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In Arizona just before Election Day, one word crept into nearly every conversation: independent. My team and I were in the state working on a piece about the impact women voters might have on the upcoming 2018 midterm races. Through the process of interviewing Republicans and Democrats, we quickly learned of a third, key constituency.

Statue at the Lodge on the Desert Hotel. Photo by Rose Gilbert.

Independents are the second largest voting group in Arizona, making up 34.7 percent of registered voters, barely fewer than the 35 percent registered Republicans  and more than the just over  31 percent registered Democrats. Independent voters’ impressive numbers are part of a recent trend: in 1988, independents accounted for only 11.6 percent of Arizona’s electorate. According to the New York Times, it was this increase in independent voters, along with support from women voters, that allowed moderate Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema to defeat her Trump-aligned Republican opponent, Rep. Martha McSally, in this year’s senate race.

“Voting a straight D ticket or a straight R ticket isn’t as important to them as making sure that things are taken care of in their community,” said Shelley Kais, an unsuccessful Republican candidate for the Arizona State Senate. 

Shelley Kais at the Green Valley Republican Club. Photo by Nate Levit.

“The lesson that I learned is that people in the district, particularly down in Santa Cruz County, are more concerned about what’s best for their community than politics,” she added                 

Arizona is not the lawless and self-sufficient land of cowboys it once was, but its residents are proud of their reputation for autonomy and independence. Many embrace candidates who refuse to toe either party line. People we interviewed, from journalists to Uber drivers, held up the late Republican Sen. John McCain, famous for his willingness to work across the aisle and to stand up to President Trump, as the paragon of the kind of maverick spirit Arizonans admire.

Arizona may not be the Wild West anymore, but plenty of locals still wear cowboy hats. When we met John Ladd, a conservative rancher who appeared in multiple campaign ads for McSally and other Republicans, he tipped his hat, an old-fashioned chivalrous gesture that fit his persona perfectly.

John Ladd by the border fence. Photo by Lindsey Schmidt.

“When you’re in the ranching community and the general farm communities overall, they’re more conservative,” Ladd explained, adding that nut growers and wine grape growers tend to be more moderate, and that specialty crop growers could even be “a little liberal.”

Although Arizona’s rural and agricultural communities are generally conservative, those who live here value self-sufficiency in a way that seems to preclude putting too much faith in any one party.

“Anybody that is growing something in America is gonna be independent,” said Ladd.

“You depend on Mother Nature. You depend on hard work to get it done. To see your successes so you can’t depend on somebody else. It’s up to you to be a success so that’s the connection with farming and ranching is independent.”

But conservatives weren’t the only ones who predicted that independents would play a big role in the year’s midterm elections in Arizona.

Sinema voter Jason Scott, whom we met at the State Fair in Phoenix about a week before the election, correctly speculated that his candidate would win the women’s vote, but added that the reason wouldn’t be because of party lines or Democratic messaging.  

“Women in Arizona are pretty independent-minded. It’s hard to tell them who to vote for and what to vote for,” he said.

The Arizona Senate election was extremely close; it took almost a week to declare Sinema the winner. She certainly has independent-minded Arizona women to thank for her narrow victory: 51% of women voted for Sinema, as compared with 49% of men, and 50% of independent women, as compared with the 47% who voted for McSally.

Me and my teammates interviewing a McSally voter at the Arizona State Fair. Although she had already voted for McSally, she emphasized that she never voted a straight ‘R’ or ‘D’ ticket. Photo by Kathleen McCleery.

Photograph by Morgan Carmen

PHOENIX—This election season, realtors in Arizona organized to fight an invisible demon, and they won. They wanted constitutional protection against any taxes aimed at service industries. Their fear: new taxes on anything from home purchases to hair cuts.

In the most expensive election season in American history, the Realtors Issues Mobilization Fund, a subsidiary of the Arizona Association of Realtors, injected approximately $6 million to fight for Proposition 126, a ballot measure designed to permanently eliminate service taxes in the state of Arizona. The initiative would amend the state’s Constitution to “prohibit the state and each county, city, town, district or other political subdivision in Arizona from imposing a new or increased tax on services that was not already in effect on December 31, 2017.” The prohibition could not be reversed by a legislature.

Yet, the legislature has never imposed a broad-based tax on services. The state does tax bars, restaurants, and hotels, in the form of sales taxes. Opponents of the Proposition, such as former Democratic Rep. Ron Barber, view it as “a solution looking for a problem-there is no problem.” Barber sees no reason to ban service taxes because they simply do not exist.

Backers of Proposition 126 saw a real danger in the very potential of a service tax. Their campaign was spearheaded by the realtors of Arizona and got a boost from a $2 million contribution from the National Association of Realtors. Steve Huffman, the Director of Government Affairs for the Tucson Association of Realtors, believes that a service tax is “not just one tax. You can have one transaction that can get taxed eight, nine, ten times.” He points to a “vanilla real estate transaction,” explaining that, if all services were taxed, a buyer could be taxed on a house inspection, the appraisal, title search, even termite inspections, and repairs.  Huffman further argues that if future service taxes are as unlikely as opponents of Prop. 126 claim, government officials should have no problem banning them.

However, recently, the state has seen a decrease in goods-related economic activity and an increase in services. If services were taxed state-wide at the same rate as sales (5.6%), the state would gain approximately $5 billion in new revenue, according to an Arizona Department of Revenue report.

Without the option to tax services, Arizonans could face higher sales or income taxes, particularly given that Proposition 126 may deprive the government of much needed tax revenue. Nowhere does there exist a legal definition of “services.” So, if the voters approve the measure, taxes on restaurants, bars, and hotels could be challenged in court as taxes on services rather than goods.

The passage of Prop. 126 could affect another ballot measure, passed in 2000: Proposition 301, which provided $600 million each year in sales taxes to pay teachers and improve classroom resources through 2021. Since the state legislature renewed that tax In March of this year, after Prop. 126’s December 2017 deadline, some–including the Grand Canyon Institute (a self-described non-partisan think tank)–argue that the state could stand to lose one third of its tax revenue– about $250 million each year–if the Proposition were to pass. Also in potential jeopardy could be a promise by Republican Governor Doug Ducey to increase teacher pay by 20%. The pledge came after the 6-day #RedforEd teacher strike earlier this year. If the state were to lose one third of its existing tax revenue and a possible source of new tax revenue, it is unclear how Arizona will honor its commitment to students and teachers.

The loss of a possible source of revenue is frightening to those like Barber, who says “if there came a time when the legislature actually had to tax any of those services to bail us out of a financial emergency or economic problem, then they will be barred from doing so because this puts that restriction into the constitution.”

On November 6th, Arizona voters passed Prop. 126 in a decisive 64.3% to 35.7% vote.

By Jordan Antebi

Along the dusty roads of Naco, a small southern Arizona town, a mountain looms in the distance, jutting above the flat plain. The expansive vista of brown grasses and shrubs from the main highway gradually slopes toward the landform on the horizon, only interrupted by a thin brown line, a fence barely visible from this vantage point, that spans in each direction.

The mountain is Mexico, and the line, America’s border fence with its southern neighbor.

Photo by Jordan Antebi

This is the sight greeting Princeton journalism students 1.5 miles from the international boundary, whose security was an important issue during the 2018 election season.  

Viewed from afar, the border is unmistakable. An 18-foot fence of rusty-red steel physically demarcates the international boundary and cuts across the landscape like a knife, contrasting with the verticality of surrounding mountains. Up-close, the fence is even more imposing. Comprised of tall bollards held together by steel beams, it dwarfs the casual observer, preventing all but the occasional wildlife from passing through.

To the untrained observer, visiting the border feels anticlimactic. Unlike the immigration politics in D.C., the scene here is tranquil, even placid.  The breeze rustles a bush. A cow moos on a nearby ranch. An insect buzzes past. There is dead silence.

On the Mexican side, however, discarded trash is visible, scattered haphazardly on the ground. Dip tins, cigarette butts, automobile tires show signs of human activity, despite the absence of anyone in sight. The aesthetic contrast between this disordered refuse, and the solid, stable border wall in front of it evokes a tension, a certain uneasiness about the calm.

Photo by Jordan Antebi

One local Border Patrol agent, speaking on background, mentions the story of a colleague, agent Brian A. Terry, now namesake of the nearby patrol station. Agent Terry, a member of the agency’s special operations unit, was killed in a December 2010 firefight with smugglers brandishing AK-47s. He was the first of two law enforcement agents killed here in Naco between 2010 and 2018.

Until the mid-2000s, Naco’s fence consisted of World War II-era corrugated metal panels nailed to wooden posts, a setup that made patrolling the border difficult. At about 6-8 feet feet high, many immigrants simply climbed over it. The present structure, a $2.3 billion project funded during the presidency of George W. Bush and installed during the Obama years, has significantly reduced the number of undocumented entries but still some migrants—civilians and smugglers—scale it with a ladder.

The Central American cartels, whose scouts criss-cross Naco’s borderlands, are widely acknowledged here as the most brazen of the fence scalers. In addition to ladders, they use airplanes, tunnels, air cannons, even blow torches to get drugs such as marijuana, heroin, and methamphetamine across.  In broad daylight, coyotes have been observed cutting holes in the fence, chaining the cut-out piece to a pick-up truck, then hitting the gas.

Photo by Jordan Antebi

Despite the appearances of calm, the Border Patrol agent says cartel scouts await armed with rifles and body armor in the nearby mountains and scrubland to call in the next shipment.  They surveil the border constantly, keeping tabs on American security operations, as well as police and civilian movements on the American side. They also know the weaknesses of U.S. security systems.

“You’re probably being watched now,” he adds half-jokingly, and gestures toward the mountain ahead.

Hearing this, some of the Princeton students accompanying the agent squirm. One laughs nervously, while another sticks his hand through the fence, and waves.

Photo by Jordan Antebi

Standing in silent witness to the border traffic is the official survey marker between the United States and Mexico. Erected during the nineteenth century, the medium-sized, metal obelisk painted in silver and black lettering stands between the mountains of both countries, like an arbiter of estranged siblings.

In many ways, the monument embodies the area’s complicated historical past, present and future.

2000 miles away in the U.S. capital, elected officials prepare to restart the contentious debate over immigration reform. Here, the marker stands as a symbol of stability in an ever-changing political landscape. Washington D.C versus Mexico City. Open borders versus closed borders. Civilians versus law enforcement. Law enforcement versus smugglers. Liberals versus conservatives. Moderates versus extremists.

An inscription at the base reads: “THE DESTRUCTION OR DISPLACEMENT OF THIS MONUMENT IS A MISDEMEANOR, PUNISHABLE BY THE UNITED STATES OR MEXICO.” It is a reminder of legal commonality, despite the ongoing, politically challenging search for immigration solutions.

Meanwhile, another day comes and goes here at the border in Naco. The expansive countryside, mountains rising from the plain. The fences, and high-tech cameras. The silence. The tension.

Photo by Jordan Antebi

By Nathan Levit, Mallory Williamson, and Rose Gilbert

The morning of our departure to the Grand Canyon State was marked by the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history, the killing of 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue. 2000 miles away in southeastern Arizona, the slaughter brought to the forefront an issue that had lingered in background for 7 years: guns.

In 2011, Jared Loughner came to ‘Congress on your Corner,’ an event hosted by Rep. Gabby Giffords in a Safeway parking lot just outside Tucson., shooting Giffords in the head and killing six other people. Ron Barber, Giffords’ district director who eventually succeeded her in Congress, was shot in the face and thigh.

We met Barber just steps from the Safeway entrance, the site where he and Giffords were shot. Leaning on a cane, Barber remembered the day vividly, describing how the horror of the event “traumatized” Tucsonans, and that “we had significant mental health issues not only in the people who were here that morning, but also in the community at large.”

Barber did not mince words when it came to gun control. There was an armed “good guy with a gun” at the scene, said Barber, but due to the confusion at the scene of the crime “[the] good guy had the good sense not to do anything… more.” Indeed, Barber fears that more innocent people could have been shot due to the chaos a second gunman could have caused.

Not all Arizonans agree. Suzy Burros is an instructor for the Sahuarita chapter of The Well Armed Woman, a group dedicated to bringing together female gun owners. She believes a ‘good guy with a gun’ is a powerful way for women and men to protect themselves and those around them. “People should be responsibly armed, because you never know,” Burros said. “With the shooting in Pittsburgh, maybe if there had been an armed congregant… then I think that somebody maybe could have helped out.”

A week after the Pittsburgh shooting, the victims have been laid to rest. President Trump didn’t pause his campaign schedule, as previous leaders have after tragic events. And in Arizona, most voters focused on border security and healthcare, not guns.

By Lindsey Schmidt, Emerson Solms, Morgan Carmen, Kieran Murphy

PHOENIX— “I feel that because I’m Native American, I don’t see boundaries such as the wall,” says Mariah Sharpe, an 18-year-old member of the Tohono O’odham tribe in Southern Arizona. Sharpe’s Native American community straddles the Mexican-American border and does not even possess a word for wall.

The international boundary cuts through 75 miles of the Tohono O’odham Nation reservation and separates the 2,000 members who live in the Mexican state of Sonora from the 34,000 in Arizona.

“Tohono O’odham Nation Map” by Forest Purnell, Institute of Infinitely Small Things, https://openborders.info/blog/tag/tohono-oodham/

         Mexico’s Territorial Evolution, Wikipedia Commons

While most of the Tohono O’odham people live north of the border, most of the tribe’s land is to the south. The borderline, first drawn in 1848 by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and finalized six years later by the Gadsden Purchase, places the majority of the tribe’s land in Mexico. For over 150 years, the border has seen members travelling safely back and forth with only a tribal ID. Recently, the U.S. government, citing concerns about human trafficking and drug smuggling, has been increasing border militarization, sending 5,200 troops to the border the week before Election Day. Only one authorized border crossing remains on the reservation. The Tohono O’odham have partnered with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and invest more than $3 million a year to curb trafficking.

Photograph by Lindsey Schmidt

Tribe members believe President Trump’s wall will jeopardize the very existence of their nation. Rhetoric in support of the wall, notes Sharpe, has started to “generalize the immigrants as serial killers and people who are bad and mean harm to us when really they are trying to … come here for better opportunities to support their families.” She hopes to eradicate the notion that, “because we’re from America … we’re better than those who are in Mexico.” In the end, stresses Sharpe, “We’re all human beings.” She worries that a border wall “is only hurting the cultural … values of our people.”

Mission San Xavier del Bac, Tohono O’odham San Xavier Indian Reservation; Wikipedia Commons

Sharpe’s opposition to the wall is echoed by prominent members of the Nation. The vice chairman, Verlon Jose, has proclaimed, “Over my dead body will we build a wall.” The Tohono O’odham Nation existed before the Mexican-U.S. border, and the members are determined to exist even with the barrier. According to the tribal chairman, Edward Manuel, “The wall would interfere with our way of life, our ceremonies, with our traditional and our cultural activities that we do on both sides of the border, because we still have communities on the Mexican side.” For the Tohono O’odham, a longtime rallying cry of activists for immigrants’ rights literally rings true: “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.”

By Nathan Levit and Mallory Williamson

Ann Kirkpatrick hustles out of her car, meets her staff member, and power walks to the door. Just days away from the election, she’s trying to win over Arizona’s second congressional district. She represented a different area before – one further upstate – but the stars aligned, and she’s back for another shot at the people’s chamber.

As soon as she arrived for our interview at the Democratic Green Valley headquarters – fancy nomenclature for piles of literature and a bunch of plastic tables – she asked where the interview would be televised. When we told her it wouldn’t be, she took it in stride, albeit a tinge of disappointment entered her face for a fleeting second. After all, she’s six days away from the date that’s been circled on her calendar for eighteen months. In front of our cameras, she was the practiced politician. Her concise answers in a 7-minute interview included points she’d hammered home many times before.

She sat down, welcoming us warmly to her corner of Arizona. Less than a minute into the interview, she tied herself to a wildly popular figure in the district. “This district was represented by an amazing woman, Gabrielle Giffords, who is a good friend of mine, and a mentor, and who has endorsed me,” Kirkpatrick said. Giffords was shot and severely wounded at a 2011 campaign event with constituents.

Kirkpatrick was most animated when asked about the role of women in politics. “When women run, they win,” she said, smiling. Citing her previous Congressional experience, she explained that “women tend to be more collaborative, and less competitive, and that’s how you get things done.”

She expressed joy at the notion that the surge in female political engagement after the 2016 Presidential race has been “sustainable through the election,” and that “women who have never been involved in politics before were just energized.”

Victory in Arizona’s second congressional district can be a temporary phenomenon. Drawn after the 2010 census, it’s fashioned in a way that each party can win it at any time.

The district is the southeasternmost chunk of the Grand Canyon State, a rectangle that stretches from Tucson to the Mexico border. Its Partisan Voter Index, which measures how much a district leans Democratic or Republican, indicates it favors Republicans by just one percent more than the national average. With many analysts predicting a blue wave, this district might echo that trend.

It was Giffords’ district. Her district director Ron Barber – also badly wounded in the 2011 shooting—ran to replace her. In the special election after Giffords resigned, Barber won by less than 5,000 votes.

Five months later, Barber beat Martha McSally, then a political newcomer but now the GOP Senate candidate, by less than one percent. McSally came back two years later to beat Barber in a rematch by just 167 votes. Barber, who had been ten points ahead, said “it really makes you think,” and warned never to count anyone out in this district.

Four days before the 2018 elections, all polls showed Kirkpatrick with a lead over Lea Marquez Peterson, the Republican nominee.

Marquez Peterson is the President of the Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, a moderate and powerful force in the biggest metropolitan area in the district. She’s run a campaign emphasizing independence and her hometown roots, bashing Kirkpatrick as a political opportunist along the way. “She is not one of us. She moved here to run in our community,” Marquez Peterson said of Kirkpatrick during their only debate.

Christopher Conover, senior political reporter at Arizona Public Media, said Marquez Peterson’s lagging poll ratings could be because she has largely shunned the media. Although we made contact with her campaign, we were not able to interview her.

Arizona is the microcosm of political storms sweeping the country. The border state, replete with militias and hard-hatted sheriffs, is also home to progressive ranchers, liberal university towns, and an African-American Latino border mayor. Every year, pundits ask if Arizona’s demographics are its destiny. Will the growing Hispanic population finally push Democrats over the top after being locked out of major statewide seats for a decade?

The state is a bastion of conservatism, but it might be the kind you find in a history book rather than in the ballot box. Shaped by the legacy of Senator and presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, Arizona is home to two of the most-discussed political figures of 2018: John McCain and Jeff Flake. McCain, who died in August, was the straight-talking maverick willing to buck his party. His death produced a chorus of calls for civility…which fell flat.

Flake was a mainstream Republican before Donald Trump molded the political clay into its current form. Before joining Congress, he led the conservative Goldwater Institute, which focused on small government and school vouchers. Elected to the Senate in 2012, he initially walked the party line. But now Flake has emerged as Trump’s most fervent intra-party obstacle.

Flake faced stiff opposition in his primary, and sensing the political winds, he decided not to run for reelection. Many expect him to challenge Trump in 2020. Asked about future, he doesn’t shy away from his intentions. “I haven’t ruled it out. I do hope somebody runs on the Republican side other than the President,” Flake said on Meet The Press.

The race to replace Flake, a bruising battle between Democrat Rep. Kyrsten Sinema and Republican Rep. Martha McSally, comes as record numbers of women are running for federal office. Sinema would be the first bisexual Senator. She’s built a moderate voting record in her six years in Congress after beginning her career as a progressive firebrand. McSally was the first American woman to pilot a fighter plane in combat. She’s embraced hard liners on immigration, and welcomed President Trump’s support.

The race promises to be close. In the waning days of the campaign, polls show the race as a toss-up. Turnout is key, but so is flipping the voters who might be molded in the era of McCain or Flake: conservative, but turned off by the bombast. Where those voters will turn, according to Conover, is the million-dollar question.

How do you win a race for Senate in Arizona? It’s a case of brute force versus tacit maneuvering.

Martha McSally’s path resembles a flyer that a PAC has been mailing to voters across the state. The mailer is a hologram that depicts a beautiful Phoenix sunset on one side, but from another angle shows the mushroom of an atomic bomb engulfing a city.

McSally has dusted off an old playbook: defend the military and secure the borders. In her ads, her opponent is not Sinema but rather a conglomeration of Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren. McSally doesn’t have to piece together a coalition. Republicans get out to vote, and all she needs to do is ensure Sinema does not pick off too many GOP voters.

Kyrsten Sinema, on the other hand, must be a careful operative. To win statewide, Arizona Democrats have to thread a delicate needle. Sinema must convince disparate groups to drop their allegiances to a changed Republican Party or vote in greater numbers than they have in recent elections. She needs to lure moderately conservative Latino men disaffected by Trump, win over white suburban women, and drive up Latino and Native American turnout.

Races are often close until the end in the Grand Canyon State. In 2012, the Democrat running against Jeff Flake was up in two of the final four public polls before losing on election night. The last major Democratic candidate to turn a close race into a win was Janet Napolitano in her 2002 gubernatorial bid, and even that was by less than 1%.

We may not know until the wee hours of Election Day who will win the race. Conover, who has covered elections in the state for fourteen years, predicted that the results may not be official until Friday.

By Molly Milligan, Hamza Hasheem, Jordan Antebi, and Natalie Nagorski

In Arizona, the gloves are off, as Representatives Martha McSally and Kyrsten Sinema vie for an open Senate seat that could determine control of Congress.  Since early 2018, Republican McSally and Democrat Sinema have spent a combined $30 million on television and print ads — many of them negative attacks — in a strategy that has prompted mixed responses from voters.

At the State Fair in Phoenix, Chase Gibbons, a McSally supporter, said he was receptive to aggressive, partisan advertising. For him, the ads provided essential information on the candidates’ records, and helped convince him to vote against Sinema. “There’s plenty of stuff to dig up on her,” he said, referring to an old image of the Democrat in a pink tutu protesting the Iraq war. The McSally campaign has paired the photo with a picture of their candidate, a former Army combat pilot, in her flight jacket.

But independent voter Donna Moore was turned off by the tactic, calling it “very disappointing.” Moore cited the fact “that the Republican candidate for senator started with the nastiness even before the primary” as one reason why she chose to vote for Sinema. McSally’s advertising strategy, Moore believed, deterred many Arizona independents.

Negative ads like this one from Sinema have even dissuaded some from voting this cycle. Robert Oman, who did not disclose his party affiliation, said he felt cynical about the smear tactics of the senate campaigns, and would not cast a ballot. “I think it’s all ridiculous. It’s all bashing,” he said.

Unlike Moore, who faulted the GOP, Oman criticized both parties and their messages. Going negative, Oman believed, only blurred the candidates’ true personalities, and made it difficult to evaluate their positions on the issues. “You can’t go both ways, you can’t beat up on somebody while also getting the message across,” Oman said. “A lot of it is probably true, but it don’t matter, they’re not stating the facts.”