PHOENIX – It was a rough night for Arizona Republicans on Election Day. The top six statewide races are expected to all go blue, and the state Legislature could see a historic shift toward being majority Democrat, which hasn’t happened in decades.

Democratic and Republican leaders in the Legislature are now navigating what this shift in control looks like and how they’ll target affordability, education and water as they enter a new political balance.

The Associated Press called the Arizona governor, secretary of state and attorney general races for Democrats. The treasurer, superintendent of public instruction and state mine inspector races are also leaning blue. And the Democratic Party is poised to control the state House and Senate for the first time in 60 years, according to the Arizona Mirror.

Results aren’t confirmed, and several federal and statewide races haven’t been called, but expectations point toward a “blue tsunami.”

U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego, who previously served in the state Legislature, told Cronkite News at a Democratic election watch party in Phoenix it’s been a “long time coming” for the Legislature to flip, but work in the state “needs to be done” if his party takes control in January. He said Gov. Katie Hobbs’ reelection could help the party with issues such as transporting and borrowing water.

Attorney General Kris Mayes told Cronkite News at the watch party that she’s expecting to champion around “12 bills” if the majority does flip, including one focused on price gouging. 

“We’re going to hold the ESA (Empowerment Scholarship Account) program accountable so that I don’t have to prosecute fraud in the (school) voucher program, and we’re going to hopefully pay our teachers what they deserve,” she said.

Secretary of State Adrian Fontes also won his election and said Wednesday morning that conversations with the Legislature will continue on election security and access, and he’s “been beating the same drum for several years.” 

He said, with the shift, he wants to see more productive sit-downs with legislators.

“Our budget requests are not going to shift that much,” he said. “We're going to continue to ask for the basic commonsense, data-driven, research-backed requests that we have always made. I never asked for the moon. I always made reasonable asks.”

State Rep. Oscar De Los Santos, whose district covers Laveen and parts of Phoenix, is currently the top Democrat in the Arizona House and possible future speaker of the house. He told Cronkite News at the watch party his priority is affordability, which is a message he said Arizona voters largely resonated with.

“(The election outcome) is really a mandate from the people of the state of Arizona about how badly the Republicans have run this state,” he said.

Sen. Priya Sundareshan, who sits in the Arizona Senate as its minority leader, also said at the Democratic watch party they will focus on workers and the promise that “people are in charge.”

“At the end of the day, this fight is about something bigger than any one candidate or any one election,” she said. “We are going to respect working families, and we are going to respect regular, everyday Arizonans who deserve to have a voice at the Capitol and policies that reflect them.”

After the first results were published on election night, Republican Sen. Warren Petersen, the current Arizona Senate president, said Arizona “will be California in six months” if the GOP lost control. 

He said Democrats have less infighting than Republicans in the Arizona Legislature, and the party would “get stuff done” with a majority.

“Your Legislature has been the red wall keeping Arizona from turning into California for the last four years,” he said.

Petersen also ran for attorney general this election, and lost to Mayes, according to the Associated Press. He said he’s never lost a race before, and it’s “new territory” for him.

Republican Sen. John Kavanagh, the current majority leader in the Arizona Senate, told Cronkite News Wednesday that with a potential super majority in both the House and the Senate, as well as the governor’s office, Democrats “don’t need our cooperation.” He said he expects to see them undo deregulation bills and “30 years of conservative legislating.”

“I don't think the voters realize how dangerous it is to give the Democrat Party control of both chambers and the governor's office, especially in today's political environment, where both parties are far more left and right than the general public,” he said. “They're going to have buyer's remorse.”

Cronkite News journalists Noah Flug, Senna James and Nico Lehocky contributed to this story.

This article first appeared on Cronkite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.