Greetings from the laughingstock of the nation, now an international pariah as well! As a 17-year resident of "Baja Arizona" (the more progressive southern part of the state), I've followed recent threads arguing for and against a boycott. As Kurt Vonnegut put it, you may as well oppose glaciers. The boycott is happening, will happen. Ought to happen.
I don't mind, as one commenter put it, "taking one for the team," even if it makes it harder for me to find a job. But please make sure you boycott smart. Follow up with letters to the Convention and Visitors Bureaus, Chambers of Commerce, and corporate headquarters of any AZ-based businesses you plan to shun. And the AZ economy thrives on sprawl, so target the real estate associations, and let them know why you won't be moving there anytime soon.
As a laid-off schoolteacher, I've already been giving myself a crash course on Arizona's state legislative districts. Our lunatic lege is holding our schoolchildren hostage, demanding that we vote ourselves a regressive sales tax increase to make up for their corporate welfare tax cuts. So even before this loathesome immigration law was passed and signed, I was looking for which districts we might need to flip.....
Arizona has 30 state legislative districts (pdf). Each district elects one senator and two representatives. We need to flip four seats to take the state Senate (currently split 18R/12D), and six for the House (35R/25D).
Fourteen of the districts have Republicans in all three seats, and nine are all Democratic. That leaves seven districts with split representation (I'll get to the titular eighth later).
While I agree with those who argue for a 50-state strategy (or a 30-district strategy down here), these are the places where we can have the greatest impact. Most of the 2008 state senate races in red districts went Republican by ten to twenty points. In four districts the Republican ran unopposed. These swing districts are where voter registration drives, GOTV efforts, and nonprofit groups like those that turned Colorado blue will do the most good.
Arizona went for Bill Clinton in 1996, the first time a Dem carried the state since Truman. But Al Gore wrote us off in 2000, never setting foot in the state. A strong registration and GOTV effort centered in Tucson helped Janet Napolitano narrowly win the governorship in 2002. She was handily re-elected in 06, but left for Obama's cabinet rather than continue battling the troglodytes in Phoenix. That's how we were left with the incompetent Governor Brewer, so unpopular with her own party that she felt compelled to pander to the teabaggers and sign the bill.
Demographically, AZ will hit Hispanic majority sometime this decade, but as others have noted, this crisis equals our opportunity. Legislative races in some districts can be decided by a few hundred votes, even in a presidential election year. The rage among Arizonans of all ethnicities unleashed by this law can be our ticket to send these Repubs back to the 19th Century where they belong.
District 5, around the Payson area, is represented by Republican State Senator Sylvia Allen, who won in 08 with 54.5% of the vote. Democrat Elaine Bohlmeyer is the candidate this year. On the House side, Bill Shumway is the only Democratic candidate I could find.
Candidate recruitment is a problem statewide; in the 08 election, two Republicans and one Democrat vied for the two District 5 seats, effectively conceding one of them. We need all hands on deck this time around. (The deadline for primary candidates is May 26.)
District 11 has a Republican incumbent in the Senate, Barbara Leff, who won by ten points in 08. She's opposed this year by Democrat Rita Dickinson.
In the House, the lone incumbent Dem is Representative Eric Meyer. He squeaked by in a three-way race in 2008, sandwiched between two Republicans with 33.8% of the vote. Again, there was no second Democrat on the ballot! And this time? Meyer is still the only Dem.
District 20 has one Democrat, Rae Waters, in the state House. She is the only candidate announced so far, facing two Republicans. No Democrat has announced for the Senate seat held by Republican John Huppenthal, who took a twelve-point spread in 08.
District 23 has a Democratic incumbent in the Senate, Rebecca Rios, who took the district by twelve points. The House delegation is split between Democrat Barbara McGuire and Republican Frank Pratt. The second Democratic candidate missed grabbing the seat by a mere eighty-five votes! Hopefully 2010 candidate Ralph Varela can improve on that margin.
Right now I can't find any announced House candidates for District 24. This Yuma district is represented in the Senate by Amanda Aguirre, who took in a lopsided 76%-23% share of the vote in 08. That year's House vote split Dem/Rep/Dem, putting Lynne Pancrazi into one of the seats. This district seems like fertile ground for a pickup.
District 25's state Senator is Democrat Manny Alvarez, who went 53/47 last time around. There are three Dems running for the two House seats, including incumbent Pat Fleming. Candidate Ken Davis is hoping to join hier.
And District 26, in the more conservative Foothills area north of Tucson, split its House votes in 08, giving Democrat Nancy Young Wright one of the seats in a four-way race. The Senate race split 51/49 for Republican Al Melvin, the closest margin in any of these swing districts. This one should be hard-fought on both sides.
So those are the seven districts with split delegations, where it may be theoretically possible to harness anger over the immigration bill and the massive education cuts to switch partisan control of one or both legislative houses. But I mentioned eight districts. The last one to target is Phoenix's District 12, where, unfortunately, a Green Party candidate for the House took 5,976 votes in a five-way race decided by... 5,947 votes. Sigh.
I would hate for the comments to be dominated by the umpteen millionth "Greens vs. Dems" recriminations. But the stakes are high here. More productive would be to brainstorm ways to convince those six thousand heartfelt but misguided protest voters that they should join forces with the Dems this time around. Either that, or register and turn out so many new Dems that those Green votes are irrelevant.
And I have to stop this now. I've spent way too much time researching this diary, since I still have to teach fifth grade for four more weeks. Arizona voters may decide my fate on May 18, when the special election for the sales tax will be held. If it passes, I have a good shot at being rehired. If not, thousands more teachers will lose their jobs, and kids will be crammed into underfunded schools at a minimum of 30 to a classroom. Governor Brewer, whatever her other deficits, was savvy enough to wait until the registration deadline had passed before she signed the bill.
But the August primaries and the November general should include thousands of newly-registered, extremely pissed-off voters. Please help us find them.
This diary was strictly an amateur effort, mainly to educate myself. I'm counting on the mighty DK community now (especially you Arizonans) to correct my mistakes, teach me a thing or two, and maybe add some more links to help us throw off the yoke of wingnut tyranny. Now be nice to each other, or you get no recess!