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    'Crossroads of the climate crisis': swing state Arizona grapples with deadly heat

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    Even now, Ivan Moore can’t think why his father didn’t didn’t tell anyone that the air conditioning in their house was busted. “I honestly don’t know what was going through his mind,” he said.
    That week three years ago, temperatures in Phoenix, Arizona were forecasted to top 115F (46C). Moore, his wife and two children went to the mountains for a camping trip, and his dad Gene, stayed behind. A few days later, Gene died.
    The air conditioning had been blowing hot air. “He’d opened a window but it was too hot,” Moore said. “My dad’s heart basically gave out on him.”
    Phoenix – America’s hottest city – is getting hotter and hotter, and Moore’s father is one of the hundreds of Arizonans who have succumbed to the desert heat in recent years. More

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      'Voters are fed up': will Arizona's suburbs abandon the party of Trump?

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      In the agonizing days after the 2018 election, Christine Marsh, a Democratic candidate for state Senate in a traditionally Republican suburban Phoenix district, watched her opponent’s lead dwindle to a few hundred votes, with thousands of ballots left to be counted.
      In the end, just 267 votes separated them.
      Marsh lost. But the result was ominous for Republicans, in a corner of Phoenix’s ever-expanding suburbs where Barry Goldwater, the long-serving Arizona senator and conservative icon, launched his presidential campaign in 1964 from the patio of his famed hilltop estate in Paradise Valley.
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      In the decades since, population growth and shifting demographics have transformed the cultural, political and economic complexion of the region.
      And the election of Donald Trump has exacerbated these trends across the country, perhaps nowhere more dramatically than in diverse, fast-growing metropolitan areas like Phoenix, where the coalition of affluent, white suburban voters that once cemented Republican dominance is unraveling.
      “We’ve seen a huge shift in my district, even in just the last two years,” said Marsh, a a high school English teacher who is challenging Republican incumbent Kate Brophy McGee again this year. The district, which includes the prosperous Paradise Valley and parts of north central Phoenix, is now at the center of the political battle for Arizona’s suburbs.
      Over the last four years, Republicans have watched their support collapse in suburbs across the country, as the president’s divisive rhetoric and incendiary behavior alienates women, college graduates and independent voters. But as Trump continues to downplay the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic, even after more than 225,000 deaths nationwide and as cases continue to climb, his conduct is imperiling not only his own re-election campaign, but his entire party. More

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      ‘Turning pain into purpose’: why the Covid crisis is driving Arizonans to the polls

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      When Kristin Urquiza drafted an obituary for her father, Mark Urquiza, she didn’t imagine it would be all that controversial or notable.
      “I was just being honest,” she said, when she wrote that her dad’s death from Covid-19 was “due to the carelessness of the politicians who continue to jeopardize the health of brown bodies through a clear lack of leadership, refusal to acknowledge the severity of this crisis, and inability and unwillingness to give clear and decisive direction on how to minimize risk”.
      Her words – published by the Arizona Republic – were shared, retweeted, emailed and relayed across the country. Daughters, sons, parents, grandparents, friends mourning loved ones flooded her inbox.
      Her father was a Trump supporter who had trusted the president, and believed it would be safe to go to a karaoke bar after Arizona’s stay-at-home order was lifted in May. Now, Urquiza has returned to Phoenix, the city where he lived and she grew up, to campaign for Trump’s opponent – and get out the vote. “I’ve been turning my pain into purpose,” she told the Guardian. “This is our chance to collectively come together and demand change.”
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      The coronavirus crisis, which has dominated the election cycle, looms especially large over Arizona. The virus has killed more than 227,000 people in the US, including nearly 6,000 Arizonans, and forced hundreds of thousands more to file for unemployment. It has taken a disproportionate toll on Latino, Black and Native American populations.
      Maricopa county was especially hard hit, and remains the fifth worst affected in the US. With election day less than a week away, a traumatized electorate is weighing the failures of Republican leaders to control the pandemic in Arizona, and across the country. More

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      'I can have a voice': Latino voters set for decisive role in key Arizona county

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      Even before she could vote, Imelda Quiroz Beltran had a goal for this election: to register as many Latino voters in Maricopa county as possible – and make sure they cast their ballots.
      Every day for months, she has gone door to door with the non-profit Mi Familia Vota, undeterred by the searing desert sun – zipping across Phoenix’s sprawling concrete-paved neighborhoods in search of eligible voters.
      And then the day came when Beltran registered herself – after she became a naturalized citizen this year.
      “Finally, I can have a voice,” she said. “And this year, it is so important that we all have a voice.”
      Maricopa – which includes Phoenix – is the fastest-growing county in the US. Of its nearly 4.5 million residents, one-third identify as Latino, according to census data.
      While Arizona has voted for the Republican presidential nominee in every election but one since 1952, this year, political strategists and pollsters are predicting that Latino voters in Maricopa could play a decisive role in electing Joe Biden to the White House and Democrats up and down the ballot.
      “Whoever wins the Latino vote, is going to win Maricopa county. And whoever wins Maricopa county is going to win Arizona,” said Joseph Garcia, director of Chicanos Por La Causa Action Fund, a non-profit based in Phoenix. “And whoever wins Arizona is likely to win the White House.” More

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      The Arizona county that could decide the future of Trump – and America

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      For years, Carlos Garcia would grab his bullhorn each afternoon and head downtown to the office of Joe Arpaio, the brash, hardline, anti-immigrant Maricopa county sheriff who became known as “the Donald Trump of Arizona”.
      When Garcia’s protests began in 2007, just a handful of devoted activists joined him. A conservative firebrand, Arpaio was re-elected every four years by the mostly white residents of the state’s most populous county. He was seemingly untouchable.
      But as Arpaio’s crusade against immigrants intensified, the backlash grew. “We literally went from five to 200,000 people,” Garcia said of the protests.
      On 8 November 2016, the same night Donald Trump won the White House, Arizona finally ousted Arpaio. After nearly a quarter-century in power, the sheriff was undone by Latinos, young progressives and white voters who Garcia believes “felt shame over Maricopa’s reputation” as a hostile and intolerant place.
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      Just as Arpaio’s tenure foreshadowed Trump’s national rise, the same forces that expelled the sheriff in Maricopa county appear to have flourished across the country as the president pursued his own hardline agenda. And now, those forces – catalyzed by the coronavirus pandemic – may seal the president’s fate in next week’s US election.
      “We are a community that has suffered through Trump-like policies for such a long time,” said Garcia, who was elected to Phoenix city council in 2018. This year, Latinos and others are mobilizing to defeat the “Arpaio in the White House”.
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      Maricopa county, which encompasses Arizona’s capital, Phoenix, and blossoming rings of surrounding suburbs, has nearly 4.5 million residents and dominates the state politically. One third of Maricopa residents identify as Latino, according to US census data. More