Will Arizona's relentless Republican gerrymander decide the 2024 presidential election?

The intersection of South Gilbert and East Warner roads in Gilbert, Arizona, looks like many other places in suburban America. "They've obviously stacked the deck," says Tomas Robles, executive director of Living United for Change in Arizona, one of the state's leading Latino activist groups. The chairman of the state GOP launched a new commission that would "monitor" the 2021 commission, chaired by well-connected conservative attorney Michael Liburdi and including members from each of the state's nine U.S. House districts. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, the 15-person appellate court board — which must, by constitutional order, "reflect the diversity of Arizona's population" — was evenly divided among eight Democratic appointees and seven Republicans. They included Robert Wilson, whose Flagstaff gun store hosted rallies for Donald Trump headlined by Rep. Andy Biggs, chair of the House Freedom Caucus ; Thomas Loquvam, a well-connected general counsel and registered lobbyist for one of Arizona's major utilities, whose sister, Jessica Pacheco, in 2014, helped direct another prominent utility's seven-figure "dark-money" operation against Democratic candidates; Megan Carollo, the owner of a floral boutique whose partner advises the Arizona Mexico Commission and serves as president of a firm that has received more than $1 million in contracts from the governor's budget; and the eventual choice, Erika Schupak Neuberg, a psychologist and national board member of the hawkish American Israel Public Affairs Committee and a prolific donor to Ducey-related Super PACs, who had gifted nearly $100,000 largely to Republican candidates nationwide and within Arizona, including Ducey himself.