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An Arizona lawmaker says the Republican Party’s “extremism” has led many voters in the state to increasingly support Democrats.
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“The Republican Party has become extreme in the age of Trumpism,” the senator told Politico.
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Arizona has become a hotly contested swing state in recent years, both on the ballot and on the ballot.
In recent years, Arizona — after decades as a bastion of the Republican Party — has emerged as one of the Democrats’ most prominent election prizes.
President Joe Biden won Arizona in 2020, the first time a Democratic presidential candidate held the state since 1996. Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly won a special election for his seat in 2020 and then won a full term in 2022. And Katie Hobbs was elected governor in 2022, the first time a Democrat had won the post since 2006.
In November, Democrats are hopeful that Rep. Ruben Gallego can fill the seat of retiring Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, who has become an independent, now that he is likely to face Republican Kari Lake.
However, despite Arizona’s seemingly clear shift to the left, a Democratic lawmaker recently said the state was not as blue as it seems, pointing to what she said were voters’ distaste for the Republican Party’s “extremism” as a reason why she party has achieved success. .
“Arizona’s trajectory has become increasingly blue at a statewide level,” Sen. Priya Sundareshan recently told Politico. “It’s not because Arizona is necessarily a blue state, but it’s because Arizona has rejected extremism and the Republican Party has become extreme in the age of Trumpism.”
Arizona, one of the key swing states that will be hotly contested this fall by both Biden and former President Donald Trump, has become ground zero on major issues like immigration and reproductive rights.
Sundareshan, an environmental lawyer who was elected to the Senate in 2022 from a Tucson-area district, is among a number of Democratic legislative leaders trying to repeal Arizona’s near-total Civil War-era abortion ban — which the conservative state Supreme Court has recovered. earlier this month.
The GOP-controlled House of Representatives voted to repeal the law earlier this week after three Republicans joined Democrats in the House of Representatives to roll back the measure. The Senate will vote on the repeal next week.
If the repeal passes both chambers, Hobbs, an abortion rights supporter, is expected to sign the bill into law.
Top Republicans are scrambling to contain the fallout from the abortion ban, especially given the party’s precarious position in critical suburban areas across the country, which includes dozens of voters in Arizona’s densely populated Maricopa County.
Despite appointing three anti-abortion lawyers to the U.S. Supreme Court who supported overturning Roe v. Wade, Trump declared earlier this month that the Arizona court’s decision went too far. And the former president has also apparently rejected the conservative push for a national abortion ban.
Read the original article on Business Insider
