Salon: Don't it make a red state blue

[kskiska]

In Arizona, influential Republican women are increasingly coming out for John Kerry.

PHOENIX, Ariz. -- Judith Allen, longtime Arizonan and lifelong Republican, says her choice is clear. She is voting for John Kerry on Nov. 2 and says there are plenty more where she came from.

Allen is not a lone voice, crying in the wilderness. She currently serves as a volunteer coordinator for the group Republicans for Kerry, which believes in "putting aside partisan politics to do what is right for America." In spite of recent polls to the contrary, Allen says her fellow Republicans, turned off by the Bush administration's sharp turn to the right, are defecting in droves to the other side. If what these Arizonans want is any indication, Bush may well be in trouble. Since Arizona earned statehood in 1912, no Republican has been elected president without carrying the state.

Allen is also part of a brewing revolution of Republican women called the WISH List (Women in the Senate and House), a Washington-based organization committed to electing moderate, pro-choice Republican women to public office. WISH raises about $1 million a year to elect candidates and boasts a 75 percent success rate for the 1,400-plus candidates it has supported since 1992.

In the presidential election, says WISH national board member Deborah Carstens, the group stands firmly behind the Bush-Cheney campaign. Behind the official facade, though, is a different picture. "I've met and talked with numerous Republicans since I've been in this march for John Kerry," says Allen, now a senior adviser to Arizona's Kerry-Edwards campaign. "They have all echoed to me, 'I will vote for Kerry.'"

more…
http://salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/02/arizona/index.html