Washington Wednesday: Arizona’s transformation

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 4th of September.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Lindsay Mast.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: And I’m Paul Butler.

Time now for Washington Wednesday. Today, election politics in a battleground state. But first, a preview of news from Capitol Hill.

The August recess ends this weekend. When members of Congress return, they will have three weeks until the deadline to agree on government funding for 2025.

MAST: Republicans in the House of Representatives promised to get back to the regular order of business with single-topic appropriations bills. So far they’ve only cobbled together enough support to pass five of 12 needed spending measures. So, seven more to go. Part of the holdup has been a disagreement over tying spending bills to voter-integrity measures included in the SAVE act, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act.

BUTLER: Meanwhile, the Senate hasn’t yet touched appropriations. And with House bills containing conservative priorities, it’s likely the Democrat controlled Senate and White House won’t pass them.

That leaves a tough choice for Republicans: force a shutdown on the eve of an election, pass an omnibus bill funding 2025, or kick the deadline out with a short-term funding extension.

MAST: Turning now to the presidential election. A recent addition to the list of swing states that could determine who wins the White House and the Senate.

Here’s WORLD’s Washington Bureau reporter Carolina Lumetta.

CAROLINA LUMETTA: Arizona was once a reliably red state with voters consistently putting its 11 Electoral College votes in the Republican column. But not anymore.

SAMARA KLAR: I remember in 2020, we put a sign up on our front door that said, “We've already voted early, please don't knock.”

That’s Samara Klar, a political scientist and professor at the University of Arizona.

KLAR: You know, I'd always looked at places like Iowa, New Hampshire, and thought like, “Oh man, that must be an annoying place to live during elections.” And now I live there too, I get it.

While states like Pennsylvania and Michigan have been swing states for decades, Arizona has only recently become competitive.

KLAR: So Arizona is now a swing state. I moved here in 2013. And back then, you know, Arizona had been voting Republican so consistently that we didn't get a lot of ads. We didn't get a lot of knocks on the doors or text messages. But if you look at every election year over the last 20 years, Republicans have been winning elections in Arizona by smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller margins until we kind of reach the natural outcome of this long trend in 2020 when the Democrat finally won.

The Democrat was President Joe Biden, who carried Arizona by fewer than 11,000 votes.

So, how did Arizona get here? Part of it is due to population shifts: Arizona’s largest county has grown by nearly 100,000 people since 2020 as West Coast residents leave their blue states. But Democratic Party registration has plummeted by more than 186,000 over the same time period, while Republican affiliation dropped by nearly 74,000. The only group to expand? Unaffiliated voters, who now make up about a third of the Arizona voting population.

KLAR: The vast majority of Independent voters do prefer one of the two parties, and if you ask them, “Which party do you prefer?” they can tell you. The vast majority of Independents—and when I say that, I mean 75% to 80% of Independents—will vote for that party very consistently.

That’s not just true for presidential candidates. Back in 2022, Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema switched to independent in an attempt to shore up support at home. But polls showed that she still would have suffered in a three-way race. When Sinema announced she would not seek another term, that put one of Arizona’s senate seats in play for this election.

On the Republican side is former television news anchor Kari Lake who ran an unsuccessful campaign for governor in 2022. She still has not conceded that she lost that election, and instead blames tainted election results. Her case appealing that election is pending in the Arizona Supreme Court. Among conservatives, Lake maintains a popular following. She received more than two minutes of applause from rallygoers chanting her name at a Trump and Turning Point USA rally last month.

KARI LAKE: Do me a favor. Let's let those guys back there in the fake news know that MAGA is alive and well in Arizona! Let them hear it!

On the Democratic side is Ruben Gallego, a sitting Congressman representing the state’s largest district where Phoenix is located. Gallego has a liberal reputation, with endorsements from every major pro-abortion group and organizations like the AFL-CIO. But while Kari Lake has been touting her status as a Trump ally, Gallego has begun appealing to moderates on issues like border security. For example, here’s a recent campaign ad featuring a border city sheriff:

GALLEGO AD: Every day on the border is a challenge. Both parties created it, and neither has the guts to fix it. But Ruben Gallego has stood side by side with me, the only member of Congress that has come regularly to my border…

Recent polls suggest Gallego has taken a slight lead over Lake.

BEAU LANE: It's interesting because they both kind of come from the extreme ends of each party.

Beau Lane is the executive of a digital advertising company in Arizona. In 2022, he ran for secretary of state as a Republican but lost in the primary. He says the way Gallego and Lake communicate with voters in the center may determine who wins this election.

LANE: Kari Lake has run as a full on MAGA candidate and has made very little appeal to the moderate Republicans. In fact, she's, she's sort of chased them away and told them to not be involved anymore. So right now, Ruben has kind of gone to the to the middle, at least in his campaign, and he seems to be attracting the most of the left or right of middle, and middle segment of the electorate. So, conventional wisdom is that he will cruise to an easy victory and what should be a very competitive race.

Lane is concerned that Kari Lake’s strategy may reinforce the transformation of Arizona from a red state to a purple state.

LANE: In 2022, we elected, statewide, almost exclusively Democrats because the Republicans that were nominated were looked to be too much on the fringe…We have essentially two Democratic senators, I mean, Sinema is on her way out, but it looks like she'll be replaced by a Democrat. So we'll have two Democratic senators, Democratic governor, Democratic attorney general, Democratic secretary of state. That's the first time in my lifetime that that's ever happened in Arizona. So traditionally, we've been a red state or a red-leaning state. I'd say we are a moderate-leaning state right now.

So what does all this mean for Trump and Harris in November?

Before dropping out of the race, President Biden was lagging behind Trump by more than five points in Arizona. But Harris and Trump are now statistically tied in FiveThirtyEight’s polling. With the state up for grabs, both campaigns are focusing time and dollars on winning over voters. More than 13,000 attendees flocked to Trump’s rally in Glendale last month where he added former candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to his campaign team. And Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance will be in Phoenix tomorrow to deliver remarks. Meanwhile, data from AdImpact shows that the Harris campaign is pouring nearly $35 million into the state in digital ads alone, compared to the Trump campaign’s $10 million.

LANE: We understand that we have a lot of influence. I think there's a general anticipation that on election night, Arizona is going to be a key element to decide who's our next leader.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Carolina Lumetta.

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