Tim Steller's column: Time to move on, as election results clear Arizona air

Democracy didn’t die.

The republic hasn’t crumbled.

And Arizona never needed saving in the first place, despite what a certain PAC said.

After all the existential dread of the long campaign leading up to Tuesday, there has been something comforting about the arrival of results, as inconclusive as they have been in some races.

I know I hit the wall a couple of weeks ago — could hardly bear to hear more ads, receive more texts, read more Tweets, learn of more polls, get more fundraising emails or think about the campaigns and the ramifications.

Now, maybe even the inconclusiveness is giving me comfort. Tucsonans, Arizonans, Americans — we cast our ballots, and the results have been ... mixed.

Republicans are winning some, Democrats are winning some. The results seem to show the voters taking care about which side they voted for in which race, considering the individual candidates, the wording of the initiatives, reflecting local flavor.

Take, for example, the ballot measures about our initiative powers, Propositions 128, 129 and 132. I opposed all three, reasoning they all limited voters powers in different ways, but Arizonans appear to have rejected one and approved two, though narrowly in the case of Prop. 132.

Or take the statewide races. Thousands of the same voters who cast ballots for Democrat Adrian Fontes for secretary of state also voted for Republican Kimberly Yee for state treasurer, giving her the biggest vote total in all the contested races.

So it goes.

Could it be that the country and the state are slowly leaving behind the hyper-polarization of the Trump era and feeling our way toward a less unhinged future? I hardly dare hope, but I do — a little.

After all, if people really believed that we needed to vote for Blake Masters to “save our country” — that the country’s very existence was at stake, as he argued — a lot more would have done it. Maybe people sniffed out the fact that those were not the real stakes, that he and others were hyping fear, and that other, more grounded issues were the ones they wanted to vote on.

Some of the same voters who turned down Masters also apparently rejected Democrats’ latest attempt to take either chamber of the state Legislature. That’s in part due to outcomes like the one in Legislative District 23, a huge district that goes from Yuma to Tucson’s southwest side.

Despite a Democratic voting advantage, Republican Michelle Pena took one of the House seats. That canceled out a possible Democratic victory in GOP-leaning Legislative District 16, where results have Democrat Keith Seaman eking out a possible win. The Democratic struggle for Legislative relevance continues.

So it goes.

Cano to be Dems’ leader

The leader of the Democratic caucus at the state Legislature will be a young Tucsonan, Andres Cano.

Barring a miracle for Democrats as results roll in, that means Cano will be House minority leader, rather than speaker, a position held by the leader of the majority party.

Cano, 30, is a graduate of City High School and Arizona State University — the first college graduate in his family. He worked for the late Pima County Supervisor Richard Elias for years before winning a House seat in 2018. He defeated Rep. Jennifer Longdon, of Phoenix, for the title.

After winning the position, he pointed to last year’s budget process as a pathway toward continued relevance for Democrats, who have occupied 29 of the body’s 60 seats for two sessions in a row. The Democrats’ platform will be based on that budget, he said,

“It shows the ability of Democrats at the Legislature to be the new normal,” he said.

Cano — who represents the West Side Legislative District 20, along with Alma Hernandez — said he hopes for more chances for bipartisan action this year and noted that it seems to be what voters are looking for.

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“Extremism on both sides does no good for Arizonans,” he said.

The significance of his role will also be highly dependent on who is governor. If Republican Kari Lake ends up winning the race, it could largely sideline Cano and the Dems. But if Democrat Katie Hobbs wins, Republicans will likely need Democratic input to pass legislation that Hobbs will sign.

The other leaders elected by Democrats Thursday were: Rep.-elect Lupe Contreras as assistant leader, Rep. Melody Hernandez and Rep. Marcelino Quiñonez co-whips. All three are from the Phoenix area.

Republican legislators were scheduled to elect their leaders over the weekend.

Hand-count carousel in Cochise

While fresh breezes are blowing through American politics, a dank miasma is trapped in Cochise County.

There, despite the fierce objections of the Republican county attorney and some residents, the two GOP members of the three-member Board of Supervisors have insisted on pursuing a large hand count of ballots.

Beginning in October, as mailed votes were already coming in, supervisors Peggy Judd and Tom Crosby first voted to approve an undefined but expanded hand count. Then they agreed to a limited hand count. Then the attorney general issued an opinion that said they could do a hand-count of all ballots, so they decided to do that after all.

Then a judge ordered them not to hand-count 100 percent of the ballots, saying it is against state law, so they briefly backed off those plans. But then they decided Wednesday to appeal that ruling. And on Thursday they had an ingenious idea — they could just hand-count 99.9 percent of the ballots, and they wouldn’t be violating the court order stopping them from counting all of them! But it all but are to an end Friday after the Arizona Court of Appeals refused to consider the county’s appeal.

All this happened as Peggy Judd, the supervisor from Willcox, gave embarrassing responses and justifications. For example, when Pima County Superior Court Judge Casey McGinley, hearing the case because of a conflict of interest with Cochise County judges, ruled against the full hand-count idea, concluding it was illegal, Judd responded this way, as reported by Shar Porier of the Sierra Vista Herald:

“What we intended to do was legal and if I can find the will in other key participants and way to do it, I will proceed. Pima County is our most liberal county in Arizona. It was in our judge’s DNA to side with the plaintiff. Our attorneys presented the best defense that could be had and we lost due to political bias.”

McGinley, by the way, was appointed by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey.

Judd also posted a fundraising appeal to GiveSendGo, the conservative-oriented version of GoFundMe, asking for donations to defray the legal costs that county taxpayers are accruing. As of Thursday, it had raised $10 of the $50,000 goal.

Looks like Cochise County taxpayers will be paying for this spasm of nonsense.

Take a break on polls

A lot of the political polls were wrong — again. Perhaps the worst example: A Fox 10/Insider Advantage poll, conducted Oct. 24-25. It found that Lake had a 54-43 advantage over Hobbs in the race for governor.

But perhaps the problem isn’t the polls themselves. They’re only as good as their assumptions and the sample they survey. They’re mostly useful to campaigns, so what do the rest of us need them for anyway? We eventually vote and find out the real result after all.

I tried to stop reporting on polls after the 2016 election.

They can be intriguing, but they’re brain candy. And as it gets harder to find people to answer surveys, it’s likely they’ll keep being wrong.

Tim Steller is an opinion columnist. A 25-year veteran of reporting and editing, he digs into issues and stories that matter in the Tucson area, reports the results and tells you his conclusions. Contact him at tsteller@tucson.com or 520-807-7789. On Twitter: @senyorreporter