Having lived in Arizona for ten of the last 16 years, I was getting to think that I had the psyche of the state pretty well nailed down. Socially conservative with a hefty dose of libertarianism thrown in. A few pockets of liberalism scattered in Tempe, Tucson and a few other places. Lots of Mormons.
In other words, a place where something like our Proposition 107 would be a sure success. It was billboarded as the "Protect Marriage" initiative. It was shorthanded as the "anti gay marriage" initiative. All the right buzzwords for success in this state.
Read on for my surprise...
The thing about this initiative though, was that gay marriage was already illegal in Arizona. This one starts off by defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman. But then it goes that extra mean-spirited mile and adds that....
"AND NO LEGAL STATUS FOR UNMARRIED PERSONS SHALL BE CREATED OR RECOGNIZED BY THIS STATE OR ITS POLITICAL SUBDIVISIONS THAT IS SIMILAR TO THAT OF MARRIAGE."
Yup, basically, a guy and a girl can get married and get all the benefits that accrue to that status. AND NOBODY ELSE CAN. SO THERE. Not gays. Not elderly couples who happen to want to live together in a committed relationship but for whom tax reasons might make it better for them not to get married. NOBODY ELSE.
It was a "Thou shalt not create any kind of civil union entity that you might want to bestow any kind of benefits upon" kind of thing.
And Arizona, being what it is (or at least what I was depressingly thinking it was), would be just the kind of state to go for this. Heck, I even wondered why they were bothering trying to hide the "no civil union benefits" part of this measure from their sales pitches. I cynically thought that they might have even got more votes if they had. I mean, similar measures were sweeping the nation and they were so successful in getting out the conservative vote two years ago, that here it seemed like Arizona was going to just go back to the well.
But here I am at 11:35 pm local time, looking at the local papers most recently updated numbers, and about 95% of the vote is in and this thing is GOING DOWN.
943,631 votes in. 52% opposition. 30,000 vote lead.
And we voted to put in a state-wide ban on smoking in restaurants and bars. And we voted to raise the minimum wage to $6.75 per hour. And we're going to add an 80 cent per pack tax on cigarettes to fund early child health programs. And we even passed a humane farming initiative.
And we sent six-term incumbent J.D. Hayworth packing from AZ-05 by a whopping 52-45 margin.
And we picked up the AZ-08 seat that was vacated by (R) Jim Kolbe.
Well, yeah, we also went and passed a bunch of mean-spirited anti-illegal-immigrant initiatives that some Republicans in our state legislature put on the ballot because they didn't have the cojones to pass on their own. (Cuz our Guv would have vetoed them). And it looks like we may have dropped the ball on preserving some of our state trust land from developers.
But the glass is definitely looking more full in Arizona. How's the temperature in your state?