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.
