Arizona, the center of anti immigrant legislation, and arguably the ‘looniest” state in America, at least according to Bill Maher, is ripe for pickup by the Democratic Party and Barack Obama in the Presidential campaign of 2012.
Yes, it is true that the legislature is overwhelmingly Republican, and that both Senators (John McCain and Jon Kyl) are Republicans, and that the majority of the House delegation is Republican, and that Governor Jan Brewer is Republican, but yet with the growing Hispanic and Latino population, now about 30 percent, it looks as if Arizona is, over time, going to go the way of California, New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado and vote Democratic.
Even Texas in the future, certainly by 2020, is likely to tip Democratic as long as the GOP continues its nativist mentality toward immigrants.
No one is saying that Obama will win Arizona, but there is a good chance that he could, and even if he does not, Arizona is likely to be a closer race than it was in 2008, when an Arizona Senator named John McCain won his home state, but not by as much as one would have thought (about 8.5 percentage points of the vote and 196,000 popular votes).