Gov. Katie Hobbs' plan to flip the Arizona Legislature just took a big hit

Democrats were dealt a blow on Tuesday with the news that Rep. Jennifer Pawlik won’t be seeking reelection next year.

Pawlik, D-Chandler, represents the state’s most competitive district, one that is key to Democratic hopes to seize control of the House.

The Arizona Democratic Party could have made a grab for the reins of power last year.

Instead, party leaders decided to protect Pawlik by running only one candidate for the two House seats in this predominately Chandler district.

Democrats lost a chance at a 30-30 split

In fact, the party ran only one candidate for two spots in four of the state’s five competitive legislative districts.

It was a genius strategy — if your strategy is to remain irrelevant.

Republicans now control the House, 31-29, just as they did before last year’s election.

Democratic consultants at the time defended the move, telling me the “single-shot” strategy — fielding only one candidate for a district’s two seats, thus increasing that candidate’s odds of victory — made sense in the long run.

It gave their candidates a chance to get a foothold in competitive districts that lean Republican then build on that in future elections.

But in the short run — 2022, when the Democrats were just one vote short of forcing a 30-30 tie?

It amounted to political malpractice.

Gaining ground now will become even harder

And it particularly made no sense Legislative District 13, where Pawlik, the incumbent, easily bested her two Republican challengers. Democrats left the race wide open for Republican challenger Liz Harris to snag the second seat and well, you know how that turned out.

Think about how different this year’s legislative session might have looked, had Democrats actually tried to gain a share of control of the House.

Will 11 more vetoes: Gov. Hobbs sets rejection record

Republican bills fixated on bathrooms and book bans and pronouns never would have made it out of a 30-30 House.

Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs would have had some leverage in the Legislature, and her frequently-used veto stamp would not be running dry on ink.

And maybe, just maybe, there might have been a focus on addressing the state’s real problems — affordable housing and water and such — rather than searching for new and creative ways to try to make Hobbs look bad.

Pawlik’s Tuesday announcement was the equivalent of handing Wile E. Coyote a special delivery from ACME. Ouch.

The Democratic Party — having thrown away any chance of gaining control in 2022 — now will have to field a newcomer next year, making it more difficult to snag even one of the district’s two House seats.

Suddenly, Hobbs’ plan to flip the Legislature just got a lot harder.

Reach Roberts at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Gov. Katie Hobbs' plan to flip the Arizona Legislature took a big hit