How the progressive Arizona of the 1900s morphed into Tea Party Arizona: A history

Good morn­ing from Phoenix! Our live cov­er­age of Net­roots Nation con­tin­ues all day today, the mid­dle day of the con­ven­tion. The first activ­i­ties today are break­out ses­sions, and I’ve decid­ed to attend How Pro­gres­sive Ari­zona Became Tea Par­ty Ari­zona. The syn­op­sis of this pan­el is as follows:

Ari­zona entered the Union in 1912 as a pro­gres­sive state, enshrin­ing in its Con­sti­tu­tion cit­i­zen pow­er over elect­ed offi­cials in at least three major ways: ini­tia­tive, ref­er­en­dum and recall.

All have been used repeat­ed­ly to enact pub­lic pol­i­cy, recent­ly, for exam­ple, in the his­toric recall of Rus­sell Pearce. Unions have his­tor­i­cal­ly been robust in the state and still are today. Yet all statewide elect­ed offi­cials today are Repub­li­can, and the state leg­is­la­ture is over­run with Tea Par­ty con­ser­v­a­tives. How did this hap­pen? And more impor­tant­ly, what can be done to revi­tal­ize and re-empow­er pro­gres­sives and pro­gres­sive policy?

The pan­el’s mod­er­a­tor is Joel Wright. Pan­elists include for­mer State Sen­a­tor Alfre­do Gutier­rez, Hei­di Osse­laer, Dan Shilling, and Pacif­ic North­west trans­plant Jon Tal­ton (who writes on eco­nom­ics for The Seat­tle Times) .

Dan Shilling kicked off the dis­cus­sion for us by pro­vid­ing a thor­ough overview of Ari­zon­a’s his­to­ry. He began his remarks with the obser­va­tion that Ari­zona has been a home to human beings for thou­sands of years, despite being the youngest of the low­er forty-eight states. Twen­ty-two tribes still endure today in Ari­zona, and the Hopi and Nava­jo Nations are among the first peo­ples with the largest reservations.

Ari­zon­a’s econ­o­my has been shaped sig­nif­i­cant­ly by indus­tries like agri­cul­ture and min­ing. It also ben­e­fit­ed from the Unit­ed States’ entry into World Wars I and II. Its infra­struc­ture and devel­op­ment were made pos­si­ble by the peo­ple of the Unit­ed States (think Hoover Dam, Grand Canyon Nation­al Park, Cen­tral Ari­zona Project).

In the words of Shilling: “The state could not exist with­out fed­er­al largesse.”

Hei­di Osse­laer fol­lowed Shilling, and gave us an excel­lent primer on the his­to­ry of women in pol­i­tics in Ari­zona. For decades at the turn of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, pol­i­tics in Ari­zona (as else­where) was con­sid­ered by men to be the domain of men, and women were not open­ly wel­come in either the Demo­c­ra­t­ic of Repub­li­can par­ties. As a con­se­quence, women got orga­nized through wom­en’s clubs. They worked for caus­es like suf­frage, an end to child labor, and Prohibition.

But a lot has changed between then and now.

In the 1990s, Ari­zona made his­to­ry by elect­ing five women to the high­est offices in Ari­zona (gov­er­nor, sec­re­tary of state, attor­ney gen­er­al, trea­sur­er, and super­in­ten­dent of pub­lic instruc­tion). Pri­or to the inau­gu­ra­tion of cur­rent Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor Doug Ducey, Ari­zona had had a suc­ces­sion of three women gov­er­nors: Jane Dee Hull, Janet Napoli­tano, and Jan Brewer.

Seat­tle Times colum­nist Jon Tal­ton, an Ari­zona native, was the next to speak. Echo­ing and expand­ing on Dan’s com­ments, he reit­er­at­ed that Ari­zona entered the Union dur­ing the midst of Pro­gres­sive Era, with a Con­sti­tu­tion that pro­vid­ed for the ini­tia­tive, the ref­er­en­dum, and the recall. Unique­ly, Ari­zon­a’s Con­sti­tu­tion also cre­at­ed an elect­ed body called the Cor­po­ra­tions Com­mis­sion, which is charged with reg­u­lat­ing most pub­licly-owned cor­po­ra­tions with­in the state.

Tal­ton remind­ed the audi­ence that the Pro­gres­sives of the 1900s were from a dif­fer­ent time, and did not hold all of the beliefs and prin­ci­ples that pro­gres­sives of today do (though the val­ues they believed in are the same val­ues we believe in).

In the ear­ly decades of state­hood, Ari­zona was most­ly rur­al, and run by Democ­rats. Demo­c­ra­t­ic hege­mo­ny last­ed through the Depres­sion and World War II, but began to be more com­pet­i­tive dur­ing Har­ry Tru­man’s pres­i­den­cy, in part due to Tru­man’s unpop­u­lar­i­ty. It was dur­ing Tru­man’s last year as pres­i­dent that the state elect­ed lib­er­tar­i­an con­ser­v­a­tive Bar­ry M. Gold­wa­ter, turn­ing out long­time U.S. Sen­ate Major­i­ty leader Ernest McFar­land by a nar­row margin.

Alfre­do Gutier­rez was the last pan­elist to speak, and focused on the emer­gence of Ari­zon­a’s major cities and sub­urbs as the cen­ters of pop­u­la­tion and polit­i­cal pow­er. Prag­mat­ic Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans from urban areas used to work togeth­er, once upon a time, to devel­op insti­tu­tions like Ari­zona State Uni­ver­si­ty, he said.

But those days are over. The Ari­zona Repub­li­cans of the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry are an extreme, mil­i­tant, xeno­pho­bic par­ty whose mem­bers are impos­si­ble to work with… the kind of Repub­li­cans who think Joe Arpaio and Don­ald Trump walk on water.

“We have always been a south­ern state,” Gutier­rez observed.

The pan­el wrapped up by tak­ing a few ques­tions from the audi­ence. Most of the ques­tions con­cerned points raised by pan­elists ear­li­er in the discussion.

The chief con­cern of the pan­el and audi­ence mem­bers is the weak­ness of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty in Ari­zona. Repub­li­cans have con­trol of statewide offices and also the Leg­is­la­ture, which has result­ed in many bad poli­cies get­ting enact­ed, with Sb 1070 being the most famous example.

Our move­ment has not done a good job of orga­niz­ing new Amer­i­cans and get­ting them out to the polls, which is per­haps the most impor­tant rea­son why Repub­li­cans con­tin­ue to win elec­tions in Ari­zona despite hav­ing anti-immi­grant views.

“The peo­ple who tend to vote in Ari­zona are old white Ang­los,” Tal­ton point­ed out.

“Democ­rats do not have a chance unless you have an Ari­zona Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty that fig­ures out a way to stand up and fight,” he added, to enthu­si­as­tic applause.