‘It’s a daunting task’: Democrats prep to lead Arizona legislature for first time in 60 years

For the first time in six decades, Democrats control the Arizona legislature and will be able to turn their policy priorities into state law. But doing so without ostracizing the Republican and independent voters who helped elect them may prove difficult as the party grapples with governing a state where Republican voters still outnumber registered Democrats. 

Tuesday’s election was a boon for Democrats up and down the ballot. The state’s three top Democratic incumbents easily trounced their GOP challengers, and the party is poised to wrest two extra congressional seats and the Superintendent of Public Instruction’s Office from Republicans. 

At the state legislature, Democrats outperformed their electoral goals. The party needed to flip three seats in the Arizona Senate and four in the Arizona House of Representatives to upend 60 years of GOP control; as of Wednesday, they were on pace to capture six seats in the state senate and 10 in the lower legislative chamber. 

After years of facing legislative gridlock under Republicans, who refused to so much as discuss Democratic proposals they ideologically opposed, party leaders are excited at the prospect of finally advancing their policy wishlist. Rep. Nancy Gutierrez, the assistant minority leader in the House, said that Democrats are looking forward to making their vision for Arizona a reality. 

“Democrats really get to do some good things for the people of Arizona,” the Tucson Democrat said. “The people of Arizona will have their voices heard in our Arizona state legislature.” 

Among the party’s key priorities, Gutierrez said, are affordability solutions, reproductive healthcare protections, and gun safety legislation. Gutierrez emphasized that legislation aimed at addressing Arizonans’ affordability concerns is at the top of that list. 

Last year, Democratic lawmakers proposed bills that would have made it more difficult for corporations to purchase single-family homes, sought to prohibit manufacturers and distributors from price gouging generic drugs, and would have set aside funding to resolve the state’s backed up child care assistance waiting list. None of those bills were ever granted an initial hearing. 

Democrats have also pushed to make access to contraception a right for years, but have been repeatedly shut down by opponents across the aisle. And while Arizonans voted two years ago to make abortion a fundamental right and outlaw any unnecessary restrictions on the procedure, Republicans have refused to repeal the dozens of anti-abortion laws that remain on the books. 

With Democrats at the helm, those changes are now almost certain to occur. 

But some warn that winning a legislative majority won’t automatically make the party’s political agenda a reality, at least not without some hard work. Chuck Coughlin, a Republican political consultant, said that Democrats have an unprecedented opportunity to advance their solutions to some of the state’s most pressing problems, including water conservation and education funding. But he noted that the party leaders will need to learn how to wrangle their caucus members in both chambers to arrive at a consensus; just because the party has a majority in both chambers doesn’t guarantee they will always agree with each other. 

“They’re going to have to work with themselves and figure out how the caucus can govern in both bodies, which is going to require something we don’t see often in politics: patience and humility to try and work with one another to help the governor fashion an agenda,” Coughlin said.

Republicans themselves, despite 60 years of dominating the legislature, faced intraparty friction at times. In the past few years, members of the party’s far-right fringe increasingly threw a wrench into policymaking, particularly when it came to money for schools. Republicans were unable to put together a plan to renew Proposition 123, an initiative that public schools depend on for $300 million in annual revenue, despite three years of heated debate on the subject. 

Coughlin added that Democrats and Gov. Katie Hobbs are under unique pressure to deliver results for voters, who expect them to succeed where they feel Republicans didn’t. And he said that, because many Democrats were awarded wins in red districts, the party will have to balance bold moves against a long-term strategy to preserve its majority.

“If the caucus is going to maintain those voter majorities they’ll have to be respectful of their colleagues and who they represent,” he said. 

But Democrats and their supporters feel the party is ready to meet that challenge. 

“It’s a daunting task but it’s a task that we are up to,” Gutierrez said. “We might have bumps in the road but everybody does. Even people who had been leading for decades had missteps.”

“There’s going to be a learning curve on the governing side, but it’s not insurmountable,” echoed Liz Goodman, a lobbyist who has worked closely with Democrats for more than a decade.  

Goodman pointed out that Democratic leaders have already proven they can work within the confines that Democrats who represent conservative constituencies may find themselves in. Two years ago, Rep. Kevin Volk flipped a Republican seat in a Tucson district where registered Republicans far outnumber Democrats — 69,719 to 52,862, according to the latest voter registration report. Volk later went on to establish a reputation as a moderate, at times going against his party. 

The first-time legislator once earned repudiation from progressive organizations when he joined Republicans as the lone Democrat to support funding a budget line item that sets aside money to address drug trafficking as well as to “deter and apprehend” people who cross the state’s southern border without authorization. The money, which is disbursed by the Hobbs administration, is strictly reserved for drug interdiction initiatives but the language was previously passed by Republicans and has long been opposed by Democrats. 

Despite his actions drawing condemnation from progressive activists, who vowed to defeat him in the next election, no such movement emerged against Volk and he earned reelection on Tuesday. 

“Leadership understands that the Democrats in the state represent vastly different constituencies,” Goodman said. 

At the same time that Democrats will be learning how to navigate a near-legislative supermajority, they’ll need to contend with obstacles from the federal level. 

Goodman noted that while state lawmakers have no control over what the Trump administration does, they will have to figure out how to implement the coming Medicaid cuts in a way that causes the least impact on the state’s healthcare system and Arizonans themselves — amid an ongoing economic downturn and the cuts to federal food assistance, which hit the Grand Canyon State particularly hard. 

The biggest question is where Democrats will funnel state revenue. 

Some Republicans have already admonished voters for awarding the party control of the state, warning them that Democrats will only deepen Arizona’s affordability issues by overspending. But Goodman said that the social safety programs that Democrats want to fund, like free and reduced meals for students, child care assistance and programs that help low income Arizonans afford health insurance, help prevent more expensive problems down the road and reduce the strain on the state’s infrastructure, including hospital emergency rooms. 

Gutierrez added that Democrats are focused on spending money to improve the lives of Arizonans. 

“Democrats are fiscally responsible, we just will spend differently than the Republicans did because our focus is on the people,” she said. “Their focus was on their rich friends and huge corporations.”