Arizona’s top court ruled that a strict 160-year-old ban on abortion may be enforced.
“the government of today has no right telling us how to live our lives, because the government of 200 years ago already did!”
Cynically, while being terrible in the short term, this may be a long term, positive outcome. Arizona is going to be an important state, electorally, for the 2024 Election. It’s one of the few States which can reasonably be called a “toss-up”. While it has been trending Democratic in the last few elections, that is not a guaranteed outcome. However, a total abortion ban and a ballot initiative to fix it may be really good at driving Democratic and Democratic Leaning voters to the poll. While there, they could well hand the State’s 11 Electoral Votes to Biden as well as sending a Democrat to the US Senate. This is why:
Some Arizona Republicans also expressed concerns about the ruling.
Kari Lake, a close ally of Donald Trump and a Republican candidate for the state’s seat in the US Senate, said she opposed the decision.Polling has her just about tied with the Democratic candidate (Ruben Gallego). Anything which increases Democratic turnout is bad for her.
reporting in from Pima County, AZ:
We’re generally just shy here in Pima County of a 60/40 democratic lean. On the ground it feels like more and more people from Cali are moving in and voting blue all the way down ballot. Biden himself isn’t very popular, but the Democratic policies are however very popular. I’m in my 30s, and nearly 60% of the people I know are voting blue, with people in Phoenix seemingly trending more blue since 2020. A down ballot abortion issue (it looks like it’ll make the ballot in November) will absolutely cause a surge that will push the election over the edge as I know how pro-abortion most people are here. The Democratic Party here is running canvassing and getting people involved; I feel cautiously optimistic about us going blue again this cycle.
