POLITICO.com
PHOENIX, Ariz. -- President Barack Obama and his party have a modest plan for contesting Arizona in 2012: speeding up time.
Not literally, of course, but Democrats are actively targeting the state this cycle with a push they hope will eventually convert Arizona to permanent swing-state status and test the GOP's appeal up and down the ballot.
The idea is to accelerate a transition in Arizona that's already taken hold throughout the West, as the rapidly growing ranks of Hispanic and independent voters have turned once-conservative-leaning states such as Colorado and Nevada firmly purple.
Strategists in both parties say it's uncertain whether Arizona is changing quickly enough to make it a genuine battleground in 2012 -- or anytime soon. The task of competing here looks especially daunting for a president who has clashed repeatedly with local Republicans, and whose Justice Department has sued the state over its restrictive immigration law. Most Republicans think their opponents are chasing a mirage in the desert.
But if they can fire up Latino voters, bring new registrants into the political process and take advantages of state-level miscalculations by the GOP, Democrats are hopeful that they can at least win back some of the territory they lost in the 2010 conservative landslide.
"All the elements are in place for Arizona to be a competitive state. Demographically, historically, all the pieces are lining up," said Andrei Cherny, a former state Democratic Party chairman now running for Congress. "You need to have an appeal that reaches past party lines and motivates and excites independents. I think that can be done, even on a presidential level."
Democratic state Rep. Ruben Gallego predicted that in a presidential year, Latino voters who sat out the 2010 campaign and who gave native-son presidential candidate John McCain a respectable showing in 2008, would come out in force for Obama.
"Time is moving this way, but what's also happening is the Latino community is becoming more active," he said. "The Republican brand is very damaged among the Latino community in Arizona."
Longtime Republican presidential strategist Charlie Black said he doubted Democrats would be viable in Arizona in 2012. Over a longer political timeline, he explained, the political prognosis is different.
"With the growth of the Latino vote and if Republicans don't get back to being more competitive in the Hispanic community, yeah, Arizona will be a competitive state up and down the ballot," said Black, a top adviser to McCain's 2008 bid. "But people in the West, including Arizona, have a sort of libertarian orientation. They don't much like the federal government and they don't like 'Obamacare,' telling religious voters what to do."
The state's conservative history has been alive and well in recent cycles: Arizona has routinely gone for Republican presidential candidates, handing GOP nominees 50 percent-plus totals in every election since 1996. Republicans control the governor's office, both chambers of the Legislature, both Senate seats and a majority of the congressional delegation.
And yet, the Obama campaign and other national Democrats have insistently signaled that they aim to compete here. The president's team outlined one possible route to reelection that involves strengthening the party's performance here and throughout the West -- potentially offsetting Democratic losses in states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Obama has already opened offices in Phoenix, Tucson and Flagstaff, and plans to open a fourth in Glendale soon, according to a campaign official. As of Wednesday, Obama for America's Arizona staff and volunteers had more than 237 phone banks and 439 voter registration events, the official said.
Democrats have geared up for this year's Senate race, with Obama helping recruit former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona -- a George W. Bush appointee - for the open-seat contest to replace GOP Sen. Jon Kyl. Encouraged by newly drawn congressional maps, the party is hoping to recapture several of the House seats it won in the 2006 anti-Bush landslide and then lost in 2010.
Mahen Gunaratna, the Obama campaign's spokesman for Arizona and New Mexico, said the president's team is "confident we can be competitive in Arizona," emphasizing the potential impact of the Latino vote in a race against "a Republican field whose leading candidates oppose the DREAM Act, even calling it a 'handout,' as well as opposing a path to citizenship for immigrants."
Even Democratic strategists who are upbeat about the party's Arizona prospects suggest that they may fare better down-ballot -- in state and congressional races -- than in the presidential election, with an incumbent tied to a weak economy.
Jill Hanauer -- president of Project New America, the group formerly known as Project New West -- said it's part of the "Western tradition" to engage in split-ticket voting and support maverick members of both parties, such as McCain and Janet Napolitano, Arizona's former Democratic governor.
"I think voters in Arizona are going to be very intentional and do a lot of sorting," she said. "I think Arizona, both short term and long term, is really primed to be what Colorado is now, which is a solidly purple state that favors moderate, mainstream Democrats over Republicans."
On top of long-term trends that ought to make the state more hospitable to Democrats, Arizona has been buffeted since 2008 by a series of political crises and controversies that inject a major dose of uncertainty into the mix for both parties.
The national uproar over Arizona's immigration law -- known as S.B. 1070 -- was the first in a cascading sequence of local political crises, including a federal investigation of firebrand conservative Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a recall election that ousted state Senate President Russell Pearce and, most prominently, the January 2011 shooting of Democratic then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
What has remained constant throughout is much of the state's resentment against the federal government for its immigration lawsuit -- it's now headed for a ruling in the Supreme Court after portions were blocked by lower tribunals -- and the steady growth of the Latino population.
There's no question that population growth looks like a boon to Democrats. Between 2000 and 2010, Latinos went from 25.3 percent of Arizona residents to 29.6 percent, with that percentage markedly higher among younger Arizonans. A Democratic official said that over 111,000 people with Hispanic last names have registered to vote since 2008, and that 80,000 Hispanic voters who participated in 2008 took a pass on the 2010 campaign -- giving the party room to expand this year.
Republicans remain intensely skeptical -- verging on scornful -- of Democratic claims that this demographic shift will be enough to put Arizona in play this year or in the immediate future. To them, the prospect of Arizona-as-swing state looks about as plausible as the short-lived George W. Bush-era fantasy of turning California red.
Republican National Committee political director Rick Wiley issued a memo late last year essentially dismissing the Obama campaign's Arizona chatter as a flight of fancy and said this week he still doesn't "see a scenario" where a president with middling approval numbers can mount a real fight for the state.
"With the gains we had in '10, this is an entirely red state right now," Wiley said. "I think you're looking at a decade, at least, before they can get close in some of these congressional districts."
Though there's some evidence that Republicans are paying a price for their policies on immigration and other divisive policy debates, there's little indication so far that the alternative voters want is a Democrat. When they booted Pearce, the polarizing author of S.B. 1070, they voted in another Republican -- now-state Sen. Jerry Lewis.
And while state and national Democrats have scored points off flamboyant conservatives like Pearce and Arpaio, the party's 2012 ticket is likely to be headed by two more inoffensive candidates: Mitt Romney and Rep. Jeff Flake, who is running for Senate.
That doesn't mean that the GOP isn't taking some steps to prepare for a Democratic push here -- even if it's one viewed as doomed from the start.
At the Republican National Committee's winter meeting in New Orleans, Wiley said the Arizona GOP was asked to take part in an exercise that other 2012 battleground states participated in last year, sizing up their state as a potential target and taking "a long, hard look at why [Obama] can't win."
"I just wanted to put the Arizona party on notice," Wiley explained, calling it a matter of "diligence."
The amount of preparation necessary for the state GOP will depend on how much actual money and national attention Democrats end up devoting to the state -- X factors that are unknowable this far out in the cycle. While Obama visited Arizona only last month, his time and resources will be scarcer by the fall.
"If the Obama people choose to run a serious campaign in the state, we'll have to run a serious campaign," said Black. "But let me put it this way: they will run about 4 or 5 points behind their national median in Arizona. So it won't be a state they'll need to get."
What's more, the president's presence may or may not be an asset to candidates running down-ballot and seeking to appeal to Arizona's independent streak.
That makes for something of a balancing act for candidates like Carmona, who's offering himself to voters in the Senate race as a "centrist and moderate" challenging a state GOP that's perceived as "too radical."
"The average person is just looking for somebody -- more or less any person -- who will do something rather than blaming the other side," he said. "The thing I hear most is, they just want some leadership. 'Somebody solve the damn problem.'"
As for whether that anti-politician mantle would leave room for, say, campaigning with Obama, Carmona was non-committal.
"I haven't even thought about that, to tell you the truth. I know Arizona is one of 50 for him and Arizona is my Number One focus," he said. "I'm certainly happy to have the conversation, but my focus is on my campaign and the issues that I think are important to Arizona."
Tim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow Tim Graham on Twitter.