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October 16, 2001

Host: Michael Grant
Topic: KAET Poll
HORIZON's 20th anniversary: MLK Holiday
Producer: Merry Lucero
In-Studio Guests: Dr. Bruce Merrill, director of the KAET poll and the Walter Cronkite media research program at ASU;
Niels Marslev, associate director of the KAET poll;
Mark Flatten, political reporter for the East Valley Tribune

MICHAEL GRANT: Tonight on "HORIZON," what Arizonans did with their tax rebates, how they feel about terrorism and the future of America. We'll have the results of a new channel 8 poll. Plus, as "HORIZON" celebrates its 20th year, we look back at our coverage of a controversy that shook our state.

MICHAEL GRANT: Good evening, I'm Michael Grant. Did you get a federal tax rebate? If you did, you are among 68% of Arizona voters who responded to a Channel 8 poll conducted over the weekend. What did Arizona voters do with their tax rebates? 36% of those who got a rebate say they saved all or part of it. When asked if they spent any of the money, 47% said they did. 53% said they did not spend any. 35% of the Arizona voters say they used their tax rebate to pay off existing debt. And a mere 9% reported investing any portion of their tax rebate. Meanwhile, a whopping 89% of the Arizonans say they support America's military action in Afghanistan. 91% believe more terrorist attacks in the United States are either likely or very likely. The number drops dramatically when asked about terrorist attacks here in Arizona. Only 44% think more terrorist attacks in Arizona are either likely or very likely. The telephone poll of 636 registered voters in Arizona has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.9%. More poll results later in the program, but first, Dr. Bruce Merrill, director of the KAET poll and the Walter Cronkite media research program at ASU. Bruce, did we ask an open-end question on what people did with their tax rebate?

DR. BRUCE MERRILL: No, not really. We gave them those options, Michael. So some people obviously did all four things, and that's why we did it that way. So, what we know is that bush was pretty successful in the sense that most people spent all or some of that tax rebate. About half the people did. So if bush was trying to spur the economy on, in Arizona, it did seem to work a little bit.

MICHAEL GRANT: I guess you can kind of understand invest all or part low response in light of -- it's not a great time to be going to the stock market.

DR. BRUCE MERRILL: I think that's exactly right. Very few people did that. A few people said they donated it to charity, interestingly, and a few people even said they sent it back. Not very many, but a few people did.

MICHAEL GRANT: Overwhelming support for the military strikes in Afghanistan, pretty consistent with national polling?

DR. BRUCE MERRILL: Almost identical. 90% of the polls, the nation fall polls are showing support for the president. It's 89% to 90% here, so very strong support for the president in terms of the way he's responding to terrorism.

MICHAEL GRANT: In fact, Bruce, I recall our question -- when was our last poll, probably three weeks ago?

DR. BRUCE MERRILL: About three weeks ago.

MICHAEL GRANT: And the support of the president was 91%. Obviously this number very consistent.

DR. BRUCE MERRILL: About the same within the sampling error, Michael.

MICHAEL GRANT: Is the expectation of more terrorist attacks grown since last month? We polled on that subject.

DR. BRUCE MERRILL: Yeah, it actually has, and largely, particularly when we looked at the amount of news media that people are watching. If people were really turned on and watched the media a lot in terms of what's happening, then their expectation of terrorism-- terrorist attacks, actually did increase. And again, it's about the national average. Very hyper taj. About high 80s, almost 90% of the registered voters in Arizona expect another attack in the United States. And this is one of those things where you get into when you look at Arizona, is 44% saying they expect an attack in Arizona, is that a high number or a low number? And actually, I think one might argue that that's a pretty high number for a place like Arizona. Almost half of the people expect something to happen here in the state.

MICHAEL GRANT: You know, one thought that occurs in relation to that response, has been obviously the recent attention to these anthrax strikes.

DR. BRUCE MERRILL: Yes.

MICHAEL GRANT: And the fact that although they have occurred in Florida, New York, of course, most recently with NBC and ABC. You also have had episodes in, For example, Reno, Nevada, and I wonder if that's not saying, well, jeez, maybe we're not as safe in the interior as we thought?

DR. BRUCE MERRILL: Well, I think that's absolutely correct, Michael, particularly when it comes through the mail, because we all get the mail, and we all tear open those envelopes. So I think it's something that anyone in America can identify and have some fear over, and clearly, if the intent of the terrorist is to cause us to have fear, you know, we're talking about ten cases in the whole united states, but look at the fear that it's caused. I mean, it was a terribly successful terrorist act.

MICHAEL GRANT: Well, in fact, I heard one national health official commenting today that you really do need to put it in some perspective. A few hundred people die each year from the flu, and of course, we've only had one death from anthrax. That's not to minimize one death, but still, it's some attempt to try to place it in some context.

DR. BRUCE MERRILL: Well, plus, I think in America, it's caused a lot of us to feel violated, because it comes into our home. I mean, we have a very open mail system here where the mail is delivered to our home, so it's part of our household almost, and the thought that the terrorists can get into any of our households through the mail, I think, really is terrifying to a lot of people.

MICHAEL GRANT: The responses on more terrorist attacks, more likely, and that increasing generally from the last time we polled on the issue, I think obviously it is only logical to assume with the start of the bombing campaign on Afghanistan, obviously you would expect some sort of retaliatory action.

DR. BRUCE MERRILL: Yeah. Well, in the administration, of course, has prepared the American people for that. That's been a tough one, as has been pointed out, because every time the government issues warning, that causes more people to be frightened. So, the government right now is having a difficult time finding that line and not wanting to frighten people unnecessarily, but if they have some information there could be a threat, feeling that they have to warn us about that. I guess, Michael, this is something we're going to have to learn to live with for a while.

MICHAEL GRANT: Are Arizonans confident America will recover from the terrorist attacks? Here's what they told us. 77% expressed some degree of confidence that the United States will be able to prevent major acts of terrorism from occurring in the future. Only 39% are confident that the u.s. can defeat all terrorist groups around the globe. Arizonans are extremely confident that the American way of life will be preserved. 91% believe that to be true. As for the economy, 93% expressed some degree of confidence in the long-term prosperity of the u.s. economy. Joining Bruce and me now is Niels Marslev, associate director of the KAET poll. Niels, you took the answers to those questions and created a scale --

NIELS MARSLEV: Yes, we did. Actually, it's the second month in a row we're doing that. As I'm sure some viewers remember, we created a scale that measured the psychological impact of the attacks on Arizonans. What we did this time was, as you could see on the four questions you just went over, it was obvious that they all measured some element of confidence. So what we can do, statistically as we're crunching the numbers is we can actually test to see if those four are measuring the same dimension, if they are measuring, sort of a general confidence. MICHAEL GRANT: Attitude overall?

NIELS MARSLEV: Exactly.

MICHAEL GRANT: What did we find out?

NIELS MARSLEV: We find out that -- on this one, we made three ranges. We found that 44% were very confident and a similar number, 44% were moderately confident. And only 12% were not very confident. And you could say 12% is a lot, but you can also take notice of the fact that almost 9 out of 10 Arizonans were somewhat confident.

MICHAEL GRANT: Basically saying we're going to get out of this. We were talking to Niels before we went on the air. You mentioned there was an interesting correlation between people who had been watching a lot of media and how they responded.

NIELS MARSLEV: Exactly.

MICHAEL GRANT: What did that indicate?

NIELS MARSLEV: We found that it seems that the more you were watching, we asked people if they followed the media closely and a good number of people did, and we found that those people who followed the media closely expressed a higher degree of confidence that America would recover and rebound from these attacks. And similarly, we asked people what they thought of the coverage that they had followed, both nationally and locally, and we found the same thing, that the people who thought the coverage was either excellent or good, were also more likely to be confident that the u.s. will recover.

MICHAEL GRANT: Now, Bruce, I'm trying to put that together with the results on the well-being scale a few weeks back, and I seem to recall that that's really kind of the reverse of the trend we were seeing on the well-being scale and people tended to be more depressed the more media they watched.

DR. BRUCE MERRILL: Exactly. At that particular time, they were seeing on the screen, some pretty scary kinds of events. I think that we did kind of find the opposite of that. It's interesting, however, as Niels points out, that also, we found that the people are giving the national media and the local media very high ratings in terms of the job that they're doing. Again, up close to 90% of the people feel that the national media is doing a good job and only slightly -- what was that percentage for the local media, Niels?

NIELS MARSLEV: Well, we didn't have very many people who said that they thought the local media had done a poor job. We had a higher number who didn't have an opinion, probably because they mainly have been following the national media.

DR. BRUCE MERRILL: Right.

NIELS MARSLEV: But on the positive rating, it was about the same.

DR. BRUCE MERRILL: About the same. About nine out of every ten people give the media high ratings for the way they've covered these things.

MICHAEL GRANT: 75% excellent or good. Niels, any other striking subdata? Were women more confident? Men more confident? Republicans more confident?

NIELS MARSLEV: We had some very interesting findings on that, especially in light of the scale of psychological impact that we did last month where we found that women were far more likely to be severely impacted than men. I would say we were expecting to find something like that this time, but there was virtually no difference between men and women this time. They expressed the same degree of confidence. Also race and education didn't seem to influence, but what did matter was people's registration, what party they said they belonged to. And understandably, people who are registered republicans had a higher degree of confidence than democrats or others. And I suppose that it makes sense that the administration that you helped into power, that you have a higher degree of confidence that they'll pull us out of this disaster.

MICHAEL GRANT: Now, Bruce, I understand, again, on our well-being index, couple three weeks ago, older people --

DR. BRUCE MERRILL: Right.

MICHAEL GRANT: -- were showing much less effect from the overall attacks. This time we didn't see as strong a correlation in the age data?

DR. BRUCE MERRILL: Not as strong, but still, in this particular poll, the older people did have more confidence that they -- that the country would recover. And again, remember, last time we talked about the older people and the kind of been there, seen it, done that kind of syndrome, and I think that carries over here to some degree. I mean, they've been through this before. They have slightly higher confidence that we're going to get through this.

MICHAEL GRANT: All right, Bruce Merrill, thank you for joining us.

DR. BRUCE MERRILL: Glad to be here.

MICHAEL GRANT: Niels Marslev, thank you for helping us as well. Thank you for doing the poll. This month "Horizon" celebrates its 20th anniversary. One of our biggest stories of the time, the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. While states around the nation were observing King's birthday, Arizona was embroiled in controversy over it. That controversy lasted several years. Through it all, "Horizon" offered in depth interviews, commentary and taped reports. Merry Lucero takes us back.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: From the mighty mountains of New York, let freedom ring from the height anything of Pennsylvania.

MERRY LUCERO: on April 8th, 1968, four days after martin Luther king's assassination, the first federal legislation for a holiday was introduced. A bill was signed in 1983. In 1987, while 40 other states marked the holiday, incoming Arizona governor, Evan Mecham rescinded the paid state holiday created by former governor Bruce Babbitt. Governor Mecham explained why.

EVAN MECHAM: The bottom line is I'm not rescinding anything. I'm correcting something that really never happened. Now, the governor cannot appropriate money. This appropriates money. He can't do it. A governor cannot make an official state holiday. That has to be legislative action. It's there very clearly.

MERRY LUCERO: With an attorney general opinion to back him, Mecham questioned the league galt of Babbitt he is executive order creating the holiday. He called for a statewide public ballot referendum, allowing voters to decide on the issue.

MICHAEL GRANT: Today marks what would have been Dr. Martin Luther King's 58th birthday, even though today is Dr. King's actual birthday, Monday, January 19th is the day set aside by the federal government as a holiday to honor Dr. King. And on Monday, the occasion of the holiday, Arizona governor Evan Mecham and former governor Bruce Babbitt will be guests on "the McNeil\Lehrer News Hour" to discuss the disputed king holiday in hour state.

MERRY LUCERO: The heated debate brought the national spotlight.

NEWS REPORTER: Joining us are the two protagonists, Bruce Babbitt, he created the holiday by executive order, and the new governor, republican Evan Mecham, the man who rescinded the holiday. They both join us from public station KAET in phoenix.

EVAN MECHAM: I've been disappointed in Bruce, because I think he used them. I think they deserve better. That's an incredible statement for the governor of Arizona to say there's no problem with discrimination. Bruce Babbitt is pandering to blacks. I simply see it differently. I think there is an unfinished agenda.

MERRY LUCERO: in 1988, Governor Mecham was impeached and removed from office. Some thought this would clear the way for the King holiday.

MICHAEL GRANT: But first, a bill that would create a Martin Luther King holiday in Arizona has cleared its first hurdle in the state senate by a 5-4 vote, the government committee approved the measure that would combine Washington and Lincoln's birthdays into a single holiday in February. That would pave the way for a holiday in January to honor the slain civil rights leader. Last year, a similar bill was struck down 6-3 in the senate's government committee. With me tonight to discuss the King holiday measure is its sponsor, Senator Carolyn Walker of phoenix. Senator Walker, what changed it from a 6-3 vote against to a 5-4 vote for?

SENATOR WALKER: Well, there was an awful lot of lobbying going on.

MERRY LUCERO: Lobbying did go on, so did the controversy and the commentary.

NEWS REPORTER: Supporters argue that the holiday should be adopted as a sign of reconciliation. Particularly after the Mecham trauma. Opponents argue that the King holiday is merely a symbolic gesture to a minority of Americans and that his accomplishments don't compare to those of Washington and Lincoln, whose birthdays we do honor, or even those of Jefferson and Roosevelt, whose birthdays we don't.

MERRY LUCERO: the legislation failed in '88. In 1989, for the third year, the Legislature was asked to vote on the holiday.

MAN ON STREET: We are here this morning to make it clear to anyone who doesn't understand, that for as long as it takes, for as much energy as it takes, we will be here until we pass the holiday!

MAN ON STREET: I am waiting for the legislation to send over the martin Luther king bill so I can sign it!

MERRY LUCERO: Supporting and opposing viewpoints continued to be heard.

REPORTER: And each year, millions set aside a day to reflect on his efforts. Regrettably, our own 39th session of the Arizona State legislature was doing business as usual on that day. What will it take to move the sincerely stubborn republican majority in both chambers to enact a paid state holiday honoring Martin Luther King Junior?

REPORTER: I feel it would be appropriate to call for an election for by the people to see if the majority support a paid holiday to honor dr. king. I understand a paid holiday would cost the taxpayers something over $3 million, so the people paying for the holiday should have the right to approve it.

MERRY LUCERO: The legislature passed and Governor Rose Mofford finally got to sign the bill in 1989, swapping the paid state King holiday for Columbus day.

GOVERNOR ROSE MOFFORD: On yesterday, September the 21st, 1989, Arizona finally joined the nation and 46 other states in honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

MERRY LUCERO: Petitions were filed calling for a public vote and the legislature also, once again, passed a bill for a statewide voter referendum. Both went on the ballot. [ applause ]

MERRY LUCERO: The following day, ex-Governor Mecham showed his displeasure.

EVAN MECHAM: I -- we have a king day, and if you wasn't so damn stupid, you would recognize that. We've got a King day. We've got a King day! We've got a King day! We've got a King day!

MERRY LUCERO: And in November 1990, voters rejected two separate ballot measures. By 1991, there was intense public outrage over the count versus see and millions in economic damage with cancelled tourism and conventions and Arizona lost the chance to host the '93 super bowl. Just since November's vote rejecting the holiday, 68 groups have cancelled meet eggs in the valley at an estimated worth of $70 million.

MAN ON STREET: Sign the martin Luther king petition right here.

MERRY LUCERO: Public support for the holiday was growing.

MAN ON STREET: We want them to name it not simply martin Luther king, jr. day, but martin Luther king civil rights day to represent every person who supports civil rights.

MERRY LUCERO: Finally in 1992, the people approved a measure to combine the birthdays of Washington and Lincoln to create the holiday. Arizona observed its first official Martin Luther King Day in 1993. Lost from the controversy, an estimated $500 million in state revenue, and many believe progress for civil rights in Arizona. But, Arizona is now the only state that passed the holiday by a vote of the people.

MICHAEL GRANT: Joining me now, a journalist who was on the beat at the time this controversy was boiling. Mark Flatten, political reporter for the "east valley tribune." Mark, good to see you. You know, I had forgotten this was a six-year story.

MARK FLATTEN: It was a six-year story, and it started with sort of this fleeting, running out of office, executive order from Bruce Babbitt. In one sense, Mecham was right. Certainly after Babbitt issued that order declaring a king holiday, the attorney general at the time, Bob Corbin said, huh-uh, that's not the way it works. You can't do that legally, if you allow the holiday, you're going to be personally liable for every state worker's salary. He said that before the election in which Mecham was elected. Mecham's biggest problem was the way he did it. Legally, he was on solid ground, but he did it in an adversarial manner. He seemed to enjoy repealing the holiday. Probably a more adept way of handling it would have been to come out and say, look, legally, I have to repeal the holiday, but I'm going to be the first one to sign a petition to get it on the ballot or I'm going to go down right now to the Legislature and tell them I want a king holiday. If he would have handled it that way, people would have been a lot more understanding than coming in and three days after taking office, signing this repeal saying, I've repealed it, it's over with.

MICHAEL GRANT: Bruce Babbitt had been in office for 8 years. As you indicated, this was almost one of his last acts going out the door, shortly before the election, if I recall.

MARK FLATTEN: And he was running for president at the time.

MICHAEL GRANT: Was he creating a -- you refer to it as a legacy?

MARK FLATTEN: Well, I think he was. Babbitt was truly a supporter of the holiday, but I mean, let's face it. He did declare an executive order the first year of his term or the second or the third or the fourth or the fifth. He declared an executive order as he was running for president almost literally as he was walking out the door, to carry on his campaign for president.

MICHAEL GRANT: in 1990, you've got the two competing ballot propositions, very confusing on how we ended up with that.

MARK FLATTEN: You know, part of the reason this was a six-year fight was the ineptness of the people in the legislature and some frankly, some of the supporters of the holiday. What happened was they finally got their act together and they passed a bill that went to Mofford that I believe replaced Columbus Day. Of course, the Italian Americans didn't like that, and you add that group to the people already opposed to the holiday and they were able to get a referendum and put it on the ballot. The legislature said we'd pass our own referendum. Well, there was nothing to repeal the original bill. So the attorney general's office said, no, you can't just, you know, supersede this one. You've got to put them both on the ballot. It created a lot of confusion, split the vote, probably, I don't know if that's what killed it. There were a lot of other outside factors that killed it. One of which, I noticed in the package they talked about the boycotts and the NFL. I think that did as much to kill the original vote as anything. In fact, there was a great bumper sticker at the time when the NFL said they were not going to NFL, go to hell and play the super bowl there. And it created this anger that outsiders were coming in. the following election, they ran a low-key, they told the NFL stay out of it and they were successful.

MICHAEL GRANT: I don't think it really is possible -- I do think you had some built in things working against the 90 proposals, as you have indicated, including but not limited to the split of the yes vote, depending on which model you preferred and, of course, a solid constituency against not being split, but I don't think you can overestimate the impact, really, that the comments from the NFL made a lot of people, even supporters of the holiday, felt that that was border line, if not clear, extortion.

MARK FLATTEN: It created a great deal of resentment, and the supporters of the holiday learned after that experience, they quietly told the NFL at the time, look, just stay out of it, let us run our campaign. They didn't try to - they essentially changed their tactic. Instead of this high profile, boycotts, we're going to draw national attention, they ran a quiet low-key campaign and that's what ultimately proved successful, because the '90 campaign with the NFL and the boycotts, I'm not sure how much economic impact they had, yeah, there were a lot of conventions that cancelled, but those hotel rooms were immediately booked back up because phoenix in the winter time is also going to be full. But they created a great deal of backlash. What had become an emotional issue, and an issue that people were getting rather tired of, by the time it did pass, I think there were a lot of people, too, that just said, you know, it's inevitable, let's pass it, let's pass it quietly, let's not make a lot of fanfare.

MICHAEL GRANT: And in 1992, this six-year story came to an end. Mark Flatten, always a pleasure. Thanks. For information about the future "Horizon" segments, or to share your opinion about tonight's program, please visit KAET's web site at www.kaet.sau.edu. Click on "Horizon" and follow the links. Tomorrow on "horizon," October is Domestic Violence Awareness month. We'll talk about the problem and efforts to find solutions. That's tomorrow on Wednesday's edition of "Horizon." Thanks very much for joining us on this Tuesday evening. I'm Michael Grant. Have a great one. Good night.