Arizona's flirtation with becoming a blue state.

Arizona: land of cactus, sunshine, and liberals.

At least that's what the election results here would have you believe. An unmarried, Democratic, woman governor picked up 63 percent of the vote for re-election. More than 65 percent of the voters approved a minimum-wage hike. About 62 percent of them approved a ban on small cages for pigs and calves.

Oh, and with 52 percent of the voters saying thumbs down, Arizona has just become the first in the nation to defeat a gay marriage ban.

Has Arizona morphed into a blue state?

Remember, this is a state that voted down Martin Luther King Day. A state where not one of the four propositions on this year's ballot targeting illegal immigrants passed with less than 70 percent of the vote. Arizona remains the state in which 65 percent of the voters approved a measure limiting local governments' powers of eminent domain. And almost 60 percent of us thought meth users should go to jail on a first offense.

What to make of it? Was this a tremendous victory for gay rights? Or was it something else? Could it have been the proposition was just poorly, broadly worded?

Proposition 107 states:

To preserve and protect marriage in this state, only a union between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage by this state or its political subdivisions and no legal status for unmarried persons shall be created or recognized by this state or its political subdivisions that is similar to that of marriage.  

And it's that part—about "no legal status for unmarried persons shall be created" —that doomed Proposition 107 here. The three largest population centers in the state also happen to be home to its universities, which offer domestic-partner benefits. So do some of the cities in the state, as well as some of the more progressive employers. And—believe it or not—domestic partnerships are a big deal in the retirement communities that surround the cities. Passing a law that could be interpreted to deprive those groups of such rights virtually guaranteed that the measure would be strongly opposed.

It's something that opponents of the proposition figured out early on. They challenged the ballot language earlier this year on the basis that it addressed two issues, rather than just one (gay marriage and domestic partnerships). An Arizona court upheld the language. But it gave opponents an in. Arguing that gays deserve equal protections and rights hadn't worked in any other state gay-marriage-ban contests. So, the amendment's Arizona opponents sponsored an ad campaign that forced the focus of the debate from the law's intent to its consequences.