Gov. Jan Brewer, who ran on a platform of rebuilding Arizona's prosperity while riding the wave of SB 1070 fervor, handily beat back a challenge from her Democratic rival, state Attorney General Terry Goddard.
Goddard, who was making his third attempt at the office, trailed the incumbent Republican by a sizable margin, with Libertarian Barry Hess and Green candidate Larry Gist pulling single digits.
Brewer, the former secretary of state who rose to the gubernatorial position in January 2009, morphed into a national figure in late spring, first defending the state's controversial immigration law, known as SB 1070, from critics and then leaping to its defense when the federal government sued to overturn the law.
An Associated Press analysis of exit and pre-election polls showed 75 percent of people who strongly supported the new law favored Brewer over Goddard.
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A critic of 1070, Goddard won nine out of 10 voters who strongly opposed the law, as well as nearly three-fourths of Latino voters, the AP analysis found.
Brewer, in Tucson on Saturday, told supporters she was proud of making big spending cuts in the state budget, while still protecting education and public safety. "We're headed into, of course, difficult times again. But I'm not afraid," she said, pledging to continue to fight the federal administration on health care reform and its immigration stance.
"The bottom line is people know what we stand for. They know what our philosophy is - ‘leave us alone, federal government. We know what's best for Arizona.' "
Her press aide, Paul Senseman, said one of her priorities will be to try to borrow funds from First Things First, after voters refused Tuesday to let the state simply seize the money from the early childhood education program.
Asked whether he had any 20/20 hindsight, Goddard said his campaign did the "best job we could" given the national climate and local concern about immigration, which drowned out talk of the economy and education.
"It seems that there was some problems with overreaching perhaps by the (Obama) administration," Goddard said. "We certainly felt that people either didn't understand what had happened or were very questioning of it. Let's say there were messaging errors along the way. I think a lot of good stuff has been done. Obviously, that didn't translate."
Terence Ball, a political science professor at Arizona State University, joked Monday that with polls refusing to budge in the attorney general's favor, the only way Goddard had a chance of winning was if Republicans and independents fell asleep and forgot to vote.
"He ran a pretty good campaign, but it's not the Democrats' year. Almost no matter what he did, he wouldn't win this year," Ball said, adding that historically, the party in power tends to get a drubbing.
And while he said the economy was the main issue - even more than the hot-button issue of immigration - voters tended to give Brewer a break "for having come into a very difficult job in a very difficult time."
Reporter Howard Fischer of Capitol Media Services contributed to this report.
