Arizona Democrats may have thought they were on a roll in recent years, at least in congressional elections. Harry Mitchell beat J.D. Hayworth in a solid red district and Gabrielle Giffords won a swing seat. Much of that was actually anti-Bush, anti-J.D. sentiment. Now Arizona seems poised to rejoin the South and most of the Plains and Intermountain West states as solidly red. My recent sojourn to my home state did nothing to dissuade me from this view. Many Democrats are dispirited. The party lacks the infrastructure of the right — from "think tanks" and big corporate money to endless right-wing talk radio. In a state with a fairly recent past of vigorous two-party competition, the Democrats were largely asleep as the extreme Republican right took control from the ground up, starting with school boards and obscure boards, eventually taking commanding power in the Legislature, by far the most powerful branch of government.
This is a crying shame for Terry Goddard. I heard the meme of "he thinks he deserves to be governor because his old man was." Far from it. Goddard is the most qualified candidate, a smart, open-minded public servant who has earned his way in elective office and actually did the most to attack border crime. The Democrats have a number of excellent candidates for statewide races, including David Lujan, Andrei Cherny and my old colleague and friend John Dougherty. They stand little chance against the vast capacity of the right. Mitchell and Giffords may well go down.
The big weapon against the Dems is, of course, SB 1070, the Jim Crow anti-immigrant bill.
Gov. Jan Brewer was facing primary trouble and Goddard was leading the field before she signed state Sen. Russell Pearce's bill into law. Now, if the polls are to be trusted, she's soaring ahead and most Arizonans support 1070. This leaves Goddard in a no-win situation, which is just what the white-right wanted. The measure was always a crafty weapon to maintain power, keep the base hysterical and intensely involved, sow fear and defeatism among Mexican-Americans and put Dems on the spot. As I've written, the bill was never intended to shut down illegal immigration — the state economy and not a few of the businesses that support the white-right would collapse. It is a brilliant tactic, like guns, God, gays and abortion — a faux existential threat that must never be really solved because it is so politically profitable. If no small dose of cruelty and hypocrisy are involved welcome to Arizona.
Phoenix is America's least educated, least literate major metro area. Arizona is a case study for What's the Matter With Kansas? author Thomas Frank. Low information voters caught up in an economy that has been withering for decades, stuck in low-wage jobs, seeing their future become more bleak need someone to blame. Because of the effectiveness of the "conservative" machine, they never vote against the right-wing, corporate oligarchy policies that cause their plight. They don't go after the Anglo elite that has created Arizona's basket-case economy. They seem incapable of connecting the state's problems to the "conservatives" that have been in power for decades. Instead, they blame "liberals," the other, and in Arizona, "the Mexicans." It's pointless to attempt to engage them in the complexities of the immigration issue. What part of illegal don't you understand??
Additionally, Arizona seems to be more and more a case of the Big Sort, with like-minded (white) people gathering there, especially retirees, while progressives are ever more marginalized. In recent years, the Arizona Republican Party has been purged of its historic soul, as has happened to the GOP around the country; the tea party is merely the latest incarnation of this ever-more-nihilistic ideological (and theocratic) trend. Barry Goldwater's party has lost all its virtues, while its vices have been taken to steroidal extremes. Also, as commenter Soleri has pointed out, the urban form of Phoenix encourages the kind of disconnectedness that plays to Republicans. In any event, Arizona politics is usually small ball, primaries and even general elections that are decided by a small turnout, where the intense enthusiasm of the white-right and tea party will be decisive. Arizona lacks any leftward balance to the extreme right, and neither the left nor the center have foot soldiers to offset the Mormon vote. As for Hispanics, they tend to have very low turnout. Nationally, Hispanic citizens may be moving away from President Obama, and by extension most Democrats, because of what is seen as a cowardly response to immigration.
Obama and the national Democratic Party have done their state parties no good. Health reform is esoteric and doesn't have enough provisions that would immediately provide help — especially a public option. The president and party have failed in their "message," their "narrative," as the popular phrasing goes. FDR "welcomed their hatred" — the plutocrats, that is. Obama and the Dems just seem as bought off as the Republicans. Most Americans, surly and damaged from this horrendous economy, don't even know the real villains. The president won't tell them. Now the Gulf spill, although largely cooked on the Bush watch like so many other calamities, makes him look weak. Carter weak.
In any event, Tuesday's primaries showed the quiet coup in action. It wasn't a "big day for women." It was a big day for billionaires and those in the pocket of big pharma, etc. Don't think this won't play into Arizona politics. The tea party itself gets much of its heft from big corporate power and their henchmen, from Dick Armey to Rupert Murdoch. Thus, millions are frantic to vote for the very policies that have caused our national troubles.
So is it "hopeless??" No. Goddard must work harder than he's ever worked in his life to overcome the white-right. Hispanic turnout must be mobilized. The real enemies of the working class need to be identified. Arizonans need to understand how the "conservative" elected leaders have repeatedly failed them, how the policies of the right have been tried with disastrous consequences. Good luck finding penetrating, muckraking or balanced coverage from most of the local media, but maybe social networking can get some young people to offset the reliable senior and LDS vote. And start building that bottom-up infrastructure as the right did. Still, I know people such as Kyrsten Sinema and Chad Campbell who have been working at this for years. I'm not telling them anything they don't know.
The sad reality is that the left has nearly disappeared from America. Barack Obama holds down a center that is far to the right of historic American politics. But further right still are the ever more radical and dangerous cadres of reaction. More states will catch the Arizona syndrome. In November, we'll see how badly.
"A poll conducted by ASU researchers indicates that 81 percent of registered Latino voters oppose SB 1070 either strongly or somewhat that and 59 percent blame Republicans. But the poll also indicated that 60 percent of Latino voters also blame Democrats for not doing enough to block the law."
The same article notes that:
* Latinos account for about 30 percent of Arizona's population but only 14 percent of its registered voters. Of these, 51 percent are Democrats, 17 percent are Republicans
Presumably the other 32 percent are Independents. The latter is especially useful since Independent voters are allowed to vote in Arizona Republican primaries, potentially giving them de facto veto power over extremist candidates.
* Arizona has a large untapped pool of about 400,000 unregistered Latinos eligible to vote.
* About 500 Latinos per week are registering to vote as Democrats, up from 100 per week before the passage of SB 1070. No word whether registration as Independents has gone up.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/election/azelections/articles/2010/06/08/20100608arizona-immigration-law-backlash.html?loc=interstitialskip
Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | June 09, 2010 at 05:42 PM
Politics in Arizona cannot be divorced from energy/water policy. If there is an Arizona Syndrome, it is the disease arising from the toxin of having the nation's largest nuclear power plant located upwind near the state's capitol and feeding the unsustainable energy hunger of the Southwest.
For those who may have missed the latest example of the cozy relationship between 'regulators' and industry: “Ex-nuke panel chief joins Pinnacle West” - http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/business/articles/2010/06/02/20100602biz-nuclear0602.html
Posted by: Rate Crimes | June 09, 2010 at 07:29 PM
Institutional liberalism is at a disadvantage in a society that is economically contracting and socially anxious. The Right traditionally does very well during periods like ours (FDR was the very lucky exception) because it emotionally connects to people's fears. That's why their narratives speak to people's convoluted anxiety about social status. Progressive policy may be thoughtfully detailed but it fails to assuage this neurotic tic in post-boom America.
I think the real question is whether the long arc of socio-political reform and gradualism - essentially our history of the past 80 years - is now over. The fantasy constructs of xenophobes and paranoiacs now usurps more of our discourse than actual problems. We squander billions daily making sure a one-time event like 9/11 never happens again. We're still spending billions to prevent a Soviet invasion of central Europe. We subsidize Big Oil and starve alternative energy. We spend like crazy on suburban infrastructure because our economy is a virtual one-trick pony. And we deny the real-world labor market should have any impact on our immigration laws.
Arizona got here first because it had less institutional liberalism to overthrow in the first place. And now we're going to lead the way to the Randian utopia of yeoman E-Bay titans. It should look like Quartzite but without the monthly Social Security checks.
Posted by: soleri | June 10, 2010 at 10:31 AM
"So is it 'hopeless??' No. Goddard must work harder..."
And so begins the paragraph that should be waved in the face of anyone who claims that Mr. Talton doesn't have the best interests of Arizona at heart. Along with many others, but this is, well, contemporaneous.
Posted by: Petro | June 10, 2010 at 05:49 PM
I'd like to understand more about how the LDS voting bloc has influenced previous elections and given us such luminaries as Russell Pearce, Thayer (Axe the Tax)VerSchoor and former legislator Karen Johnson. With 6% of the population, they seem to have disproportionate clout.
Posted by: Jim Hamblin | June 10, 2010 at 06:02 PM
Let's not forget about two other important elements. One is the cycle of "starving" the government, which leaves our society susceptible to inevitable disasters, which, in turn, lead to greater anti-government sentiment. During a period of great duress (when the government is seen as the problem, not the solution), politicians who have extolled the virtues of big government (such as Obama and Napolitano) are blamed. The other is the visceral aspect for some whites of seeing the ascendancy of minorities, both in terms of population and visibility. The social problems associated with illegal immigration, for example, are seen to be linked to racial factors and not the economic factors that fuel such immigration. These whites will then vote against their own interests so as not to benefit this group.
Posted by: Jacob | June 10, 2010 at 09:32 PM
"Progressive policy may be thoughtfully detailed but it fails to assuage this neurotic tic in post-boom [the name of any collapsed civilization]."
Posted by: Rate Crimes | June 11, 2010 at 02:31 PM
It the midst of the furor over SB1070 here in AZ it was barely noticed that employer groups were in DC getting Obama's Solicitor General to petition SCOTUS to overturn the 2007 employer sanctions law. So the industries with the highest concentration of low-skilled immigrant workers (both documented and not) prioritized saving their own necks and profits. Every time Arpaio raids a workplace, you never see an employer's face on camera. Goldwater Institute and the AZ Chamber of Commerce have been AWOL on SB1070 because the Lege stripped out a provision that would have let county attorneys subpoena employer records to proceed with sanctions cases or take witness depositions. Gosh it's sure hard to prove they "knowingly" hired undocumented workers without that! Dozens of cases against employers have been dropped (I believe there has been maybe one successful prosecution since the employer sanctions law was implemented) and only 6% of Arizona companies are signed up for e-Verify, though the law requires that any company that hires someone after 2008 must use it. I would buy that not a lot of companies are hiring due to a bad economy but I'm finding it hard to believe that 94% of AZ businesses haven't hired anyone in the past 2 years. I do know there's no enforcement whatsoever of e-Verify. The so-called toughest employer sanctions law in the nation is a sham and so is SB1070. If that law stands, I predict there will be a few months of high-profile raids and deportations but in short order the business community will put the kibosh on it and we'll be right back where we started.
Posted by: donna | June 11, 2010 at 09:36 PM
"donna" wrote:
"...only 6% of Arizona companies are signed up for e-Verify, though the law requires that any company that hires someone after 2008 must use it."
Thanks for this statistic -- I've been wondering about that. Could you please cite the source or provide a link?
As for the requirement to use e-Verify, yes, it's there, but there is no criminal or civil penalty specified for failing to use it.
Nationally, only 2.6 percent of employers use e-Verify. It pushes immigrants away from the use of fictitious Social Security numbers and toward ID theft from individuals living or dead. More than half of the job applicants who should have been denied authorization to work were incorrectly approved by e-Verify:
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2010/02/26/20100226everify0226.html
ICE recently conducted an audit of 84 Arizona businesses; 43, more than half, were found to have illegal workers on their payrolls.
ICE conducted a random audit of the I-9 forms of 17,000 Arizona employees. They wouldn't say how many were found to be illegal, but nationally the rate is about 18 percent, and Arizona has a higher percentage of illegals than the national average.
http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/2010/04/23/20100423arizona-illegal-workforce-audit.html
Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | June 12, 2010 at 12:28 PM