the state Senate. He was a typrical Republican of his time, wanting the US out of the UN, critical of the Supreme Court decision banning publicly recited prayer in public schools, and tax cuts for the rich. He won a GOP primary election for governor with very sparse turnout on the strength of his support from fellow Mormons, a strong presence of Birchers and from the large segment of retired Arizonans because he promised them a tax cut. He got 54% of the vote in the GOP primary, and 40% of the vote in the general election because the Democrats split between two candidates.
His governorship was characterized by his past experience as a used car dealer. He cancelled the state's Martin Luther King holiday, declaring "King doesn't deserve a holiday." which more or less set the tone for everything else he did, killing Arizona's thriving tourist business and leading to the cancellation of hundreds of conventions and sports events, including a Super Bowl bid. He was known for racial slurs, not only involving African-Americans, but Asians and Latinos as well. Many of his cabinet appointees were either under criminal investigation, including one for murder, had served prison time and one had been court martialed out of military service.
Mecham couldn't avoid making serious gaffes, using the term pickaninny in reference to African American children, insisting that the US constitution was "divinely inspired" (a Mormon doctrinal assertion) and he was not obligated to the state legislature, and claiming that the state's daily newspapers were against him because he had been their competitor at one time. But it was the corruption in his administration, combined with his own tax evasion tactics that got him impeached and removed from office. Though both houses of the state legislature had Republican majorities, it was members of his own party that provided testimony, submitted evidence and voted to convict him and remove him from office.
Governor Fife Symington
Bank fraud, extortion, involvement in real estate development fraud for which Arizona is well known, claiming to have an encounter with UFO's, and after being convicted of fraud and extortion, enrolled in a culinary school. This guy had it all.
Arizona is dotted with real estate developments that never lived up to their billing. People buy land, sight unseen, for the purpose of developing it by building homes or investing in business as the population grows. Symington was involved in loans and deals for a retail project in Phoenix which he claimed led to his loss of $23 million and declaring bankruptcy. It was this deal that led to the extortion and bank fraud charges.
He was pardoned by none other than his good friend Bill Clinton, whom he had rescued from drowning in an incident in Connecticut many years before. That just adds to the strangeness. Not facing a prison term, Symington enrolled in the Arizona Culinary Academy and had, as he described it, a "humbling experience."
While still governor, Symington claims to have had an encounter with a UFO, the famous "Phoenix Lights" episode of March, 1997. He described the UFO in relative detail, claiming that as a pilot, he knew every kind of aircraft that was in existence and this wasn't an aircraft. Many other people also claimed seeing the lights, but the governor's detailed description is unique.
Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio
The self-proclaimed "Toughest sheriff in America," Arpaio was openly racist when it came to his way of enforcing the law. His term as sheriff stands as an example of how easy it really is to abuse power, pander to a particular constituency, violate the law at multiple points and get away with it as long as you know the voters won't hold you accountable. Arpaio served as sheriff from 1993 to 2017, gradually seeing his margin of victory in elections diminish as his record of police misconduct and incidents of abuse mounted. After being convicted of contempt of court, he lost to Democrat Paul Penzone in the 2016 election, in spite of his support for Trump, with whom he appeared at a rally.
Arpaio's notoriety didn't really materialize until 2005, when he came out strongly against illegal immigration. His support for the state's notorious anti-immigration bill SB1070, which was struck down by the Supreme Court, was just the tip of the iceberg. Litigation in civil cases of wrongful death, wrongful arrest, entrapment, racial profile and discrimination cases cost the taxpayers of Maricopa County $140 million during his tenure.
This is the sheriff who "investigated" President Barack Obama's birth certificate. I put the word in parenthesis because it wasn't actually a real investigation. The authenticity of his birth certificate was proven long before either Trump or Arpaio made their claims, and Arpaio never produced any evidence to either prove his claim, nor to even justify the money the county spent on the so-called investigation.
Apparently, the political landscape in Arizona is improving. After Maricopa County voters tossed Arpaio out, and he got a pardon for his crimes from Trump, he made an attempt to run for the Senate and lost in the GOP primary. In an attempt to reclaim his sheriff badge, he also was defeated, in a primary election. Much of the success achieved by the Democratic party in Maricopa County and in Arizona can be attributed to the organizing of Latino opposition to Arpaio.
The Latest Chapter in Arizona's Embarrassing GOP Saga: The Cyber Ninjas
Trump, according to several of his cronies, threw a foaming fit on election night when, with just about 80% of the vote counted in Arizona, and Biden leading comfortably by 136,000 votes, the propaganda parade at Fox News gave in and declared that Joe Biden would carry the state of Arizona and its eleven electoral votes. It was incredibly ironic, since only the Associated Press, out of all of the other news media networks, followed suit. It would be nine days after election day before any of the other major networks would make the call.
Obviously, it was a terrific blow to Trump, the earliest sign on election night that things were not going to go his way and a miserable blue spot during the four days of waiting until Pennsylvania finally got enough of its ballots counted to be declared for Biden, putting him over the top for the electoral college victory.
It's not that this couldn't be seen coming. The Arizona of Barry Goldwater was a Republican backwater, a politically backward and provincial outpost where the GOP majority was made up of a core of Mormons, who believe in white supremacy and whose church doctrine excluded dark-skinned people from church membership or leadership, and the descendants of settlers who pushed the native tribes off their ancestral lands and slaughtered them, along with Mexican settlers who also wouldn't give up their claims. It was politically more like Mississippi or South Carolina than neighboring California or New Mexico, a fact born out by the electoral college votes gathered by Goldwater in his blistering 1964 defeat.
But the state has added over six million new residents since 1964. Many of them have come along with corporate headquarter relocations to Phoenix or Tucson from the upper Midwest and the Northeast, urban and suburban areas where the majority of voters are Democrats. Being a border state, the Latino population in Arizona has also surged and political situations have caused them to become more organized. In Arizona, the Latino vote is frequently 75% Democrat or higher. Much of the growth in the past two decades has come from neighboring California, which is also heavily Democratic.
The political shift has been inevitable. The legacy of corrupt GOP governors and the failures of recent governors to accomplish much of anything, like Jan Brewer and Doug Ducey stands in contrast to Democrats like Bruce Babbitt, who resolved the state's financial deficits, Rose Mofford, who cleaned up Mecham's mess, and Janet Napolitano, who went on to become Secretary of Homeland Security under Obama, and the whole Arpaio-Trump disaster, have changed things in Arizona. The Congressional delegation, even with blatant gerrymandering, has shifted and the state has gone from having two Republican senators to two Democratic senators in one election cycle.
In spite of all of that, the Republicans of the Arizona Senate are presenting the Democratic party in Arizona with a beautifully wrapped gift. The very presence of the Cyber Ninjas as a serious attempt to "audit" the votes in Maricopa County is a joke that just adds to the already miserable Republican legacy of the state. They have conclusively proven that they do not know what they are doing, do not know how to count ballots or audit a ballot count. They have succeeded in convincing enough Republicans in the state senate that they are a waste of time and money and that they will produce nothing useful. They have convinced somewhere around 85-87% of the Arizona electorate that they are a fraud.
But the Cyber Ninjas will achieve success. They will help the Democrats gain a majority of seats in both houses of the Arizona legislature, put a Democrat in the governor's chair, help at least one, maybe two Democrats get a GOP congressional seat and guarantee that a Democrat will carry Arizona in the 2024 election.
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