Arizona just handed Democrats full control of state government for the first time since 1966, and the Republican establishment has nobody to blame but itself.
Democrats captured both chambers of the state legislature and reelected Gov. Katie Hobbs by a wide margin, according to the Associated Press. The AP called at least 31 House seats and 17 Senate seats for the party, clearing the majority lines in both chambers. Sixty years of Republican control in the Arizona House — gone.
This is what happens when a party refuses to fight for its base. Arizona Republicans operated with a 33-27 House majority and a 17-13 Senate margin for the past two years, KTAR reported. They had the numbers. What they didn't have was the will. Hobbs vetoed more than 540 bills from the Republican-led Legislature in her first term — a state record, according to the Arizona Mirror — including measures on taxes, immigration, and voting rules. The Republican response to that blockade was effectively nothing, and voters noticed.
Republican Rep. Justin Wilmeth of Phoenix called the election a referendum on President Donald Trump rather than a mandate for Democratic policy, KJZZ reported. He defended the party's economic record, citing Arizona's 2.5% flat income tax and 4.9% corporate rate. But those numbers are cold comfort to working Arizonans watching their cost of living climb while the party that promised to fight for them folded at every veto. Wilmeth conceded that Republicans "have an ownership of this" and should examine the outcome, the station reported.
Hobbs now has a free hand. Her stated priorities include water policy, affordability, and going after the state's Empowerment Scholarship Accounts voucher program, the AP reported. She pledged to redirect the roughly $1 billion the program costs toward public schools, according to KJZZ. Republicans opened those accounts to every student four years ago. That program is now on the chopping block.
The stakes extend well beyond Arizona's borders. The result could push the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact past the 270-electoral-vote threshold needed for activation, Arizona Public Media reported. Eighteen states and Washington, D.C., carrying 222 electoral votes, have already joined. Arizona and four other new Democratic trifectas could push the total to 283 — effectively neutering the Electoral College without a constitutional amendment.
Democrats took full control in at least six states where they previously shared power, the AP reported. The New York Post framed the midterms as a historic Democratic wave, noting the party's biggest House gains since 1974 and control of the Senate. The Post buried Arizona's state-level flip beneath a catalog of GOP losses nationwide — Darline Graham's implosion in South Carolina, Roger Marshall's defeat in Kansas, Ken Paxton's double-digit blowout loss in Texas — all candidates Trump elevated over more viable Republicans.
The pattern is clear. At every level, Republican voters were handed candidates who wouldn't fight for them, and those voters returned the favor by staying home. Arizona was Goldwater country. It was McCain country. Now it's a Democratic trifecta. The party that once owned this state walked away from the people who gave it to them.
The question isn't how Arizona turned blue. The question is whether any Republican left in office has the stomach to earn it back.
