Having studied AZ politics of late...
The state is split between GOP and Dem, with GOP slightly in the lead ONLY because the Latino vote (I mean legal, citizen votes) is under-represented. Basically there are two AZ Democratic parties, a white one and a Latino one, and...they sometimes come in conflict, sometimes blend well. And the Latino one is badly broken. It's run by a few patriarchs like Grijalva who sometimes stomp on any up-and-coming Latino politicians so as to remain "big fish in a small pond".
You also have to remember that AZ Dems are *nothing* like their California cousins. There's a lot of reasons for that but upshot is, the average AZ Dem is more likely to be a gunnie than the average California Republican
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The California Democratic party is much more "top down authoritarian" than the AZ variant. I'm starting to think the "clean elections" process in AZ has something to do with it. While my Libertarian brain rebels against state-funded elections, I have to admit that with candidates winning with less money, the lower-level candidates are less beholden to the higher-level.
Classic example: in California, Dem politicians who are in "untouchable seats" such as San Francisco can take all sorts of "tainted money" (as their own people see it) without repercussions. Ever wonder why Willie Brown was speaker for, what, 26 years? He would take in all sorts of money from timber, big tobacco and the like and re-distribute it to more desperate Dems. The lower-level Dems could then say "Oh no, I'd NEVER take money from the [whatever] lobby!" - they'd just get it from Willie. And then unless they wanted the tap cut off, they did what Willie's bidding. He ended up owning over half the legislature.
That's not happening in AZ near as much. So it's much more raucous on both sides. The Dems squabble amongst themselves while the state GOP has been basically taken over by a mixed Minuteman/Christian-Coalition tag team that's somewhat "out there" by national standards.
Kinda cool if you don't WANT gov't as a smoothly oiled machine. It's more of a glorious mess. County board of supervisors members in Pima and Maricopa Counties are considered MORE powerful than state legislators...who only serve four months out of the year, are paid a relative pittance and don't have any staffers(!).
Against this backdrop, Janet doesn't want to alienate the gunnie vote - which is pretty significant within BOTH parties.
It's pretty damn cool, y'know?