I was wrong about Doug Ducey.

I had always seen him as the ice cream executive who we went from selling vanilla in waffle cones to selling vanilla in campaign ads.

Vanilla won its first election for treasurer in 2010 and parlayed that into governor four years later. After a successful first term, vanilla handily won reelection in 2018.

Tidy in attire, polite to a fault, unremarkable in every way, Ducey made plainness his trademark and settled into eight years as a caretaker governor.

He was decent and affable and completely bored by the winds of populist change that whipped about him.

All admirable traits.

But I misread him.

Ducey only looked vanilla on the outside. Inside lurked something far more sinister — some insidious core of dark chocolate that had the same effect on Democrats as stabbing them........

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