{"id":14009,"date":"2023-11-01T20:26:42","date_gmt":"2023-11-01T20:26:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=14009"},"modified":"2023-11-01T21:27:46","modified_gmt":"2023-11-01T21:27:46","slug":"how-suburbanites-latinos-and-the-ghost-of-john-mccain-turned-arizona-into-a-presidential-battleground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=14009","title":{"rendered":"How suburbanites, Latinos and the ghost of John McCain turned Arizona into a presidential battleground"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Mark Z. Barabak<\/strong><\/em>, Los Angeles Times<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Cindy McCain\u2019s endorsement of Joe Biden was a key to his Arizona victory, signaling to other Republicans it was fine to cross party lines and oppose President Trump. (Evan Vucci \/ Associated Press) <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 2016, Jenny Richardson voted Republican for president, as she had in every presidential election for decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She appreciated Donald Trump\u2019s status as a political outsider and liked the prospect of him remaking the Supreme Court to satisfy social conservatives such as herself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 2020, however, Richardson was done with Trump and his incessant mayhem. She voted for Joe Biden, not because she was particularly thrilled with the Democrat but because he wasn\u2019t the obstreperous incumbent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wanted a more conservative court,\u201d Richardson, 54, said on a recent morning when the beastly Arizona summer<\/a> finally yielded to a temperate taste of fall. \u201cBut then, four years later, his behavior was reprehensible to me and I couldn\u2019t support him again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The defection of Richardson and others like her<\/a> in Phoenix\u2019s sprawling suburbs was a ripple that helped turn a tide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden became only the second Democratic presidential candidate since 1948 to carry Arizona<\/a> and the first since Harry Truman to win Maricopa County, which takes in Mesa and most of the wall-to-wall communities carpeting Phoenix\u2019s Salt River Valley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden\u2019s victory \u2014 albeit the narrowest in Arizona history \u2014 was part of a broader political transformation across the West, which over the last two decades has turned the once solidly Republican stronghold into a bulwark of Democratic strength.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the last several months, I\u2019ve traveled through a half-dozen states<\/a> \u2014 along the Pacific Coast<\/a>, across the Southwest,<\/a> into the Rockies<\/a> \u2014 to explore the reasons for the change, which has drastically refashioned the national race for the White House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are commonalities throughout the region. Among them the defection of Republicans like Richardson, who consider the GOP too extreme<\/a>, and the relocation of Democrats who imported their political affinities from places like California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another factor is the rapidly growing Latino population and its expanded political influence, especially here in Arizona, where years of pugnacious policies aimed at immigrants<\/a> foreshadowed the nativism of Trump\u2019s MAGA movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re becoming younger. We\u2019re becoming browner. Diversity is increasing overall,\u201d said Alejandra Gomez, who helped mobilize Arizona\u2019s Latino vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden also benefited from the timely endorsement of Republican Cindy McCain<\/a>, widow of the late Sen. John McCain<\/a>, whose national stature and unflinching independence made him an Arizona icon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But no single factor can explain Biden\u2019s victory \u2014 not when he carried the state by fewer than 11,000 votes out of more than 3.3 million cast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cArizona is a microcosm of the country right now,\u201d said Paul Bentz, a GOP pollster in Phoenix, citing its solidly Democratic cities and staunchly Republican rural areas. \u201cThen you\u2019ve got the suburbs, which are like the swing states.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whatever the reasons for Biden\u2019s win, the result underscored that Arizona \u2014 once politically as blood-red as a desert sunset \u2014 has grown highly competitive and showed why the state will again be a top presidential battleground in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before there was Donald Trump and his crude talk of Mexican rapists<\/a> invading America, there was Maricopa County and its swaggering sheriff, Joe Arpaio.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forcing inmates to wear pink underwear and sleep in surplus Army tents, among other stunts, made Arpaio a big hit with Arizona voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until he wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His harsh policies didn\u2019t dramatically reduce crime and the sheriff department\u2019s repeated violations of civil rights ended up costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars<\/a> in legal settlements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After 24 years in office, Arpaio was finally ousted in 2016.<\/a> But not before his actions and the passage of a controversial state law<\/a> aimed at illegal immigration spawned a Latino backlash \u2014 in the same way Proposition 187 helped turn California blue<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Arizona, the flashpoint was Senate Bill 1070<\/a>, a 2010 law that effectively turned police into immigration officers and encouraged racial profiling by targeting individuals based on ethnicity and skin color. (The measure, which critics dubbed the \u201cshow-me-your-papers law,\u201d was largely overturned <\/a>after years of legal challenges.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among those moved to political action was Ruben Gallego, an Iraq war veteran who began as a staffer at Phoenix City Hall and now represents the city in Congress. The Democrat is running for a U.S. Senate seat<\/a> in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the crackdown on immigrants animated the GOP\u2019s right wing, \u201cLatinos start[ed] seeing the Republican Party not as the party of McCain but the party of Sheriff Joe Arpaio and all these other crazy guys,\u201d Gallego said. Add Trump to the equation <\/a>\u201cand it\u2019s a continuation of what Latinos in Arizona had seen for the last decade.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Latinos make up about one-third of Arizona residents. It is a relatively young population, which means more become eligible to vote each year. Many, like Jacob Martinez, came of age amid Arizona\u2019s incendiary immigration debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI grew up with SB 1070. I grew up with Sheriff Joe Arpaio,\u201d said Martinez, 22, a first-year law student at Arizona State, who watched Trump\u2019s casual bigotry and demonization of immigrants <\/a>with an unsettling sense of history repeating. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t have that at the nationalized level for even a little bit longer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2020, Martinez cast his first-ever presidential ballot for Biden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Democrat won about 6 in 10 Latino votes in Arizona, matching Hillary Clinton\u2019s performance in 2016. Trump won about 37% Latino support, compared with 31% the first time he ran, part of a pattern<\/a> seen elsewhere across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The difference was the Latino percentage of the electorate, which grew from 15% in Arizona in 2016 to just under 20% in 2020. The result was a net increase in Biden\u2019s vote, helping him eke out victory by less than half a percentage point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The showing also amounted to a win for grassroots organizations that spent more than a decade registering and mobilizing Latino voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of them, LUCHA, signed up about 20,000 new registrants ahead of the 2020 election and logged millions of voter contacts through phone banks, door-knocking and social media. (The Spanish acronym for Living United for Change in Arizona translates to \u201cfight\u201d or \u201cstruggle.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Arizona is diversifying, \u201cwithout the year-round organizing and mobilizing of Black and brown and Indigenous young people, we would not be where we are now,\u201d said LUCHA\u2019s executive director, Alejandra Gomez, who got her start in politics working against Arpaio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecause demographics is not destiny.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cindy McCain had finally had enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her late husband loathed Trump \u2014 he made no secret of that \u2014 and the feeling was mutual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Arizona senator said Trump\u2019s positions on national security were uninformed and dangerous. Trump mocked the 5 1\/2 years <\/a>McCain spent as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McCain cast the deciding vote<\/a> against Trump\u2019s effort to repeal Obamacare. Trump sneered he was \u201cnever a fan\u201d of McCain and \u201cnever will be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two months before the 2020 election \u2014 and two years after McCain died of brain cancer \u2014 the Atlantic published an article<\/a> that quoted Trump describing America\u2019s war dead as losers and suckers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was, Cindy McCain said, \u201cthe final straw.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although she hadn\u2019t voted for a Democrat since age 18, McCain endorsed Biden<\/a>, citing Trump\u2019s \u201clack of character, integrity [and] values.\u201d She hoped, in particular, to sway any suburban women who were still fence-sitting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

John McCain had long feuded with Republican extremists. They picketed his Senate office. They opposed him in primaries<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in more than three decades, McCain never lost an Arizona election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was widely revered not just as a war hero who refused to buckle under torture but also someone whose go-it-alone attitude<\/a> reflected the state\u2019s broad libertarian streak. \u201cIt turned a lot of people off,\u201d Kirk Adams, a former Republican speaker of the Arizona House, said of Trump\u2019s attacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cindy McCain\u2019s endorsement amounted to an invitation, or a kind of permission slip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was a nod that said, \u2018Hey, there are people, there are conservatives, that are not OK with Trumpism, that are putting their country over their political affiliation,\u2019\u201d said Yasser Sanchez, a Republican-turned-independent who helped rally Latino support for Biden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat was literally John McCain\u2019s thing,\u201d said Sanchez, who keeps a photo of himself smiling alongside the late senator amid a gallery of Republican notables filling his Mesa law office. \u201cPut country over party.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cindy McCain didn\u2019t just endorse Biden in a lightning round of TV appearances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a 60-second commercial filled with images of the two former Senate colleagues, she spoke directly to the camera and praised the Democrat as someone who would \u201cput service before self\u201d and lead the country with \u201ccourage and compassion, not ego.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McCain never mentioned Trump, but then she didn\u2019t have to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her support may have sealed Biden\u2019s victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arizona is not a solidly blue state, like California<\/a> or Colorado<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not purple, like Nevada, <\/a>which remains highly competitive even though it has voted Democratic in the last four presidential elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather, Arizona is something like a Dr. Seuss character, as Paul Bentz, the GOP pollster, put it. The state is red, with purple spots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Significantly, those purple spots are located in and around Phoenix and Tucson, where the vast majority of Arizona voters live.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That permutation is enough to convince Republicans that Biden\u2019s exceedingly close victory was something of an anomaly in what, they believe, is still a fundamentally conservative, center-right state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Democrats are just as certain that 2020 was the first step toward a lasting shift and it\u2019s only a matter of time until Arizona, with its changing population, turns as reliably blue as many of its Western neighbors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result in 2024 will indicate which is closer to the truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Mark Z. Barabak<\/a> is a political columnist for the Los Angeles Times, focusing on California and the West.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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