Special: Race to the midterms - Arizona

ROBERT COSTA: Hello. I’m Robert Costa. And this is the Washington Week Podcast.

With weeks to go until the midterms we’re diving into races across the country, and tonight we turn to the border state of Arizona. Our guests: Christopher Conover, political reporter for Arizona Public Media, who joins us from Tucson; and Dan Balz, chief correspondent at The Washington Post .

Arizona is a traditionally red state. Registered Republicans outnumber Democrats, and Republicans Donald Trump and Mitt Romney, they won the state in the last two presidential elections. Arizona is also known for some outspoken Republicans who buck the system like legendary Senator the late John McCain, who passed away this year, and Senator Jeff Flake, who chose not to run for reelection. Two congresswomen are also in competition for Flake’s Senate seat this fall, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema and former fighter pilot and retired Air Force officer Republican Martha McSally. Sinema has campaigned on her family’s struggles to make ends meet when she was young and her bipartisan voting record. McSally has spoken widely about her own military experience.

REPRESENTATIVE MARTHA MCSALLY (R-AZ): (From video.) I chose to serve in uniform for 26 years. I put my life on the line for our country. I flew 325 combat hours protecting our freedoms and our way of life.

REPRESENTATIVE KYRSTEN SINEMA (D-AZ): (From video.) I believe Arizonans deserve a senator who just calls the balls and the strikes, and doesn’t just always agree with their party leaders.

MR. COSTA: Christopher, great to have you here. When you think about this Senate race, why isn’t Congresswoman Sinema pulling away? You have seemingly all the dynamics down there – a hardline president on immigration, a traditional midterm year where the incumbent party struggles. Why is it so tight?

CHRISTOPHER CONOVER: It’s tight because of the political makeup of Arizona. As you said, there are more registered Republicans in Arizona than there are Democrats. However, the second-largest group is independents or no party. And when Donald Trump won here in 2016 in the presidential race, he only won by three or four points, so it was very, very tight. And as you also mentioned, Arizona tends to have some outspoken elected officials and a history of marching to the beat of its own drummer, so it’s a little bit different and what you see on paper is not always what you get when it comes to registration and the politics of the state.

MR. COSTA: Immigration at the forefront of the national debate as well as in Arizona. How is that issue really shaping the race?

MR. CONOVER: Immigration is always an issue here. Immigration here in Tucson, because we’re only 70 miles from the border, is a local issue, even, and everybody is always talking about it.

Interestingly enough, if you talk to Representative Sinema, she’ll tell you that, OK, the president wants a border wall? Fine, he can have a border wall, but there needs to be more than that. She wants more technology, be it drones and sensors and things like that. She also wants more Border Patrol officer(s), more boots on the ground, and that goes for customs officers also because there’s so much cross-border trade that’s very important to the Arizona economy. And what she’ll say is the border wall is an 18 ^th century solution to a 21 ^st century problem.

Congresswoman McSally has a history of similar types of ideas, saying fine, go ahead and build a wall, but there need to be more electronic sensors, more boots on the ground, and more customs officers to deal with cross-border trade.

As far as DACA goes, Representative Sinema wants to see a path for citizenship for the people who are the DACA recipients. When I asked her about it right after the debate that the two of them had, she wouldn’t say whether those recipients should go in the front of the line for citizenship or back of the line or in the middle; her comment was simply they haven’t been in the line yet so we don’t know where to put them.

MR. COSTA: When you think about this Senate race, Dan, it’s critical for Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to keep that Republican majority.

DAN BALZ: It’s one of several seats that are critical for them to hold the majority, and it’s been one of the targets for the Democrats throughout this campaign season. I mean, Arizona, Nevada, Tennessee, to some extent Texas are all seats that Democrats had their eyes on that they might be able to pick up and eventually get the majority. I think what we have seen in the last couple of weeks is that a number of these races have moved a little bit in the Republican direction. They’re still very, very close – I’m not saying that, you know, one side has an advantage at this point – but I know that Republicans that I’ve been talking to over the last several days feel more optimistic in general about holding the Senate or maybe even picking up a seat or two, and that’s because places like Arizona look a little bit better to them today than they may have a month ago.

MR. COSTA: And what about the House? You look at Martha McSally’s – her old congressional seat in Arizona’s 2 ^nd District, that’s a battleground for control of the House of Representatives. Both Democrats and Republicans have targeted this race between the former U.S. Representative Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick and Republican Lea Marquez Peterson, CEO of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Tucson. If she wins, she would be the first Latina elected to Congress from Arizona. Christopher, this House race, what a microcosm. What do you make of it?

MR. CONOVER: This House race is always an interesting one to watch because the district very much reflects Arizona with registration numbers. It is historically split almost 30/30/30 between Republicans, Democrats, and independents. Right now Democrats in this 2 ^nd District have a little bit of an upper hand, but it is still very, very close. It also is a microcosm of Arizona because it has an urban center, Tucson, where most of the population lives, but most of the physical geography is much more rural, so you get into farming issues and things like that. And it has the border. So it is very much a microcosm of Arizona. It’s been represented by Democrats. It’s been represented by Republicans. Polls have it going back Democratic right now. But no one’s going to count those votes until the 6 ^th of November.

MR. COSTA: When you think about the Arizona makeup for the – are there other House races you’re paying attention to in the state?

MR. CONOVER: The race for the 1 ^st Congressional District is always an interesting one, because the district is so large it basically spans the entire eastern side of Arizona, going from a northern Tucson suburb all the way to the Utah border. And that northern Tucson suburb is more of a Republican area, but the district includes Flagstaff, Arizona, which is more of a Democratic area. It also includes multiple Native American reservations, including the Navajo Reservation. So that’s a very interesting district to watch. Tom O’Halleran, a Democrat, is the incumbent there. But this is his first reelection, and a very strong Trump supporter, Wendy Rogers, is trying to make a race of it. And that district is so large and so diverse, that is always an interesting one to watch. Interestingly, when Ann Kirkpatrick, the Democrat in the 2 ^nd Congressional District race, was last in Congress, that’s the district she represented.

MR. COSTA: Arizona is one of 36 states holding an election for governor. Incumbent Doug Ducey, a Republican, faces Democrat David Garcia. According to recent polling, Ducey has a comfy lead. And after Senator McCain’s death this fall, Governor Ducey appointed Jon Kyl to replace him. Kyl initially said he would stay through the end of this year, but he could also decide to stay until the next general election in 2020.

Dan, when you look at this governor’s race, a lot of these governors races – in Arizona and elsewhere – somewhat under the radar this year with President Trump, the referendum story.

MR. BALZ: It’s often the case, Bob, that when you have a midterm like this the focus is going to be on Washington and what happens with control of the House and Senate, particularly if they’re in – at risk for the party that holds them. But these governors races are enormously important. As you say, there are 36 of them. This is the year in which you elect governors. These governors races are important for several reasons. One is, the question of whether Democrats can begin to make up ground that they lost during the Obama presidency. They went from a majority of governors at the beginning of the Obama presidency down to today 16. They lost ground in state legislatures. They need to begin to make up that lost ground. So that’s one reason. We will see whether, particularly in the Midwest, there is some kind of a Democratic revival at the gubernatorial level.

They’re also important because these are the governors who will be in power in the next round of redistricting. And in a – in a time when Republicans have considerable control in state legislatures, if Democrats have governors they can then veto a map that they think is too Republican – the gerrymandered maps. So these races have great implications. They have some implications for the presidential election. It’s always better to have the governor if you’re the presidential nominee. But we’ve seen over the past that governors are not often able to really deliver their state in a presidential.

MR. COSTA: Christopher, final question. You think about Governor Ducey, famous for being an executive in the ice cream business, a businessman. What’s the issue that’s facing him, that’s perhaps a challenge for him as he looks to be reelected?

MR. CONOVER: The big issue coming into the election, especially around the time of the primary in late August, was education. Arizona was one of the states that had a teachers’ strike. And the governor ended up coming up with a plan with the legislature to give teachers a 19 percent raise over a number of years. And teachers at the time said, oh, we will be back in November. Of course, we’re going to have to wait and see if they actually show up at the ballot box. But David Garcia, the Democrat in this race, that was his issue. He was very much with the teachers and tries to keep bringing education back to Governor Ducey, painting him as someone who talks about education but really favors charter schools, and school vouchers, and not public education in the more traditional sense. But looking at the polls, it appears that that’s just not sticking.

MR. COSTA: Christopher, Dan, really appreciate you being here. That’s it for this edition of the Washington Week Podcast. You can listen on your favorite podcast app, or watch us online on the Washington Week website, or on YouTube. And be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

I’m Robert Costa. See you next time.

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