In recent years, Arizona — after decades as a GOP stronghold — has become one of the most important electoral prizes for Democrats.
President Joe Biden won Arizona in 2020, the first time a Democratic presidential candidate had won the state since 1996. Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly won a special election for his seat in 2020, then won a full term in 2022. And Katie Hobbs was elected governor in 2022, the first time a Democrat won the office since 2006.
Come November, Democrats are hoping Rep. Ruben Gallego can fill Democratic incumbent-turned-independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s seat as he prepares for a likely showdown with Republican Kari Lake.
However, despite Arizona’s seemingly clear shift to the left, a Democratic lawmaker recently said the state is not as blue as it seems, highlighting what she said is voters’ disgust at regarding the Republican Party’s “extremism” as the reason his party has enjoyed success. .
“Arizona’s trajectory is increasingly blue statewide,” Sen. Priya Sundareshan recently told Politico. “It’s not because Arizona is necessarily a blue state, but it’s because Arizona has rejected extremism and the Republican Party has become extremist in the age of Trumpism.”
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Arizona, one of the key states that will be hotly contested by both Biden and former President Donald Trump this fall, has become ground zero for major issues like immigration and reproductive rights.
Sundareshan, an environmental lawyer who was elected in 2022 to the state Senate from a Tucson-area district, is a top Democratic legislative leader seeking to repeal the country’s near-total abortion ban dating of the Arizona Civil War – which the conservative state Supreme Court reinstated. earlier this month.
The state’s GOP-controlled House of Representatives voted earlier this week to repeal the law after three Republicans joined Democrats in the lower chamber to roll back the measure. The state Senate is expected to vote on the repeal next week.
If the repeal passes both chambers, Hobbs, a supporter of abortion rights, is expected to sign it.
Top Republicans are working to contain the fallout from the abortion ban, especially given the party’s precarious position in the nation’s critical suburbs, which include dozens of voters in populous Maricopa County , in Arizona.
Despite the appointment of three anti-abortion associate justices to the U.S. Supreme Court who supported dropping Roe v. Wade, Trump said earlier this month that the Arizona court’s ruling went too far. And the former president also apparently rejected conservative push for a national abortion ban.
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