I have lived and/or worked in 10 states spread across the country. Arizona was and continues to be the most complicated. The same state that elected the first openly gay mayor of a major American city is also the state that didn’t want a federal holiday for Martin Luther King Jr.

opinion columnist

LZ Granderson

LZ Granderson writes about culture, politics, sports, and living life in America.

Perhaps the cultural pendulum swings so drastically because the population changes depending on the time of year—shout out to the snowbirds.

Whatever the season, however, Arizona is not a liberal epicenter like New York. For news like we saw this week, where an Arizona grand jury accused 18 allies of Donald Trumpincluding Mark Meadows and Rudolph W. Giuliani, for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election, requires more than distaste for Trump or Republicans.

Facts are needed.

And it shouldn’t be surprising to find that kind of evidence in Arizona, where election denial arises from a long history of other racist power grabs.

Let’s think about 2020 in Arizona, even before the electoral drama. This was the same year Scottsdale City Council member Guy Phillips appeared at an anti-mask rally, made a joke with George Floyd’s last words as he was killed by police: “I can’t breathe.”

That kind of blatant racism is not unique to the area.

Scottsdale is an old sunset town that is almost 90% white. Blacks made up less than 2% of the population.

After the rejection, Phillips apologized and attributed the comments to adrenaline, whatever that means. As if resisting mask requirements requires a teaspoon of racism to be effective.

At the time of his comments, my family had just moved to the Phoenix suburb and I was beginning to think we had made a terrible mistake. On multiple occasions, pickup truck drivers called me the N-word with large Trump flags flying.

Overt racism played well with many voters. Months after mocking Floyd’s death, Phillips not only managed to get out of the primary but also ended up dangerously close to being re-elected. Colton Duncan, Republican Kari Lake’s campaign manager when she ran for governor, retweeted a racist post about Native Americans on Indigenous Peoples’ Day in 2022. Lake herself has talked about going to war with Mexico over the crisis. migratory. This year she is leaning into the racist rhetoric of “replacement theory” as she runs for the Senate against Rep. Rubén Gallego.

By the way, he launched his campaign in Scottsdale.

That’s not to say that all of Maricopa County is full of racist people. It’s just that the state’s largest county has a lot of them. Enough to sustain the political careers of people who have said and done vile things. This is the state that gave us Senator Barry Goldwater, who opposed the Civil Rights Act. Arizona also tried to pass “show me your papers” legislation.

It’s a cloud that continues to hang over the area, a constant reminder that how far we’ve come is not enough. And under that cloud of racial grievances, a group of citizens decided to defend Trump, the king of racial grievances. It is no surprise that among all the states that challenged the election results, no state has worked harder through multiple recounts and lawsuits than Arizona. In fact, Lake still suggests that the election was stolen even after the accusations reiterate that that is simply not true.

What has been true is that Arizona politics range from the unacceptable to the remarkable. After Tempe’s mayor was discovered to be gay, recall efforts accelerated. One of the key people to help combat them? Republican Senator John McCain, who resisted including LGBTQ+ members in the military.

From the outside that makes little sense. But after living in Arizona and witnessing the constant tug-of-war between progressive and conservative politics, the only thing that is clear is that neither political philosophies define the state. There is hate, there is love and then there is the truth. The accusations can be characterized as a liberal attempt to punish Trump. It is not so simple. Arizona is neither liberal nor conservative. The same goes for these accusations.

@LZGranderson