(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Arizona's Andy Biggs may be sitting in a district on the verge of becoming competitive [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']

Date: 2022-11-15

For those who don’t know, Biggs represents AZ-05, anchored in the heart of the East Valley—Mesa, Chandler, Queen Creek, and his hometown of Gilbert. It’s been in Republican hands for all but one term since 1953, and has been held by a long succession of Republican royalty. It’s best known to most of us as the district where John McCain and Jeff Flake began their careers on Capitol Hill before going to the Senate. Before then, it was the seat of John Jacob Rhodes, who was House Minority Leader during the worst of Watergate. According to The Washington Post, Rhodes’ public announcement that he would support impeaching Nixon cut the remaining ground out from under Nixon’s feet.

For most of the lifetimes of the majority of Kossacks, what is now AZ-05 (it was AZ-01 for most of the second half of the 20th century, then became AZ-06 from 2003 to 2013, and has been AZ-05 since 2013). has been an automatic deposit in the GOP’s bank account. By my reckoning, the Democrats have only put up one serious challenger in this district since McCain gave the seat up to run for the Senate in 1986. That was in 1992, when Sam Coppersmith essentially backed into the seat after three-term Republican Jay Rhodes (John’s son) was bogged down by ethics issues. Coppersmith gave up the seat to run for Senate in 1994, and got his head handed to him by Jon Kyl while Matt Salmon reverted the seat to its traditional Republican ways. From then through 2016, the Democrats only finished north of 40 percent in this district once—Flake’s initial run in 2000.

But it turns out that since 2016, the ground’s been slowly, but undeniably, shifting out from under the GOP in this district. My interest was first piqued on Sunday, when Garrett Archer of Phoenix ABC affiliate KNXV-TV posted one of his many exhaustive updates about the ballot count in Arizona. Archer revealed that most of the ballots that had yet to be counted at the time in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, were in areas that should have been friendly to Kari Lake.

x About 90k of the remaining 170k uncounted EVs are from the ruby red CDs 5, 8, and 9. Another 70k from purple CDs 1 and 4. https://t.co/AAijIbiNyF — The AZ - abc15 - Data Guru (@Garrett_Archer) November 13, 2022

So in other words, Lake’s only chance of overtaking Katie Hobbs was to run it up in the reddest areas of the Valley. But while peering into the guts of those numbers, I was surprised to see that Biggs had won a fourth term in the 5th with only 56 percent of the vote—the second-worst showing for a Republican in this district since the 1994 Republican wave, and the lowest since Flake’s 53 percent in 2000. Not what conventional wisdom would suggest in a district with a Cook Partisan Voting Index of R+11. Even more staggering, for the last two cycles, Biggs has been unable to get to 60 percent despite running against Democrats who raised almost no money. Greene only took in $356,000 while Ramos only raised $14,000—less than an independent also in the race.

It turns out that Biggs’ winning percentages have nosedived since his initial run for the seat in 2016. He won his first term with 64 percent of the vote. But since then, it’s been straight down—59 percent in 2018, 59 percent in 2020, and now 56 percent. As much ink has been spilled about Lake underperforming in redder areas of Phoenix, Biggs seems to have been underperforming for some time.

The trendline at the presidential level is more of the same. Mitt Romney won the 5th with 64 percent, but Donald Trump could only manage 58 percent in 2016 and 57 percent in 2020. What makes this all the more remarkable is that this district is the only purely suburban district in the Valley; it lost its share of Phoenix after the 2000 census.

Looking at the Daily Kos Elections numbers, there are a lot of parallels with another longstanding suburban Republican district, GA-11 in the northern Atlanta suburbs. It has a similar PVI, at R+12. But just like in AZ-05, the GOP’s performance at the presidential level has absolutely cratered in the Trump era. Romney won it with 65 percent, but Trump only got 60 percent in 2016 and 57 percent in 2020. As much ink has been spilled about the GOP tanking in the Atlanta suburbs, it looks like something similar could potentially play out in the East Valley.

Granted, it may be a few years down the road before this district is on the radar screen. But the Phoenix suburbs are undergoing a slow, but unmistakable, transition from red to blue—not unlike the Philadelphia suburbs in the 1990s, the Chicago suburbs in the early 2000s and the Atlanta suburbs now. As we all know, the Philly and Chicago suburbs are long gone for the GOP. With time and investment, we could potentially be poised to give one of the most odious members of the House some serious heartburn. And if we’re serious about expanding the map and spreading the GOP thin, it would be derelict not to do so.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/11/15/2136394/-Arizona-s-Andy-Biggs-may-be-sitting-in-a-district-on-the-verge-of-becoming-competitive

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/