Ducey and Arizona’s Republican legislators have seen the light.

Gov. Doug Ducey and Arizona’s Republican legislators have seen the light and canceled their get-out-the-vote drive to write a sanctuary city ban into the state’s Constitution.

That’s because they realized that Senate Bill 1070 2.0 was also a get-outthe-vote drive for the state’s Latino community. Maybe an even better getout-the-vote drive for Latinos, who are seeing both red and purple these days.

Red over their treatment at the Legislature of late and purple over this year’s elections in Arizona.

Just six weeks ago, Gov. Ducey used his State of the State address to call for amending the state Constitution to ban sanctuary cities in Arizona.

“It’s time,” he proclaimed, “for all Arizonans to make their voices heard, and enshrine it in our Constitution.”

Never mind that state law already bans sanctuary cities in Arizona and has for the 10 years since SB 1070 went into effect.

Never mind that voters in Tucson – one of the state’s most liberal cities – just voted overwhelmingly to defeat a measure designating it as a sanctuary city . Probably because they knew it was already illegal.

A ban on sanctuary cities is a thick slab of red meat to the base for Arizona Republicans who are hoping to hang onto the presidency, a U.S. Senate seat and their control of the state Legislature.

Just eight days ago, Sen. Sylvia Allen, R-Snowflake urged her fellow senators to put the sanctuary city ban on the ballot in November “to stop the criminal elements that are coming into our country.”

Naturally, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the bill on a party line vote – managing to additionally rile Latinos by not allowing them to be heard after one speaker dared to ask the committee to “reject this racist, divisive and hateful” bill.

Add in Tuesday’s silencing of Latinos on one of a series of election law proposals – bills Republicans assure us are all about rooting out fraud but that, taken together, actually look a whole lot more like voter suppression ...

And perhaps a flashback to 2018, when Democrats grabbed not only a U.S. Senate seat but three statewide offices ...

It all adds up to potential disaster in a state that already is tinging purple.

And so came Gov. Doug Ducey’s announcement on Thursday evening: Never mind.

It seems he and GOP legislative leaders made a “joint decision” to drop the drive to ban sanctuary cities.

“The Governor stands firmly with the people of Arizona in opposition to sanctuary cities,” spokesman Patrick Ptak said in a statement. “While these proposals will not be moving forward,

the state of Arizona will continue to oppose any effort to create sanctuary cities.”

Which, he might have added, are already illegal.

For six weeks now, we’ve been told it was necessary to put a sanctuary city ban into the constitution in order to make it voter protected and beyond the ability of a future Legislature to repeal.

Now suddenly ... after seeing the impassioned response from Latinos (and perhaps remembering the fallout from SB 1070?) ... we no longer need to put a sanctuary city ban on the ballot?

Oh yeah, Republicans are running scared.