Templar: Nerves kick in for GOP

Once the dust had cleared a little bit from Tuesday's election, Arizona Republicans looked around and could say, surprisingly, they came out ahead. At the same time, Democrat insiders were asking themselves how they could have fallen so short of their own expectations.

Read Le Templar's blog, 'What I Know'

Sure, Barack Obama is the president-elect instead of home-state favorite John McCain. Democrats will hold a majority of the state's seats in the U.S. House for the first time since 1966. And Democrats are poised to take control of the Arizona Corporation Commission, the only statewide races on this year's election ballot.

But Democratic victories stopped right there. Arizona saw none of the sweeping turn to "blue" politics that struck other traditionally Republican or "red" states last week. Republicans gained ground in the state Legislature and in Maricopa County - where more than half of Arizona's voters live - GOP stalwarts such as Sheriff Joe Arpaio and County Attorney Andrew Thomas handily won re-election.

Democratic Party leaders now claim to be comfortable with Tuesday's outcome, saying they faced tough odds in wresting away control of the Legislature or the Maricopa County Courthouse. But at least a few activists admitted to the teeth-gnashing that's going on behind closed doors.

"You get down to the state level, that's much less thrilling," said Todd Landfried of Gilbert, a former leader of the county Democratic Party who consulted on several campaigns this year. "In an election year where Democrats clearly should have done better, we actually lost seats in the Legislature.

"I think more people expected huge coattails from the top (of the ballot). I don't think we got them."

Just how good was it for Republicans? Democrats had expected to build momentum toward 2010, when McCain's Senate seat will up for election along with most state offices. The Democratic Party essentially predicted it would take over the state House, and insiders were seriously looking to knock off Thomas and possibly one of the four Republicans on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.

The Democrats' strategy was to take advantage of a serious schism between state Republican Party chairman Randy Pullen and Arizona's two U.S. senators, which dried up the fundraising that normally pays for additional support for GOP candidates and get-out-the-vote efforts. Democrats raised somewhere around $2 million and threw much of that into independent advertising against Republican officeholders.

In hindsight, most of that money was wasted. The only incumbents to face defeat last week were Democrats, including two lawmakers from legislative districts in the West Valley and southwest Arizona and Scottsdale Mayor Mary Manross. Republicans gained at least two seats in the state House for a 35-25 advantage, and likely added one seat in the Senate for a 18-12 edge.

Greg Patterson of Scottsdale, one of the state's more influential conservative political bloggers (espressopundit.com), predicted months ago that Republican candidates would do far better than even party leaders were privately expecting. His basic point: Democrats were vainly overconfident about the appeal of their message to Republican voters, and unusual circumstances behind a brief "blue" surge in 2006 have largely evaporated.

"To me, Arizona is much more red than it was when I first got into politics in 1990," said Patterson, a former state lawmaker who was elected last week to the board for Maricopa County's public health system.

Another factor was Arizona's shocking low voter turnout, perhaps the smallest percentage of registered voters in more than 30 years. Bruce Merrill, Arizona State University's veteran political pollster, said another fault in the Democrats' strategy was signing up a new flock of young and minority voters but failing to get them to the polls.

"It's the same thing for the Democrats that's happened over and over and over in Arizona," Merrill told Capitol Media Services. "There were large numbers of Hispanics that were registered. But the Hispanics simply did not vote in the percentage you would have expected them to vote."

Still, a lot of Republicans are nervous as they look ahead to 2010.

"I think Arizona was saved somewhat from a Democratic tidal wave that the state would have had, had John McCain not been at the top of the ticket," said Jason Rose, a Scottsdale political strategist whose firm provided publicity for the campaigns of Arpaio and Thomas. "I don't think there's any question that Arizona is becoming a firmly purple state. As much as I would like to see it as solidly red, I don't think you can say that with any credibility."

On the other hand, Janet Napolitano is widely expected to resign as governor sometime in the next few months to take a position in the Obama administration. If she does leave, Republican Jan Brewer would move up from the secretary of state's office.

That would significantly change Arizona's political dynamic, as Napolitano's personal popularity and the influence she wields from the governor's office has been critical to thwarting Republican agendas while boosting the Democratic Party's efforts to raise cash and attract viable candidates for other offices.

"With Janet Napolitano gone and Jan Brewer as governor, what's going to keep anything bizarre from happening?" Landfried said.