With a key Senate seat in play, progressive engagement is surging. Latino turnout, though, is still the great imponderable

Every Tuesday morning, Mary Santy joins a small group of protesters outside the Phoenix offices of Arizona’s two Republican senators, Jeff Flake and John McCain.

McCain has hope for US despite ‘challenges in the world’, says memoir co-author Read more

What started as a small demonstration against Donald Trump has turned into a weekly ritual. The protesters’ colorful signs – “Grab ’em by the Midterms 2018”, “Fox News is the real Pravda” – draw supportive honks from passing motorists.

There is the occasional rude gesture too but Santy said signs of support for liberal activism, from her small protest to the Women’s March and the March for Our Lives anti-gun violence rally, is still “so new for us” in this conservative western state.

“One of these days,” she said, “I’m going to write on my sign, ‘#ThanksTrump’.”

With its growing population of young Hispanic voters, Arizona has long seemed a tempting prize for Democrats. Year after year, electoral success has eluded them. As the 2018 midterms approach, with Arizona one of the biggest political battlegrounds, Democrats are indefatigably optimistic.

“The rest of the nation woke up to Trump in 2016,” said Alex Gomez, executive director of Lucha, an immigrants rights group. “But we have been living that for years.”



Issues that animate liberals across the country – immigration, healthcare, education – are raging in Arizona. Last month, public school teachers walked out of their classrooms – and won salary increases and more funding for schools. The state is also at the center of the roiling debate over illegal immigration and border enforcement. It is home to Hispanics, 31% of the population, and suburban white voters who strongly disagree with Trump’s hardline politics.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton lost Arizona to Trump by 3.5%, the closest margin of Democratic defeat since her husband, Bill Clinton, won here in 1996. And Maricopa County ousted Joe Arpaio, self-styled as “America’s toughest sheriff”, after 24 years. This year, Republicans were rattled by a narrow special election victory in a deeply conservative suburban Phoenix district that Trump took by 21 points.



Republicans outnumber Democrats in the state and have nearly twice as many precinct committee officials. But Democrats say their numbers have jumped since 2016 and the combined total of unaffiliated and third-party voters is greater than those for either party. Accordingly, the state Democratic party has launched a 15-county strategy to reach new voters across the states and especially independents. .

Every election cycle, they tell us that this will be the year that they turn Arizona blue Ayshia Connors, Arizona Republican party

Democrats say they are optimistic they can pick up at least one, possibly two congressional seats. They are also excited about the possibility of winning control of the state senate and insist they have a chance of unseating the Republican governor, Doug Ducey. The biggest prize of all is an open Senate seat that could determine control of the chamber. Republicans, of course, push back.

“We hear the same rhetoric from the Democrats every two years,” said Ayshia Connors, director of communications for the state Republican party. “Every election cycle, they tell us that this will be the year that they turn Arizona blue. All they have to show for it is a clean Republican sweep in every statewide office.”

Chuck Coughlin, a veteran Republican strategist, was less emphatic. Though he said too many Democrats were running as progressives in a state that is still conservative and waved off the chance of a defeat for Ducey, who negotiated the pay rise for teachers, he said the Senate seat, held by a conservative Republican since 1995, “clearly leans blue”.

‘Original Trump’

Immigration has already emerged as a defining issue of the battle for Arizona’s seat. The three Republican candidates have largely embraced Trump’s agenda – policies several party strategists quietly worry are too far right for the general election.

The Republican primary is a three-way contest between US congresswoman Martha McSally, a decorated air force veteran and party favorite; Kelli Ward, a former state senator and far-right conservative; and Arpaio, whom Trump pardoned after he was convicted of contempt of court for refusing to stop racially profiling Hispanics.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Senatorial candidate Kelli Ward waves to volunteers and voters. Photograph: Matt York/AP

The former sheriff, known here as the “original Trump”, has long shared the president’s hardline views. In an interview from his office in Fountain Hills, he pledged to serve only one term – just long enough to help Trump implement his America First policies.

“I’m running on my own history,” Arpaio said. “But I’m a Trump guy. I was with him from day one.” Referring to his primary opponents, he added: “Isn’t it nice they finally learned that the president’s a great guy?”

'You don’t tell yourself no': Stacey Abrams' bid to be America's first black female governor Read more

Ward has similarly tied herself to Trump and fully supports his plan to build a wall along the Mexican border and restrict legal immigration.

“People say, ‘What about Daca? What about Daca?’” she said, feigning a whiny voice as she discussed the Obama-era policy that protects Dreamers, at a campaign event with controversial former White House adviser Sebastian Gorka. “Well, what about Daca? I do not believe we should address any permanent solution for Daca until we secure the border, stop chain migration…”

Her comments were drowned out by rapturous applause.

It’s not hard to predict the future when you have the numbers Joseph Garcia, Arizona State University

McSally, the party favorite and one-time Trump critic, has veered right to embrace the president since entering the primary. Earlier this month, she dropped her support for a relatively lenient House immigration bill. She remains a co-sponsor of legislation that would crack down on illegal immigration and sharply restrict legal migration.

Democrats hope a nasty Republican primary will open the door to a first Democratic senator in a generation. US congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema, a “Blue Dog” centrist and the presumptive nominee, has positioned herself as an “independent voice” and consensus builder, willing to work across the aisle. While the Republicans vie to be seen as the most conservative, Coughlin said, Sinema is honing a positive, general-election message, in English and Spanish.

In his new memoir, McCain, the six-term Arizona senator who is fighting brain cancer at his ranch in Sedona, warns that Republicans are “on the wrong side” of the immigration debate and risk losing Latino voters for a generation.

“Most Arizona high school seniors are Hispanic,” McCain writes. “Do you think most of them would consider voting for the party that pulled their friends out of school, took them away from their teams and clubs and neighborhoods and put them on buses to Mexico?”

‘We can’t just bet on the demographics’

Juan Mendez, a state senator who is among a growing crop of young Hispanic lawmakers, said his own election was proof that shifting demographics and voter registration efforts are changing the political landscape.

Facing Trump, a historian appeals to America's soul: 'I think we'll survive' Read more

“The majority of 18-year-olds who are ready to vote each year are Latinos who grew up under Sheriff Joe Arpaio,” he said. “But we can’t just bet on the demographics to save us. We have to keep putting up candidates the base can believe in.”

David Garcia, a veteran and a professor of education at Arizona State University, hopes to become the state’s first Hispanic governor in four decades. His campaign is centered on education and his path to victory runs through Latino communities.



“The anomaly has long been Joe Arpaio’s electoral success in this state,” he said. “The problem is that the folks who are voting are not reflective of Arizona. When we change that I think you’ll get a chance to hear what I would consider to be the real voice of Arizona.”

Joseph Garcia, director of the Morrison Institute Latino Public Policy Center at Arizona State University, said Latinos made up more than a fifth of the Arizona electorate in 2016 election but their influence was limited by low voter turnout.

A study he worked on, however, found that by 2030 Arizona could become a “blue, progressive state”, in large part because of the Latino vote.

“The die is cast as far as changing demographics [go],” Garcia said. “It’s not hard to predict the future when you have the numbers.”