Historic first: Not one Dem elected to statewide office

(PNI) Sorting through the election debris:

The failure of Democrats Paul Newman and Sandra Kennedy to be re-elected to the Arizona Corporation Commission has been largely overlooked. In fact, it marks an extraordinary historic event.

As a result, in 2013, for the first time in Arizona history, there will not be a single Democrat holding a statewide elected office.

Since 1912, there has always been at least one Democrat elected to statewide office -- U.S. senator, governor, secretary of state, attorney general, superintendent of public instruction, mining inspector or corporation commissioner. As of January, after 100 years, there will be none.

This may come as a shock to some Democrats, who are being told that demographic trends in Arizona are improving their electoral fortunes. The principal demographic trend supposedly doing that is an increase in Latino voters.

According to the national exit poll, Latinos in Arizona were 18 percent of the electorate this year. They overwhelmingly voted for Barack Obama over Mitt Romney, 74 percent to 25 percent. Yet, as of this writing, Romney was winning the state by 11 percentage points.

This isn't new. In 2010, the Latino vote also went overwhelming to the Democratic candidate for governor, Terry Goddard, over the Republican incumbent, Jan Brewer, 71 percent to 28 percent. Yet Brewer carried the state by 12 percentage points.

We've been inundated by press releases and news accounts about impressive efforts to register and turn out the Latino vote in Arizona. Yet Republican Jeff Flake will be Arizona's next U.S. senator and Joe Arpaio, who has been as much of a stimulus for Latino political activism as one human being could possibly be, was comfortably re-elected as sheriff.

The national situation may be different, although I suspect not nearly as much as the current hand-wringing assumes. But in Arizona, there is very little evidence that a surge in Latino voting is making the Democratic Party a more potent force.

In fact, just the opposite. The Democratic Party is a rapidly shrinking presence in Arizona politics.

Republicans have generally held steady in their voter-registration figures in the face of the true rising force in Arizona politics, the independent voter. Democrats have been hemorrhaging registrants.

For this presidential election, there were 69,000 fewer registered Democrats than there were in 2008. In 1998, Democrats had a registration advantage over Republicans in 12 of Arizona's 15 counties. Today, they have an advantage in just seven.

What leaves me dumbfounded is that Democratic leaders in Arizona seem completely unconcerned about this. They don't even acknowledge that the party has a problem that needs to be addressed.

If not having a single statewide elected Democrat for the first time in 100 years doesn't shake them out of their lethargy, probably nothing will.

The drop in Republican numbers in the Legislature is being taken as a sign of weakened electoral support. That's a misanalysis. Instead, it highlights how much Republicans overachieved in 2010.

In 2010, Republicans achieved a veto-proof Legislature, with 21 of 30 seats in the Senate and 40 of 60 seats in the House.

This turned out not to mean anything. There were not even any attempts to override a veto. When the governor is of your own party, things are worked out in different ways.

Having a veto-proof majority is highly unusual. In fact, since one-man, one-vote in the 1960s, it had never been achieved by either party in the Senate. It had happened only three times before in the House.

Republicans have a registration advantage in 17 of the 30 state legislative districts. So, the natural distribution of power is 17-13 in favor of Republicans in the Senate and 34 to 26 in the House.

It looks like that is exactly what the split will be in the Senate. No Senate candidate for either party successfully bucked a registration disadvantage.

There are still a lot of votes left to be counted, but at this writing, Republicans were leading for four House seats in which they have the registration disadvantage and Democrats in only one. In the House, Republicans will probably have 36 to 38 seats. That's outperforming their registration advantage and more seats than they had in either 2006 or 2008.

Perhaps I'm just deluding myself to keep from becoming too disillusioned with our democracy. But it seems to me that voters generally look past the clutter, garbage and crap the campaigns toss at them and decide elections on broad, important things.

In the presidential race, I think they did so again, but

on something that's missing from the national postelection analysis gabfest.

The exit poll suggests that Romney didn't make his case that he would be materially better on the economy or fixing the finances of the federal government than Barack Obama.

So, people were left with a lot of financial distress and anxiety in a sluggish economy with uncertain prospects.

Obama clearly stood for the proposition that government should be willing to help. Romney clearly stood for paring back what government does, except for the military.

Given the lack of belief that Romney would really improve the economy, swing voters didn't want to give up government as a source of potential help.

That and a potent ground game, I think, decided the election.

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Wisconsin's historic recall elections wrap up this week (Reuters)

By James B. Kelleher James B. Kelleher – Mon Aug 15, 12:55 pm ET

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Wisconsin's series of recall elections concludes on Tuesday when voters go to the polls in two state Senate districts where Democrats are being forced to defend their seats.

No matter who wins, Republican Governor Scott Walker and his Republican allies will retain control of the legislature, where the battle over public workers' union rights was waged earlier this year with public protests, legislative maneuvering and court challenges.

Republicans have managed to keep control of the state senate -- 17 to 16 at last count -- because Democrats failed to unseat three Republican state Senators in the key round of six GOP senate recalls last week. But Democrats did pick up two state Senate seats formerly held by Walker allies.

To many Wisconsin voters, especially Republicans, the special elections have been, as 70-year-old Wade Ellingson of Fond du Lac put it, "a waste of time and money."

Nevertheless, Tuesday's two final votes, like the seven before them, will be watched closely.

Two Democrats who opposed Walker's anti-union bill and even fled the state for weeks in an unsuccessful effort to prevent a quorum and delay passage -- Jim Holperin of Conover and Robert Wirch of Pleasant Prairie -- will be defending their seats.

"As always in Wisconsin politics, one has to give the incumbent an edge," said Mordecai Lee, governmental affairs professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

"It is likely the two Democratic incumbents will win their recalls -- but it is not a slam dunk," he said.

Holperin seems to be in the tighter race. His rival is Kim Simac, founder of the Northwoods Patriots, a Tea Party group.

Though Simac is a political novice, the district has leaned Republican in the three years since Holperin was elected.

READING THE TEA LEAVES?

Inside Wisconsin, Tuesday's votes will again be seen as a referendum on Walker's Republican policies since his election last year. It may also give Democrats who hope to recall Walker next year a sense how such an effort might turn out.

Outside the state, pundits will be seeking more clues to what 2012 holds in the national elections.

In Wisconsin, not only have Republicans kept control of the state Senate by the slimmest of margins, the limits they wanted to impose on public workers are now state law.

Walker fought for the curbs, which severely diluted union bargaining power and also make public workers pay more for healthcare and pensions, saying they were needed to help Wisconsin close a $3.6 billion budget deficit.

Democrats cried foul, pointing out that public workers already agreed to steep benefit cuts. They called the effort as union-busting, designed to hobble organized labor -- a major source of Democratic Party financing -- ahead of 2012.

The fight thrust Wisconsin into the national spotlight, igniting massive pro-union protests and political fights that led to the recall efforts against six Republicans who backed the union curbs and three Democrats who opposed them.

On Tuesday, analysts will be watching turnout carefully, since the key issue of senate control --- and a possible legislative block on Walker's conservative agenda -- is settled.

Analysts say Democrats may be less motivated to turn out to vote. Tea Party activists, meanwhile, appear more energized by the recent fight in Washington over the debt ceiling, seen as a clear victory for conservatives in the budget-cutting concessions agreed by President Obama and Democrats.

The nine Wisconsin recalls are historic. Until this summer, there had been only 20 state-level recall elections in the 235-year history of the United States.

Reflecting the national spotlight Wisconsin drew over the winter as Walker and his allies battled state Democrats, a tidal wave The money poured into the campaigns has been something for the record books, too.

Mike Buelow, research director for the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, estimates that candidates and outside groups spent as much as $37 million on the recalls.

That amount is "really astronomical for Wisconsin," he said -- more than double the amount spent on state legislative races last year when 116 seats -- not nine -- were up for grabs.

With the recalls acting as somewhat of a rehearsal for 2012, experts say the spending could be a harbinger of record outlays next year.

"This is the first major election of 2012," said Joseph Heim, political science professor at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, "and one of the things we saw here was huge amounts of money."

(Additional reporting by David Bailey and Mary Wisniewski, editing by Barbara Goldberg and Peter Bohan)

(The following story corrected the governor's name in second paragraph)

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