There’s an article about Arizona in the Los Angelos Times. I think there must be some mistake because they quote a Republican strategist, someone from Ruben Gallego’s team, and a Democratic strategist who has worked with Kirsten Sinema. No one does that anymore!
There are several questions to be answered heading into next year’s election, chiefly whether Gallego cleared the field; how much former President Trump will influence the Republican primary, and what role, if any, Sinema will play in a potential three-person race. But the biggest question may be how purple is Arizona?
“I wish I could say that Arizona’s turning blue and all the good work we’ve done is convincing people that progressive ideas are right, but that’s not where the state is yet,” said Stacy Pearson, a Phoenix-based Democratic strategist and longtime Sinema ally. “Arizona is not any more progressive, but it continues to reject extremism.”
I knew that Arizona is fairly evenly split between Republicans, Independents and Democrats, with Democrats coming in last by a few percentage points, and I found the information quoted below to be less than encouraging.
Sinema’s favorability rating went up 13 percentage points with independents, to 42%, and 5 percentage points, to 43%, with Republicans after she announced she was leaving the party, according to a January Morning Consult poll. Her support with Democrats fell 12 percentage points, down to 30%.
We all knew her support with Dems has cratered, but I had no idea that Independents more than made up for that with their increase. It’s not at all surprising that Republicans were happy she is leaving the party.
I am pretty sure I have read in the comments here that Sinema’s support was cratering everyday.
In the article, the Democratic strategist working for Gallego’s campaign thinks he can win it. The Democratic strategist who has been working with Sinema believes she can win it. The Republican strategist is quoted as saying this:
“You have to go into this race assuming that she doesn’t stay in, and that you need to win with 50[% of the vote] plus one,” he said. “If she does stay in, there’s a very good chance that she will take more Republican votes than Democratic votes in the general election, and that makes it all the more important that Republicans nominate a strong candidate.”
Apparently Gallego raised more than $1 million dollars in the first 24 hours after he announced he is running. An article from last week posited that the Democratic Party is going to decide who to back in Arizona based on the numbers for the first quarter in which Gallego announced – based on how much/many of the donations are coming from folks in AZ, because they think he can’t win if his support is mostly national.
Sinema has $8 million in her campaign account. I have no idea how far that goes these days, but it seems like a significant amount of money to me.
I don’t have any predictions, but it’s certainly interesting. The article suggests that AZ isn’t really a purple state; they just reject the extreme MAGA republicans. I hope it doesn’t come down to whether the Rs run a crazy MAGA candidate, or just a regular awful Republican. They are all MAGA as far as I’m concerned. If you support it, you own it.
Open thread.
Interesting Read About Arizona (Open Thread)Post + Comments (96)