Fellow Democrats,

Dick Searle and I have been letting DORR members know election results in Sedona since 2004. It is as we all know a dismal year for Democratic candidates. Nationally many great Democrats have been defeated Russ Feingold, Tom Perriello among them. Here in AZ we have lost two wonderful representatives, Harry Mitchell and our own Ann Kirkpatrick.  Kirkpatrick’s loss is particularly hard since we finally had a Representative who really represented Sedona after years of absentee representation by a corrupt and now indicted Republican. She supported the 22 year old dream of Sedonans for a National Scenic Area. It was a devastating election by any measure, but we’ve survived Ronald Reagan, Bush One and Bush Two, and decades of Republican Congressional rule, “We’ll be back!”

In Arizona, the Republicans now have what appears to be a 2/3 control of both houses of the legislature and have won all statewide positions from the top to the bottom of the ticket. Read your newspapers and web sites listen to TV and radio– massive attacks on Arizona’s most vulnerable citizens are in the works. The safety nets like medicaid  are under attack. Huge income and property tax cuts for businesses and the wealthy are in the works despite the huge state huge deficit.

As someone involved in DORR’s programing and inviting candidates to our DORR breakfasts and other meetings, I can say I have never seen a finer group of candidates than we fielded this year. I met one outstanding individual after another, which makes their losses doubly hard. DORR  did everything it possibly could to help our candidates. Everyone who contributed time and money to campaign deserves praise for their efforts.

Now when it looks darkest I urge you to become involved this year and not to wait for the election year in 2012. DORR has a wonderful lineup of breakfast speakers, evening programs, a new writers/bloggers group, a membership meeting coming up in January, a new blog for members, and much more.

As someone who works full time and was peripheral to the huge DORR office effort,  I have to say I’ve never seen DORR better run and better organized, or more intensely committed and enthusiastic volunteers. We had outstanding folks canvassing,  calling, doing data input, technical support and hospitality. DORR president Angela LeFerve did an incredible job managing our efforts. I’m amazed by our members’ and friends’ political commitment. As Democrats we owe all these folks a debt of gratitude. We’ll be honoring them soon.

Onto the data.  Some provisional votes are not counted; some races are not decided at this time.

How did Democrats do in Democratic voting Sedona? Well, the results were disappointing in absolute terms, but we did much better relative to the state (and extraordinarily better) than the rest of Yavapai county. Politically Sedona votes like Democratic Coconino county, in which Sedona has only two precincts, rather than Republican Yavapai in which we have eight. But Coconino’s turnout was only about 50%  and Yavapai’s was 61%.  Our average precinct average percentage (not total Sedona % which will be another point or so higher) was 63%. To give you an idea of our impact, so far about 7200 votes have been counted, the whole total for Coconino is about 18,000. Yavapai is of course much larger about 75,000 votes cast.

It’s not news that Republicans vote in much higher percentages than Dems. We’re making inroads but we still have a way to go in turning out Sedona’s Democrats at the level of the highest voting Yavapai conservative precincts. A number of Republican precincts in the Prescott area have turnout of over 70%.

Starting with the Congressional race: Ann Kirkpatrick carried 8 of 10 Sedona precincts losing only the traditionally stronger Republican precincts of Wild Horse and Big Park.  Red Rock 2, Coffee Pot and Red Rock East continue to be the strongest Democratic precincts. Districtwide, Kirkpatrick received 44% percent of the vote to Gosar’s 50%, but in Sedona Ann received 53% to Gosar’s 46% a complete reversal of the district wide results, actually more than a complete reversal!  (I’m not including minor party figures.) Last election, Ann won by 57% though and there was a local environmentalist won 8 % that she might have otherwise gotten.)t Ann won Coconino county and Apache county handily and more or less held here own in smaller population counties losing or winning by a few votes. What happened? She lost conservative leaning Yavapai by almost 2-1; in 2008 she had just barely lost it.

Governor’s race:  Statewide Jan Brewer got 55 % of the vote to Terry Goddard’s 42%. In Sedona Goddard lost by only 142 votes receiving 49% to Brewers 51%. He could still win Sedona with provisional votes.

Felecia Rottelini received 48% of the vote to Tom Horne’s 52% statewide. In Sedona the vote was reversed — 53% for Rottelini, 46% for Horne.
Penny Kotterman won here.  Lindsey Bell, in a three way contest with two Republicans for State Representative, won decisively with 448 votes more than her nearest competitor.

REMEMBER in contests like this, with one Democrat and two Republicans  and two seats. It is best to only vote for the one Democratic candidate, unless you have another candidate you believe should be supported.

Often in Sedona all the down ticket races are won by Democrats. This year, though, that was not always the case. Chris Deschene lost to a well known incumbent, Ken Bennett, by a 125 votes. I didn’t do the stats for Andre Cherney but he appears to have lost  the Treasurer’s race  to Ducey. McCain, usually the only Republican reliably to win Sedona, beat underfunded Rodney Glassman, but Glassman won three Sedona precincts even so.

Propositions: Medical Marijuana won here. Attempts to take money from the land conservation and early childhood development lost here as decisively or more decisively than in the rest of the state. Prop 109, the NRA’s attempt to shift wildlife control from professionals directly to legislature, lost in Sedona as well as statewide. I have talked to folks again this year who voted the opposite of what they intended due the tricky titling and description of the propositions, a recurrent problem.

by Stephen Williamson, Democrats of the Red Rocks Vice President Program Chair