As a lifelong Arizonan, I get a lot of questions about my state. How do you survive the 118°F summers? How “grand” is the Grand Canyon, really? Tell me about that time you found a scorpion in your boot!
Being a political commentator, however, the most common questions involve Arizona’s, well, peculiar politics. With former news anchor Republican Kari Lake leading in many polls for the governor’s race and former tech investor Blake Masters gaining momentum in his contest with Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, 2022 is no exception.
National Democrats were cheered to see Lake and Masters win their respective primaries, considering both to be too “MAGA” to win the general. This was the same strategy they tried with Donald Trump in 2016. We all know how that turned out.
These two supposed easy victories have turned into nightmare scenarios for Arizona Democrats, this after a surprising revival of the state’s Democratic party over the past two cycles. My fellow long-time Arizonans weren’t surprised.
Several years back, many considered Arizona to be the reddest of red states. When Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema won in 2018 and President Joe Biden and Kelly won in 2020, national commentators thought Arizona was turning blue — or at least purple.
Oops.