Upcoming elections in Arizona
TSAGUAROLAKE, ARIZ. — his is the country of the far horizon. Even with all the growth Arizona has experienced — this was the fastest growing state in the last decade — the desert seems to reach on forever, the mesas and buttes turning red and blue and, reflecting the state’s new political profile, purple.
But right now, the state — and a nation that understands the impact Arizona has on modern American politics — is concentrating on nearer horizons: the Aug. 2 primary, the Nov. 8 general election and the 2024 presidential election.
But for all the drama in the state’s gubernatorial, congressional and legislative contests, in Arizona — a hothouse even when vast political implications aren’t at stake — the struggle that may matter most is for the lowly position of secretary of state. While in most places this office is an afterthought, in Arizona it is perhaps the key to the nation’s political future.
“This is probably the most important race we face,” said Pinny Sheoran, president-elect of the Arizona League of Women Voters. “Whoever is elected to this must be committed to the idea that all voters can vote, that the state doesn’t make it hard for people to register and that there should be no effort to purge voting rolls. We will hold the secretary of state accountable.”
For generations, the public paid little mind to elections for secretary of state, a position generally more clerical than political.
“For years hardly anyone spent a moment thinking about secretaries of state,” said retired New Hampshire Secretary of State William Gardner, whose 45 years in the office made him the longest-serving person holding that title. “This controversy is part of where the country is now. No one ever raised much money for this job. I never raised a cent. But we are at the center of how elections are conducted and how votes are counted. That was never a big deal until recently. Everything now is trying to make sure your party wins.”
The office in Arizona is unusually powerful because the state has no lieutenant governor, and the secretary of state ascends to the governor’s office if, as has happened before, the governor is impeached (as Evan Mecham was in 1988) or is forced from office after being convicted of a crime (as J. Fife Symington was in 1997).
“The job all of a sudden became a steppingstone to become governor,” said Brooks Simpson, an Arizona State University historian. “Republicans are divided, but the party has moved to the right, and three of the Republican candidates were involved in trying to overturn the 2020 result. Meanwhile, Democrats are petrified by the thought of a Republican managing the 2024 election.”
That is the real prize here — the chance to manage, or to mangle, the next presidential election.
The result: Voter mechanics has emerged as an important element of American politics.
“Only people involved in elections paid much attention to these races in the old days,” said Benjamin Ginsberg, who was involved in Republican legal efforts during the Florida recount in the deadlocked 2000 election. “Since the accuracy of elections was called into question in 2000, the people who count and certify the votes have become more important. Having honest people in these jobs — umpires calling balls and strikes — is essential to the peaceful transfer of power that is a part of our democracy.”
In his 1947 classic “Inside USA,” John Gunther noted that “the two great forces pulling on Arizona are California and Texas,” meaning that California regarded this state as its “hinterland,” while Texas regarded it as a friendly colony seeded with Texan exiles. The notion still stands: California (Democratic blue in every presidential election since 1992) and Texas (Republican red in every presidential election since 1980) remain poles that pull on Arizona, which as a consequence has become purple, falling into Joe Biden’s column in 2020 after voting for a Republican presidential candidate in every election since 1948.
Arizona once was regarded as “just like hell” because, according to a member of Congress in 1860, “all it lacks is water and good society.” For generations the common view of the state, in the characterization of Arizona State University political scientist David Berman, was as “a dry and barren land populated by a few roughand-tumble misfits who had left the more civilized East because they were not wanted or, if so, only by law enforcement officers.” Today some of the roughand-tumble figures here are natives and there remains a touch of what he called “a land of lawlessness, moral laxity and instability.”
Whether as part of the Wild West or as a bustling hub that redeemed local promoters’ 1889 vision of Phoenix as a “future metropolis,” this state has always been the setting for intrigue.
In 1877, for example, work on a bridge across the Colorado River was completed only to have the federal government refuse permission for a Southern Pacific train to traverse the new structure. So when the garrison was asleep, the engineers steered the train across the bridge. “The awakened soldiery soon chased the trespassers back into California,” according to the 1940 Works Projects Administration Guide to the state, “but Arizona had seen its first train.”
Now the intrigue is focused on who will count the ballots in the 2024 presidential election, and a political position — appointed in 15 states, elected in 35 — once on the periphery now occupies center stage.
“Now that there are so many efforts around the country to make voting more cumbersome, this job is more important than ever,” said Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin, the senior non-appointed Democratic election official in the country.
The iconoclast Barry Goldwater, the Republicans’ 1964 presidential nominee, died in 1998, but the new conservatism he spawned took root here and has come to full flower in the Donald Trump years. Mr. Trump has endorsed Arizona state representative Mark Finchem, one of the signatories to a legislative initiative calling on Congress to accept “the alternative 11 electoral votes” for the president rather than the certified electoral votes for Mr. Biden, for secretary of state. Across the country, nearly two dozen people who disputed the election are running for the position.
“People never thought about election administration before,” said Mindy Romero, director of the University of Southern California’s Center for Inclusive Democracy. “Now people are thinking about how elections are conducted, and a lot of people are concerned and suspicious.”