There were a few indications that Democrats might snatch up a victory in Senate District 20 — and before the votes were counted on Nov. 4, Sen. John Huppenthal was prepared for defeat.
“We thought, with the national trend and the changes in the district, that this might be the end of the line,” he said.
Instead, Huppenthal kept his seat, fending off a vigorous challenge from Democrat Ted Maish, a retired teacher.
Two years ago, Huppenthal defeated his Democrat challenger by about 3,200 votes in the general election. Since then, however, the district’s voter-registration matrix has changed a bit.
Republicans maintain a voter-registration edge in the district, but that was reduced during the past two years. Between the 2006 and 2008 general elections, more than 6,600 new Democrats registered as voters, compared to slightly more than 2,000 Republicans.
The GOP voter-registration edge is now down to about 9,500 voters from an advantage more than 14,000 in 2006. The number of independent voters also grew, to almost 29,000 from about 23,000.

Nationally, the climate appeared to favor the Democrats, something that Barack Obama proved by sweeping the electoral votes. Locally, the Democrats went into the race with much more money than the Republicans. And, according to a GOP strategist, District 20 was one of the places where Republicans were in jeopardy.
Later, independent committees poured a large amount of money to elect Maish and defeat the incumbent. Independent committees shelled out roughly $53,000 to elect Maish and defeat Huppenthal, and about $30,000 to do the opposite.
But Huppenthal received 7,756 more voted than Maish with all polls reporting, according to unofficial results from the Secretary of State’s Office. The margin of victory, if it holds up, is more than twice as wide as it was in his election two years ago.
“I’m just flabbergasted,” Huppenthal said on Election Night.
“It’s as simple as a 10,000 voter-registration advantage,” Maish told the Arizona Capitol Times on the day after the election.
“There is no sorry,” Maish said of his defeat. “We got our message out there. We were just trying to let people know that our current policy makers refused to make our children’s health and education a priority, and we certainly got that job there.”
Early this year, there were indications that the Democrats were targeting Huppenthal’s seat.
Last May, the Arizona Democratic Party filed an election complaint against the senator, saying he had withheld information about who had paid for automated calls to district residents. The calls related a message about how Huppenthal had helped arrange surgery for a child with a rare case of dwarfism.
Democrats contended the calls should have included a mention of who paid for them. But the Citizens Clean Elections Commission dismissed the complaint. Democrats claimed Huppenthal’s calls were apparently made in response to their own automated calls to residents in the district informing them that Huppenthal “voted against emergency funding to clean Corona del Sol High School.”
The school’s ventilation system had been linked to illnesses.
At the time, Huppenthal said he voted against it because the measure was introduced as a floor amendment to a budget bill, and members of leadership do not support any amendments that have not been agreed to beforehand, he said.
He maintained he had worked hard to solve the Tempe school’s problem.