'Truly remarkable': Arizona activists celebrate as conservative stalwart shifts blue

Ten years ago in Arizona, a night like 3 November 2020 would have seemed impossible.

Back then, the conservative stalwart of the south-west was not just a state with strong Republican leadership on almost every level – it was a state whose staunch anti-immigration stance would go on to shape policy in the party for years to come, and would gain a reputation as the birthplace of Trumpism.

A Republican super-majority state legislature had passed SB1070, a law requiring local law enforcement to ask for proof of legal immigration status from anyone deemed suspicious. Hardline anti-immigration sheriff Joe Arpaio – the Donald Trump of Maricopa county before Donald Trump became the Donald Trump he is today – was not just in power, he seemed near untouchable.

“We would host know-your-rights sessions, with backyards full of over a hundred people because there was so much fear,” said Alejandra Gomez, co-executive director of advocacy group Living United for Change in Arizona (Lucha). “There were literally checkpoints that we would have to go monitor that Sheriff Arpaio put in common intersections. There were phone trees that the community had to give each other heads up of when Arpaio and his posse were going to be there.”

Gomez smiled. “We don’t have that any more. And that’s because of the resistance of Arizona and the strategic calculations that this community has made.”

On Tuesday, Arizona began to shift blue. While a number of ballots remained to be counted, the Associated Press called the race for Joe Biden, who was leading by 5 percentage points, saying that the remaining ballots would not be enough for Trump to close the gap to victory in Arizona. With 99% of precincts reporting, Democratic candidate Mark Kelly leads Republican Martha McSally with 52.63% of the vote in the race for John McCain’s former senate seat. Alongside Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, who won her US Senate seat in 2018, this marks the first time Arizona would have two sitting Democrats in the US chamber in a lifetime. The state legislature is also expected to flip to a Democratic majority in both chambers for the first time since 1966, though with narrower margins in some races than previously hoped.

“In 10 years, we went from a super-majority Republican state, and now, in 2020, we’re going to flip the legislature to a majority blue, our electoral votes will be a deciding factor in electing Joe Biden, and we are going to have not one, but two United State senate seats going out to Washington DC to represent our voices,” said Democratic state representative Athena Salman, who won her re-election bid Tuesday.

“It is truly remarkable and so exciting to be living in this state right now.”

But Tuesday was no fluke. It was the culmination of more than 10 years of tireless boots-on-the-ground organizing, campaigning, marching, protesting and door-knocking.

It was never about politics for these organizers and activists. It was never about Republican or Democrat, red state or blue state, conservative or liberal.

“This was not a state where you got involved in politics because you wanted to do work in politics,” said Tomas Robles, co-executive director of Lucha. “For us, it wasn’t about attaching ourselves to a political party. In 2010, both political parties deserted us. There were Democrats who did not vote against SB1070, folks who did not even bother showing up.”

For them, it was a fight for their lives. It was a fight to keep families together, to prevent the deportation of loved ones, the criminalization of an entire race.

“The 10 years of this, it’s a sign that Arizona is moving in the direction that we envisioned since 2010,” Robles said. “You have eight-year-olds who experienced the heartbreak of watching their families stand there in fear because of SB1070. They’re now 18-year-old voters. You have a ton of people that have grown up experiencing what it is to organize and what it is to build collective political power in a state that used to have none of it.”

In the pandemic, 90% of the members of Unite Here Local 11, a union representing predominantly Latinx and immigrant hospitality workers in southern California and Arizona, lost their jobs. So instead, they took to the streets, knocking on doors to campaign for Biden and Kelly, sometimes in the sweltering 120-degree Fahrenheit Arizona heat.

In July, union organizers met with epidemiologists specifically to find ways for their members and volunteers to safely continue knocking on doors. Since then, they estimated that they’ve knocked on 800,000 doors and had at least 250,000 conversations.

“People know,” said Unite Here Local 11 co-president Susan Minato. “They’re not stupid. They know there are a lot of negative things going on and our country is way worse than it was before Trump started. That’s why people are here. There are children today, 550 of them, who are in cages. No one even knows who they are, who their parents are. They were taken from their parents arms. If we live in a country where that can happen, then anything can happen.

“If people know that in their gut, then they’re here in the heat, they’re here, separated from their own children and loved ones temporarily, they’re here knocking on the doors of strangers in a pandemic, and they’re loving it because they know this is how we save our country.”

Local organizers and activists have much to celebrate after Tuesday. Beyond the wins, beyond turning Arizona blue, the state saw historic youth and Latinx voter turnout, they said.

But they’re also already looking ahead. Minato noted that they have just two years to go before the governor’s race. And Robles pointed out that winning the election is just half the battle.

“This is a marker in a very long marathon,” Robles said. “We’re going to have to prepare our members and prepare our leaders and also prepare our elected officials that our voters put in those seats. Election Day is just when you get the job. The job has only just begun. We’re ready and prepared to deal with whoever is in charge with crafting policy that will affect our families.”