Posted on 11/13/2018 5:48:12 AM PST by LS
As a native Arizonian---though one who has been away for 30 years until 2016---I forgot a lot of my history. People like to paint states or regions as "red" or "blue" but Arizona, like most states, has a complex and hardly linear past.
Arizona began as a "Progressive" state and was denied statehood for many years because it had "democratic" elements in its state constitution (the first to do so): Initiative, Referendum, and Recall of state officials. They also included direct election of senators and women's suffrage. The feds found this unconstitutional and delayed statehood status for this reason.
Arizonians removed the offending clauses, got statehood, then immediately put them back in.
While Arizona was a Republican state, it came from the Progressive/TR/Taft wing. Nevertheless, Arizona's first two senators were Democrats, Marcus Smith and Henry Ashurst. After being reelected in 1914, Smith lost to the first Republican senator, Ralph Cameron. He'd be the LAST Republican til Goldwater!
In 1927, Carl Hayden(D) won. He became an Arizona legend and is properly celebrated here because with Ernest McFarland (D who replaced the reelected Ashurst in 1941) the two made Arizona water their top priority.
In the 1980s I was asked to create the archives of Sen. McFarland and went over every paper the man ever wrote. He literally spent 99% of his time on Arizona water. He and Hayden engineered the Colorado River project that used federal money to line Arizona with canals that brought water from the Colorado River. Without that water, Arizona today would be little different than sparsely populated states such as New Mexico or Utah.
McFarland stepped down in 1952. That marked only the second time since 1926 a Republican served in the Arizona senate delegation. Barry Goldwater held the seat until 1965. He had stepped down to run for president in 1964, and R Paul Fannin took his seat (Hayden was still there!). Hayden finally left in 1968 when Goldwater returned, and for the first time Arizona had two R senators (Fannin the other).
It didn't last long. Fannin stepped down in 1976 and another Democrat Dennis DeConcini replaced him. Ten years later Goldwater finally retired and John McCain too his seat (DeConcini still the other senator).
In 1994 DeConcini retired and current US Senator Jon Kyl was elected, becoming Arizona's most conservative senator since Goldwater. Kyl served until 2012, when the useless slime Jeff Flakey was elected (and immediately disappointed Arizonians). Upon McTurd's death, Kyl was again asked to step in.
HAVEN'T CHECKED, BUT HEARD ON THE RADIO THIS IS THE FIRST TIME IN DECADES Ds OUTNUMBER Rs IN THE COMBINED AZ CONGRSSIONAL DELEGATION.
My point is only that Arizona's past is NOT reflective of "extreme conservatism," and a long view would more appropriately suggest it has been a D-leaning state until quite recently.
DJT did everything possible. If he hadn’t come, she’d have lost by 150,000 votes! Or more.
The entire contemporary Right Wing was originally progressive (and vice versa).
In the 1690's the eastern seaboard was burning witches. One hundred years later it was conducting the first "red scare" in American history, with people like Rev. Timothy Dwight (President of Yale) and Rev. Jedidiah Morse (Samul F.B.'s father) seeing Illuminati, Freemasons, and "French atheists" under every bed. The ancestors of today's conservatives were derided as atheistic Jacobins who would confiscate and burn all Bibles if their man Jefferson was ever elected. A generation later the Whigs made similar accusations against the Jacksonians.
In the 1890's the eastern seaboard was quaking in its boots over the "Jacobin" William Jennings Bryan, whose creationism threatened the Social Darwinism that was used to justify their beliefs. They even had a bunch of alienists (and psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists were known at the time) to declare Bryan "insane." Sound familiar?
Then during the New Deal something happened. The Eastern Seaboard discovered in New Deal statism a more useful argument for centralization and elitism than the old Hamiltonian conservatism had been. Suddenly the children of the old "robber barons" of the Gilded Age were Secretly Behind Communism. And the old Reds of the 1920s were now the "Old Right."
As a Hamiltonian myself, drawing these lines gives me no joy. But it's time to admit that the most radical sector of American society is its old aristocracy. They have shifted the Left from supporting industrial workers to upper class causes like environmentalism and homosexuality (which the Old Left called "bourgeois decadence"), the repudiation of Old Left populism (initiative and referendum, recall), and the constant vilification the working class and celebration scabs (ie, "people of color," "immigrants," "refugees," "indigenous pipples").
In my former life as a chrstian, I was very attracted to the Theocratic anarchism of the J-- Witnesses precisely because the old establishment was so radical it was easy to believe they were in cahoots with "Lucifer" from the beginning.
Free Republic is a quantum above the other conservative news aggregator boards because of the quality of readers’ comments, but also because of vanities like yours that cover topics that would be otherwise missed.
I moved my family to Phoenix recently, and I am still trying to get the feel for the political climate. Pieces like yours help. I also appreciate that native Arizonans are proud of their being lifelong citizens of the state, but (at least in Phoenix) don’t hold all newcomers in derision.
I’m not sure, as usual, Maricopa County, had all legit + legal + alive voters. Can anyone explain the 350K vote swing to Sinema there any way other than massive vote fraud? The DEMs went overboard with their shenanigans this time!
He thinks the party is more like him than it is like Trump.
He's a flake.
Great outline of the history LS.
I think, like many westerners, Arizonans have an independent streak which is attributed to conservatism but could be libertarian or anarchy biased just as easily. This shows up in attitude toward 2nd Amendment issues being oriented toward individuals and not community militia ideals. Similar issues on private property and resistance to social standards.
News to Arizona Republic... Whatever Schumer tells Sinema to do, she will do.
Non-Hispanic whites are already under 50% of the state. Texas historically has done a good job integrating hispanics, who haven't voted like dogmatic leftists. Unfortunately, that is changing.
Texas will go blue soon if the GOP, and we conservatives, can't come up with a better message to hispanics about staying red.
“Can anyone explain the 350K vote swing to Sinema there any way other than massive vote fraud?”
Massive vote fraud that ONLY helped Sinema? That left almost every other statewide race in Republican hands? That defeated “Green Energy” 70-30? That passed a ban on service taxes by 30 points? That passed a Republican measure on campaign financing by 13 points - which will hurt Democrats in all future races in Arizona?
Pretty selective fraud there.
“Whatever Schumer tells Sinema to do, she will do.”
Yes...but he will give her a pass on many unimportant votes, and on votes where the GOP will win regardless. Then in 2024, she’ll run in Arizona as a centrist who frequently voted with Republicans. If she is smart - and she ran a smart campaign - she can be the Democrat Senator from Arizona for 30 years.
Meet Ms Manchin!
Agreed. I’m guessing there were some protest non-votes by Republicans on Cruz as retribution for his behavior at the RNC convention. (Figuring “Cruz would win handily anyway, lets bring him down a notch”)
And dumb, old, cucked and communist Illinois white.
“Whenever possible, she’ll vote with Republicans in the Senate - on anything not too important to Democrats, or where Republicans are going to win anyways. She wants to become Ms Manchin, so to speak.”
How will she vote on gun control?
Arizona was Jim Crow.
Democrat.
Polls show that 40% (+/-) want a halt to illegal immigration so I'd start with that issue. The trouble is the globalist, DC RINOs want open borders.
“How will she vote on gun control?”
Carefully. Maybe minor steps, but she’ll have a pass to vote against serious gun control because it won’t pass the Senate anyways and Schumer wants her in office thru 2050.
The country is conservative. It occasionally votes liberal because the media weapon system keeps people deliberately misinformed. We destroy that weapon system, and the nation will seek it's natural affinity. So long as liberals can keep control of the propaganda apparatus, the nation will reflect the influence of their weapon system.
“Hasn’t helped that any time a conservative won the primary here, the state and National GOP pulled all funding...”
Yes.
McSally is McCain.
Down the the micks in their name, and flying.
Stupid choice.
This a two year time of reorganization.
Texas is interesting. It began as a democrat state, with Sam Houston as the only one with Republican sentiments.
I moved to Dallas in 1975 and at that time it was unusual to have a Republican anywhere. Good old Jim Collins (R) served the area where lots of Texas Instrument employees lived, mostly in the district covering Richardson. Collins was a pretty lonely guy in the Texas delegation.
With the tech boom happening in the late 1970s, many people moved into the major Texas cities. The minor races in the big cities in those days began to get Republicans voters, whereas the outer areas were still democrat.
When Ronald Reagan ran for president something really interesting happened in the entire state of Texas. The outer areas and the cities suddenly seemed to wake up and we voted for Ronald Reagan. Texas became a red state.
I made a series of trips to the capital in Austin over the years and the change was palpable. By 1994, it was quite evident that the Republicans were firmly in charge.
Over the last number of elections the vote in the four major cities have trended democrat due to a number of forces. In Dallas county, in 2005, we had the majority of judgeships, however we lost that edge after the Katrina survivors moved to much higher ground. Add to that the muslims getting activated and the illegals voting, it has been difficult to maintain (R) in the big cities.
However, Ted Cruz won the election because people living outside the big cities have not changed their political affiliation. So, that is why the commie-demonrats want to flood our borders.
We need to build the wall.
More border control, border safety and border security is one of many ways to frame the issue that is appealing to almost everyone. While functionally stopping illegal immigration.
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