How? Why? What now?
Breaking down what happened on November 5, and where we go from here
If you’re asking the questions above, this post is for you.
Welcome. Pull up a chair. We’ll break the situation down into understandable components, then recommend action items that help move us forward. It’s what CEBV has always done. No sugarcoating: we’ll explain the new landscape we are facing, as clearly as possible, and describe where we believe we must go from here.
First, the state legislature. We all expected that we would be ridding ourselves of our current extremist majority in one or both chambers. But…
Losses
Not only did Democrats not pick up seats in districts like LD23 and LD27, they failed to retain several must-keep districts:
LD2 Senate, Judy Schwiebert
LD4 Senate, Christine Marsh
LD4 House, Kelli Butler
LD13 House, Brandy Reese
LD16 House, Keith Seaman
There are lots of ballots remaining to be counted (roughly 378,000 statewide as of Sunday evening), but our hopes that continued counting and ballot curing will narrow these losses are becoming more and more remote. The numbers are swinging a little further away with each drop, and the gulf is becoming too wide to overcome.
Gains
House: Kevin Volk, LD17
This gain is wonderful (hooray LD17 for picking up this seat!!) — but is not enough to offset the other losses and does not alter the balance of power in either chamber. We now expect to face a 33-27 House, which is a net loss of two seats. To be quite frank, given the national landscape, it’s a miracle we didn’t backslide further than this. More on that later.
Another potential gain, a race that’s currently too close to call, is John McLean for LD17 Senate. (This is a race near and dear to our hearts: McLean publicly thanks CEBV for “opening his eyes to how much of our day-to-day freedoms are governed at the state level” and for motivating him to run for office.) If McLean holds this seat, we will continue to face a 16-14 Republican Senate; if not, we’ll backslide to 17-13.
Why?
This is the first question on many of our minds — how on earth could this catastrophe have happened? — and it is going to be debated endlessly. Right now, that is largely not helpful. But I want to touch on a few things.
A national loss. This is not just an Arizona thing. On average nationally, we saw a six-point shift in Republicans' direction. That is a shift too large to be attributed to any one single decision or campaign strategy.
Alternative facts. The fragmented American information landscape and the rise of “alternative media” is driving this horrific bus. (Will Stancil breaks that down nicely here.) This new landscape has trapped many Americans in an information bubble that focuses on outrage, hate, and simplistic, impractical solutions, making them increasingly uninformed and easily manipulated. We will have to address this if we hope to stop our national slide into fascism and pull our society out of the dark days to come.
But that’s not what we’re here to talk about today.
Time to heal. It is not only okay to take time to grieve, it is essential. Do things that bring you joy and fill your cups for the many battles to come. Rest, so you can emerge ready to fight. We will need you come January.
"Maybe hope can be found in a self-care practice. Hope sinks into my skin with the sunscreen-enhanced facial moisturizer and I’m ready to step outside again. Taking time out to rest and reflect allows me to feel ready for the next task and enter it with the hope of making a difference." — Karie Charlton
What now?
The rise of fascism. We will continue to face not just a Republican-led legislature, but one that has lurched even farther into fascism. With election denier Shawnna Bolick replacing community leader Judy Schwiebert, book banner Carine Werner replacing educator Christine Marsh, and MAGA extremist Julie Willoughby winning over scientist Brandy Reese, we can expect to see even fewer bills that actually address the issues our communities are facing, and basically zero solutions on issues like school funding and vouchers, transportation, and water.
Do not cede power to extremists. I’m all the more thankful that we have Gov. Katie Hobbs as our common-sense backstop. But as ever, the legislature must complete its one constitutionally mandated task: a state budget. And Gov. Hobbs has a history of working against her own caucus to cede power to extremists. Over the past two years, she’s failed to insist on reining in unaccountable ESA vouchers, crafted a 2023 budget “compromise” that spent every cent of Arizona’s $2 billion surplus and a 2024 budget “compromise” that slashed funding for roads and public universities, and greenlighted a legally questionable sweep of federal opioid dollars to backfill state coffers emptied by those “compromises.”
Holding allies accountable. Our job will be to remind her of our expectations and that she must not compromise with MAGA extremists any further than absolutely necessary. She is already laser-focused on her 2026 re-election run, and likely will face a primary race. She cannot make decisions that cause her to lose support from her base (hi) and still win.
The federal level
Obviously we lost the White House. We also lost the Senate, which means continued confirmation of extremist judges, in effect stacking the courts with no check on that power.
Aggressive harms. We must take the incoming administration at its word and prepare to push back against a Project 2025 administration. We can expect this administration to come roaring out of the gate on January 20 by aggressively attacking immigrant and minority communities, imposing destructive tariffs that spiral inflation, dismantling climate protections and the Department of Education, and issuing executive orders that harm our collective future.
Judicial landscape. Checks and balances still exist, but they are evaporating. There are fewer checks on Trump’s power now than in 2016. He once again has the Senate, but he now also has the courts. Trump left the White House in 2021 having appointed more than 200 federal judges, including nearly as many powerful appeals judges in 4 years as Barack Obama appointed in 8. It’s unknown if Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor (70), a lifelong diabetic, can hang on for four more years. And it’s widely expected that new justices will replace far-right firebrands Alito (74) and Thomas (76), ushering in a racist, misogynist and anti-democratic supermajority that could rule for decades to come.
Reproductive rights. Passing Prop 139 was a huge victory, but I am worried about its future — these are state-level protections that can be overridden by a federal ban on abortion.
Bright spots
Arizona outperformed. Thanks in large part to our incredible ground game and extraordinarily dedicated voter outreach efforts, Arizona swung less far to the right than other states nationwide. Our efforts absolutely made a difference.
There was a time in Arizona not too long ago when Republicans held a state legislative supermajority, meaning they could override the governor’s veto and effectively do whatever they wanted. At that time, Arizona's 9 (nine!!) Democratic senators called themselves the “one-pizza caucus” because they could basically feed their entire caucus with a single pizza.
How far we have come since then! Despite Republican gains this year, it looks like Democrats are going to hold onto Arizona’s Senate seat, might pick up a seat in the House, and the state Legislature will remain basically the same. We continue to outperform what's happening in other parts of the country, and that is due in large part to the hard work of dedicated volunteers like you who did the hard work of organizing, knocking doors, making phone calls and talking to their neighbors.
Proposition wins. Arizonans not only wrote reproductive rights into our state Constitution, but also uniformly rejected Republican legislators' partisan power grabs. Voters refused to cede our constitutional rights to citizen initiative and judicial retention, spurned a measure to rob tipped workers, and stomped down attempts to tilt the balance of power from gubernatorial to legislative. (Rejecting these measures, but continuing to support the very lawmakers that created and promoted them, is yet another sign of the effect media fragmentation and rampant disinformation has on Arizona voters.) As for the harmful ballot measures that did pass, anti-immigrant Prop 314 is still patently unconstitutional, and we can expect further lawsuits to that effect.
School board wins. On the local level, common-sense candidates prevailed on school boards such as Kyrene, Paradise Valley and Scottsdale. In an era of book bans and attacks on minority communities, these wins will help keep children in those districts safe. The focus on local issues also undoubtedly helped Democrats outperform and hold seats as compared to the national map.
Potential US House win. There is a chance as of this writing that Democrats can retain the US House. There are 12 uncalled House seats. To gain control, Republicans need 6 of those. Seats in play include Engel vs Ciscomani in CD6. Control of that seat keeps flipping back and forth as votes are counted; on Friday, Engel led by just 209 votes, but by Sunday evening, the seat had flipped, with Ciscomani leading by 2,092. And in fact, control of the House may come down to AZ-6. Retaining the House would keep MAGA from unchecked power, preventing them from repealing the Affordable Care Act and so many other harmful actions possible in a trifecta. The House also holds some investigatory and subpoena powers which will undoubtedly be needed to check the excesses of the upcoming administration.
Looking forward. The 2026 Senate map is much more favorable to Democrats, so no matter what happens with the House, Trump can expect 2 years of power, not 4 — and he will have to answer to voters for the chaos he will wreak. History is on our side here. The party of the incumbent president tends to lose ground during midterm elections. Since World War II, the president's party has lost an average of 26 seats in the House, and an average of four seats in the Senate, in each midterm.
“If Trump wins, it’s a nightmare map,” one senior Republican aide said. (source)
Two and he's through. As of the day he takes power, Trump will be a lame-duck president. He cannot run again. The US Constitution is very clear on this subject.
The takeaway
Do not obey in advance. Part of the fascist playbook is claiming powers they do not have and succeeding because people preemptively surrender those powers to them. The fascists are counting on us giving up on ourselves, our work, our values, and each other. They want to weaponize our despair against us, and it is incredibly important that we do not allow them to do that.
“Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.” — Timothy Snyder, "On Tyranny"
Of course Trump would love to be a dictator, but that is not how American government works. We still live in a representative democracy — and we must not do the fascists' work for them by giving power to Trump that he does not have.
I highly suggest you read “10 ways to be prepared and grounded now that Trump has won.” It will help you to sidestep the fear, isolation, exhaustion and disorientation, and feel prepared to take effective action.
We’ve got dark days ahead. But we’ve still got the truth — and each other.
To those feeling despair: I understand. But remember, every step toward progress in American history came after the darkness of defeat. Abolitionists, suffragettes, Dreamers, and marchers for civil rights and marriage equality all faced impossible odds, but they persisted. Now it is our turn to pull up our socks and get back in the fight. — Elizabeth Warren
