Arizona finds new primary influence

TUCSON -- Suddenly, Maggie Galston's opinion matters. She knows this because big-time presidential contenders have come to her low-slung, mountain-ringed city to woo people just like her. Also, her customers want to talk about how she is going to vote in the Democratic primary. A lot.

"I'm thrilled," said Galston, 33, sitting behind the counter at her bookstore recently. "It's water-cooler talk. I've been voting since I was 18, and nobody ever asked me who I was voting for in a primary before. It's a thrill to be a factor."

Arizona has not been a factor in the Democratic presidential nomination -- has not even had a state-run Democratic primary -- before. But this year, thanks to a compressed primary calendar and a Democratic governor, the state will be holding its Democratic primary on Feb. 3, along with South Carolina, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, North Dakota, and Delaware.

The Feb. 3 states offer winning candidates proof of national appeal, and a total of 269 delegates. So they are being courted with an energy hitherto reserved for early voting states Iowa and New Hampshire, or for delegate-rich behemoths like Michigan and California. And voters are more engaged in the primary race than political veterans can ever remember.

A win in Arizona, the first Western primary, with its 55 delegates and its large populations of Hispanic voters and veterans, could boost those hoping to get between Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts and the nomination.

"After you've been in the wasteland for so long, this is like coming upon an oasis," said Democratic political consultant Barry Dill. "It has helped party fund-raising, it has helped the typical Arizona Democrat's positive outlook toward the future, and it has brought a great deal of energy."

Party officials in Feb. 3 states are hoping their sudden importance to the process, and their voters' enthusiasm for the Democratic candidates, will stick at least until November.

"That's what's so great about this primary," said Dick Harpootlian, former Democratic Party chairman in South Carolina, which has belonged to Republicans for years.

"It is the first time in my lifetime that national Democrats are coming to our state. We've allowed the Republicans to pitch the independent vote in this state with no comeback," he said. Now you can't pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV or open the mailbox without one or all of our candidates telling you why they should be president. The Democrats will not be defined by Republicans, but by themselves."

Arizona's is one of Tuesday's more open contests. So the candidates have been cramming visits to Phoenix and Sierra Vista in among the stops in Fargo, N.D., and Greenville, S.C. The airwaves are increasingly crowded with advertising spots, most notably from retired General Wesley K. Clark, but some of the others are catching up. In a new spot, Kerry says in Spanish: "I'm John Kerry and I approved this message because I want to return hope to this country."

It is a quirky state politically, breeding politicians with mighty strong opinions. It was home to firebrand GOP conservative Barry M. Goldwater and to environmentalist Democrat Morris K. Udall, senators, presidential candidates, and unlikely friends. And it is home to 2000 presidential candidate John S. McCain, the Republican senator whose outspokenness on campaign finance reform and other topics has riled colleagues.

In the 1980s, Governor Evan Meacham, a Republican, was impeached and driven from office for campaign finance irregularities. A decade later, Governor J. Fife Symington III, a Republican, resigned while under indictment for financial fraud. (Bill Clinton pardoned his old friend on his way out of the Oval Office in 2001.) But the state has changed enormously since Meacham's day, its population exploding by 40 percent since 1990 to 5.1 million, many of the new residents coming from the Midwest and California. Almost everybody here is from somewhere else: Only one third of Arizonans were born in the state, said pollster Earl De Berge. One in four residents is Hispanic.

Those shifts have pushed the electorate toward the center over the last decade. Registered independents have grown from 8 percent in 1990 to 23 percent today. Registered Republicans still outnumber Democrats, 41 percent to 35 percent.

In the 1996 presidential election, Clinton took Arizona, the first victory for a national Democrat since Harry S. Truman won the state in 1948. In 2000, Republican George W. Bush defeated Al Gore here. Then, in 2002, the Arizonans elected a Democratic governor, Janet Napolitano.

"It was a landmark election that shows Democrats can be competitive," said Dill, who was Napolitano's senior campaign strategist. "Now Arizona is considered by both sides to be a swing state."

Which is why President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have come calling lately, too.

Kerry has led the field in recent polls, but thousands of Arizonans, able to vote by mail since Jan. 19, sent ballots in before the New Hampshire primary catapulted him to the front of the field here. In Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, 30,000 ballots were mailed out, and about 16,000 had been returned as of yesterday, according to the county elections department. The Arizona Republic newspaper endorsed Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut on Thursday. In Tucson, from the funky stores and restaurants of Fourth Avenue to the El Rio Neighborhood Center on Speedway, voters were still weighing their options, and reveling in their new clout.

"Arizona is probably not as political as New York or Massachusetts. People may be a little more disengaged out here. But sure, people care about this election," said Nancy Pitt, 65, a children's book author who was eating dinner in a restaurant on Fourth Avenue last week and was deciding between Kerry and Senator John Edwards of North Carolina.

Others had decided to vote for former Vermont governor Howard Dean even though his fortunes seemed to be sliding. Bookstore owner Galston, whose bestsellers these days are books by leftist historian Howard Zinn "and every single Bush lying book," said she would stick with Dean as a matter of conscience.

"I like Dean most, because he's the angriest," said musician Jim Marshall, 61, sipping coffee at the Chocolate Iguana Cafe. "If anything, he's not angry enough. He is the most determined critic of the administration, and I like that."

And despite what the polls say, residents of this laid-back city, a Democratic stronghold, say they won't make their decisions based on how others have gone.

"I'm choosing a person, not just to beat Bush," said Irene Valadez, 65, a program director at the El Rio Health Center. She wants someone who can fix the nation's health care system, she said. Kerry, she said, is "too much like the political system."

Instead, she was looking at Dean, because he seemed more willing to shake things up. In any case, she was pleased to make a difference.

"It makes you more enthusiastic that we do have something to say," she said.

These are heady days, here and in the other newly important primary states.

"It's exciting to be a Democrat here now," said Paul Eckerstrom, party chairman in Pima County, which includes Tucson. "We're not beat up as much any more."

Yvonne Abraham can be reached at abraham@globe.com.