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November 26, 2002

Host: Michael Grant
Topics:
A post-election analysis of Clean Elections;
An update on restoraton efforts for San Xavier del Bac mission, Arizona's " White Dove of the Desert."
In-Studio Guests:
Gene Lemon, a Clean Elections commissioner;
Representative Steve Tully, who ran as a Clear Elections candidate;
Tom Liddy, an attorney with the Iinstitute for Justice

>> Michael: Tonight on "Horizon", clean elections helped Janet Napolitano and several others win, but the public financing of campaigns was not without its problems. A look back at the role clean elections played in this fall's campaign and the changes that may need to be made. Good evening, I'm Michael Grant. 247 people ran for state office this year. Of those, slightly more than half, 139, ran campaigns using public funding. 39 clean elections candidates won office on November 5. Clean election candidates spent almost $13 million this election cycle. A total of five candidates for governor spent a combined $6.9 million. Candidates for other statewide offices spent $2.6 million. Legislative candidates spent $3.3 million. This is the first time clean elections was used for a statewide cycles and a Paul Atkinson shows us, it had its successes and failures.

>> Paul Atkinson: YURI downing runs the editorial of a night life magazine called 944 and thanks to clean elections he ran for the district 17 state seat occupied by Harry Mitchell of Tempe.

>> Yuri Downing: Anybody who has a ground base of support can run for public office. For the first time ever in Arizona certainly anyone can have an equal playing field with anyone else. The old money doesn't matter. You can run for office and get your views out there.

>> Paul Atkinson: Downing ran as a Libertarian and took the road less traveled against his veteran political opponents.

>>Yuri Downing: I realized going into the campaign if I had done the -- what the traditional campaigning f I had gone out and tried to deliver a message as a Democrat or Republican in a rice so highly contested, there was very little chance of getting my message out. So what I did is I went after the non-traditional voter, the disenfranchised voter, so to speak.

>> Paul Atkinson: He got just 4% of the vote in a three-way race but downing considers his campaign a success.

>> Yuri Downing: I'm happy there was a very high voter turnout. I think next time I will do some things differently. I think we had an over 60% increase in Libertarian voter registration in my district which was a heck of a goal. Heck of an accomplishment, I think.

>> Wes Gullett: There were more people involved in this election financially than ever before. By far more contributors in this election cycle. Now, they were giving $5 instead of $500 and I think that that's a good thing.

>> Paul Atkinson: Political consultant Wes Gullett thinks clean elections is a major reason why 56% of registered voters went to the polls this year compared to 45% last time we elected a governor.

>>Wes Gullett: We had 10% more people vote in the general election in this election cycle than we had four years ago. I have a hard time arguing with that. That's what we want. We want more people to vote and more competition with candidates. Paul Atkinson: The number of candidates increased, but so, too, to the number of concerns about clean elections. Janet Napolitano credits clean elections with allowing her to focus on the issues instead of raising money, where special interests have always played a role. But special interests did play a role. Unions collected many of the Napolitano's $5 qualifying contributions. In the TV ads for and against candidates were funded by special interests whose money was funneled through political parties into independent expenditures.

>>Darcy Olsen: As long as we have politics and as long as we have politicians with a lot of power, we will have people trying to curry favor with them. These sorts of efforts, clean elections, has not been able to eliminate or even -- or even Emile rate some of these problems. We just saw the shift in special interest from here to here to here.

>> Our next governor, Matt Salmon!

>> Paul Atkinson: The reporting requirements under clean elections got Republican gubernatorial candidate Matt Salmon in trouble. At issue was his reporting of campaign expenditures when they were paid for instead of incurred. But it was the commission's handling of the matter of troubled many political observers.

>> Tim Casey: The commission staff violated a number, a number of their own internal rules about making public announcements, judging cases, prejudging cases. Their clean elections director is out control. And what we have is a very biassed and prejudiced governmental agency that whether deliberately or not is influencing elections.

>> Paul Atkinson: YURI downing is the latest target of clean elections. He and two friends who ran as Libertarian candidates will be the subject of an audit. At issue is the hiring of YUI's brother, including other expenses, including meals at restaurants and nightclubs.

>> Yuri Downing: I think the clean elections commission and the administrative staff is doing a very good job of trying to apply what might be some very vague rules. I don't resent what the odd -- the audit they brought upon me. I think quite frankly now upon reflection, I any everyone should be audited. I think we should be forced to provide or required to provide as much informations the public would be happy to have about the race we are running.

>> Paul Atkinson: Recommendations to improve clean elections will be made to lawmakers next year. But the future of publicly funded campaigns in Arizona may be in doubt. Congressman Jeff flake and others plan on a ballot initiative in 2004 to end what they call a costly experiment. Wes Gullett: What we need to do is we need to tweak the system, make it better, do it -- use it a couple more times, and if we have the incredible success that we had this time, people misunderstand, they think there is something wrong with clean elections because there was some controversy. The intended effect was to increase competition and to increase voter turnout, and it had that effect. We shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water.

>> Michael: Joining me for a post-election analysis of clean elections is Gene Lemon a clean elections commissioner. Representative Steve Tully ran as a clear elections candidate. And also Tom Liddy, an attorney with the institute for justice. Mr. Liddy is a critic of clean elections. Gene, what do you think? This was the first full statewide cycle for clean elections, public financing, whatever you want to call it. Disaster or great success?

>> Gene Lemon: Well, let me say first, I'm glad it's over. We believe from the queries of the candidates and the like that we met candidates' he can expectations. We certainly, as you pointed out h some winners and we had an active campaign and competition.

>> Michael: The good or the bad expectations?

>> Gene Lemon: Right. We met candidates' expectations in terms of funding and so the system, as awkward and complicated and cumbersome as it is, the system did work for this election. Now, I should say first that we are happy with the voter fees and the candidate debates, and particularly Channel 8's participation in the statewide race debates you all did. There are some pluses to this. Certainly the disappointments all come on the enforcement side, I would say. We had 73 cases opened of the 250 candidates --

>> Michael: That's 25%.

>> Gene Lemon: One in every four candidates, and of the 73 there were 40 Republican candidates, 30 Democrat candidates and three others. The -- mostly those arose from non-participating candidates, people that were not receiving clean elections money, but they have to file a very burdensome and complicated reports and they are not intuitive. It's hard to get them right, even if you know what you're doing.

>> Michael: Steve, I think you're probably going to be a middle ground here. You ran as a clean elections, publicly financed candidate. Did they meet your expectations?

>> Steve Tully: Sure. Yeah. I received over 50,000 -- I received a little less than $50,000 in clean elections. I ran in probable eat most expensive house race -- I am sure it was the most expensive house race. One of the candidates spent 126,000, the other over 80,000. I didn't get nearly as much as they had.

>> Michael: We are doing a program later how Steve Tully did it, but seriously, you're not a complete supporter, though, of clean elections?

>> Steve Tully: Well, yeah, there's obviously problems out there that I see with the program. Just in the -- not in my race particularly, but in the governor's race I saw problems with the way that they -- the matching funds for third party -- for independent expenditures were paid out. I think that was a problem. I know that there were problems with reporting from various candidates. Certainly the fact that there was a controversy as to how the accounting should be done is itself a problem. When there can be a reasonable debate whether you do it accrual or a cash basis of accounting. Of course, if you can do an accrual basis of accounting, then you can game the system and pay at the very -- somebody gives you terms of 30 day terms, what if somebody wants to give you 60 or 90-day terms and you say, you only have to report when you pay, you know, that would eviscerate the system.

>> Michael: Tom, I think your basic position is let's call the whole thing off.

>> Tom Liddy: The position of the institute for justice is that the funding mechanisms for it aren't constitutional. We won a court battle at the Court of Appeals and lost at the Arizona State Supreme Court and we hope to be on the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, to deal with that issue, whether the funding mechanism allowed to tax just people who get fined and force them to participate in public speech, whether that's constitutional. That's one issue. The institute for justice doesn't take a position on whether it's smart policy or not. But certainly the issue is out there that at a time when we have budget deficits, when teachers don't have enough money for their training or their school supplies that the first money that comes off goes to politicians to communicate their message, when they could otherwise raise it from their friends, family and supporters. That's the first threshold. The best way to look at the success of the act is to look at what it was intended to do, and it was intend to do increase participation and add more voices to the race, and it was intended to do away with corruption or the appearance of corruption. Well, let's take the latter first. The special interests that have always been involved in politics, because, after all, it's industries, economic liberties and other political freedoms that are being regulated by the government, in a system where the people govern themselves, obviously they want to have some say in the system and if making a political contribution is one aspect of communicating a message, which the court has held that it is, then obviously there's going to be people involved in that. But the special interests are now, rather than writing $700 checks, they're running around the alleys of Phoenix collecting up 20, 30, 40 five dollar bills, the accompanying forms, handing them to the incumbents and the only difference is that's no longer publicly known. It used to be you wrote a check, it was publicly known.

>> Michael: What do you think of that, Steve? What do you think about that? The argument is, hold it, if an organization can put 100 people on the ground to collect $5 and turns in a thousand or $1500 to a gubernatorial candidate, that gives you just as much clout with that candidate if elected as if you wrote them a $100,000 check. Maybe more clout.

>> Steve Tully: Maybe more. They are hard to get. So, yeah, you're right. If an organization can go gather those things for you, there's been allegations the unions did for Janet, then certainly that would buy you a lot of clout.

>> Michael: Did we oversell that aspect of wringing special interests out of the election cycle.

>>Gene Lemon: I think so. I think what we have is lots of people out raising $5 contributions helping lots of candidates. There isn't any doubt that the political parties did it, the precincts, I think -- the precinct workers were more active this time than in years past.

>> Michael: Lobby?

>> Gene Lemon: Lobbyists, I think, with their associates still raise contributions, $5 contributions for candidates, and certainly union members and union leaders were doing the same thing. What I think, though, is that the more the merrier. I think that there were so many people raising so small contributions that you don't run much risk of a candidate being beholden to a particular special interest in this system.

>> Michael: What about, does it pull candidates out of the woodwork that really shouldn't be pulled out of the woodwork? I know that sounds like a very antipopulist opinion, but --

>> Tom Liddy: I certainly would never take that position. I don't think the empirical data is out to answer that question yet. We are off a year of reapportionment. Every year you have to are do the districts. We also have the real heart of the term limits kicking into Arizona now where you have people term limited out. Those two together combine to have an awful lot of open seats for people to run in. So we have a lot more candidates, which is expected every ten years. So the fact that this is the first time we had the clean elections publicly funded candidates available doesn't necessarily mean that's why there are so many additional candidates. But I would never take a position that someone shouldn't run.

>> Michael: Steve, without minimizing your position it's tough to gather the $5 contributions, because I know it is, is, for example, with the legislative office, is that threshold too low? I mean, do you -- should it be higher so that a candidate really has to be serious in order to make that run?

>>Steve Tully: If you get 200 of those from your district, which we had to do last time, you're a serious candidate. They're hard to get. Maybe it's just because in my district we had multiple incumbents running so the precinct committee men didn't want to get involved it in but there were no lobbyists collecting for me and no precinct committeemen collecting for me. It was myself running around gathering them. I think that was the case for a lot of candidates. I think if you went to candidates, you would see Republican candidates not just for the legislature, but for state races grabbing anybody they could by the collar and saying, here, you know, you got to give me five bucks, sign this, give me five bucks. They're tough to get.

>> Michael: In fact, Alfredo told me early on, I asked him how it was going, he said fine, but this clean elections thing is weird, hi, I'm Alfredo Gutierrez, I'm running for governor, can I have five bucks, and they think your panned handling.

>>Tom Liddy: Next year in Washington they'll be asking for $2,000.

>> Michael: Gene, another issue that came up, are the spending, the amounts allocated spending too low, particularly not for the governor's race but for races like Secretary of State? Obviously the highest profile one was the Jaime Molera-Tom Horne primary battle where Horne outspent Molera four or five to one. It's not a lot of money to run a statewide campaign.

>> Gene Lemon: A statewide race, that's exactly right. I think I would say that the money is adequate to enable a candidate to present a candidacy and a message, particularly if it's a contested race and there are matching funds provided, so that you can get up to three times the base amount. I think that the equalizing is not necessarily the be all and end all that people assume it is. I think that if you have enough money to present your candidacy and your message, the fact that someone has spent quite a lot more isn't all that important.

>> Michael: Steve, you obviously were outspent a lot. Did the match -- was the level and the match sufficient? I mean, obviously you won, so --

>>Steve Tully: It was in my case. Of course, mine was a district. I could walk a lot and make a lot of personal contacts. I don't think -- I didn't run for state office, but I don't think that the statewide, for some of the lower races, it is sufficient, because you can't do what I did, which was a real hard grass roots campaign for commissioner -- you know, a Corporation Commissioner. So if you don't have already name I.D., you buy these little signs and that's about it for statewide race with -- I don't know how much they gave them. It wasn't much. Maybe one mailer.

>> Gene Lemon: That's a good point. We gave Terry Goddard $215,000. We gave Andy Thomas $402,000. So Andy had quite a lot more money. But Terry started with more name recognition, at least in Maricopa County.

>> Tom Liddy: I would also disagree with the amount of money. The amount of money that a candidate needs to communicate his political message, more than just his name I.D., is dependent upon the number of voters and the number of voters out there, potential votes for somebody running for governor is the same as for somebody running for Corporation Commissioner or treasurer or Attorney General. The amount of is money is dependent on what the printing cars is, postage is. The Post Office doesn't charge you less if you are running for treasurer than they do if you're running for governor. So there's reaaly no reason why the amount should be higher for governor and less than others. And it favors someone as an incumbent or somebody with name I.D. or Terry Goddard, or Janet Napolitano had statewide name I.D. with Matt Salmon only represented one congressional district and it's really not a system that's equitable. There needs to be an adjustment if they are going to keep a law.

>> Michael: Commission biassed? There were two allegations made. Commission biassed against Republicans? Commission biassed against people not running clean?

>> Gene Lemon: The answer to that is no. There is no credible evidence of any bias on the part of the staff, and certainly there is no bias on the part of the commissioners, the two Republicans, two Democrats and an independent.

>> Michael: Did the Matt Salmon audit undermine that, though?

>> Gene Lemon: I am sure that any candidate that had to go through the investigatory process thought that someone is out to get him or out to get her and I think that's the basic place where the story starts, and there is no evidence that there was --

>> Michael: Any disagreement?

>> Tom Liddy: I wouldn't say there is any evidence of an actual bias. I wasn't working on the Matt Salmon campaign, I don't know how they feel. They should speak for themselves. I will say this, under the federally election campaign act the staff members are prohibited from publicly disclosing any of the initial phase of any investigation until the staff has -- has gotten through phase one, made a recommendation to the federally election commission that they need to have further investigation, and the commission finds that there's a reason to believe there was a violation, then it becomes public. A staff member holding a press conference saying we're going to investigate Matt Samson wholly inappropriate.

>> Gene Liddy: Tom makes an excellent point. The law should have in it a confidentiality just like the county attorney has during investigation.

>> Michael: We're out of time. Gene Lemon, thank you much for joining us. Steve Tully, appreciate the input. Tom Liddy, appreciate the input.

>>> Michael: Restoration efforts have been under way at the San Xavier Mission near Tucson for the last decade. Sooyeon Lee has an update on how things are shaping up at the Mission affectionately called "The White Dove of the Desert."

>> Reporter: San Xavier del Bac is no ordinary church. It's an important part of Tucson's history, tradition and identity. Founded over 200 years ago, the mission is still active.

>>Man in Church: This church is so many different places. It's, of course, a functioning parish church for the village and for the larger population who lives around who comes here regular Sunday mass.

>> Reporter: But over the years, the church started to give in to the severe desert weather. In 1978, some concerned Tucsonans formed a group to save the church.

>>Bernard Fontana: We had the realization that the Franciscans who administer the church's affairs here had other things to spend money on rather than upkeep of the building itself. Because they're far more involved with the social needs of the community than they are with the artifacts, if you will.

>> Reporter: Anthropologist Dr. Bernard Fontana has devoted more than 40 years studying the mission.

>> Bernard Fontana: In 1989, plaster started falling off the wall in the sanctuary and we discovered it was soaking wet so moisture was getting into the building both from leakage from the roof as well as being sucked up through the walls around the foundations opinion at that point, then, the Patronato became galvanized and we began the fund raising campaign to address the serious problems, both with the physical structure and eventually with the art on the inside of the building.

>> Loraine Drackman: The biggest problem was raising the money, of course.

>> Reporter: Lorraine Drackman is the executive director of the group.

>> Loraine Drackman: The Patronato had ever been a fund raising organization because nobody on the board wanted to do. They knew they had to, that was critical, because those Europeans that came to do the work every year for six years in a row were very expensive and they are the world's best.

>> Reporter: Major restoration began in 1992. The interior conservation was completed in 1997. But that's not the end of the story.

>> Big Jim Griffith: If you go in for a major operation, you don't just go to the doctor, say I'm better, that's it. You have to go back for recheck, whatever, take your medication, and that's what we're doing, giving the church another dose of medication.

>> Reporter: For O'Odham Tim Lewis, this is the homecoming. He spends most of his time in Europe his conservator partner and wife Matilda.

>> Man: Right now we are doing more or less preventive maintenance or maintenance to check and see if there is any faults or if any -- anything is coming loose, any of the flakes or chips are coming loose again, because it's been ten years since we did the last restoration. So I think it's time to do the upkeep, and so that's all we're doing basically, just checking. Checking mainly the east for now. Maybe next year we'll do the west.

>>Bernard Fontana: The important thing about the conservation work that's taking place in the building is literally that, the idea is to conserve what's here. It's not to put back things that are lost. It's not to create anything that's new. And the problem, of course, is that this building, like any building, is almost like a living, breathing thing. It expands and contracts with the heat and the cold. The job of conserving a place like this is one that's simply never ending. And if it's going to last for the next 500 years, it's going to require upkeep for the next 500 years.

>> Reporter: And that costs a lot of money.

>>Loraine Drackman: Yes, it's tough. It's also tough to raise money for historic preservation. The reason is, you know, everybody realizes that health issues, children's issues, educational issues take priority over historic preservation. But the good news is that after eight or nine years, we have been able, as a board, to have a nice foundation of donors. They really value its importantance and they don't want to see Tucson without mission san Xavier. We all have only one goal by being a member of the Patronato, and that's to make sure san Xavier outlives all of us and is here to enrich the lives of the children and grandchildren and on down the hiss -- the generations to come, because it certainly has enriched our lives and we want to make sure it's here to do that for future lives.

>> Reporter: The restoration is a journey of faith, for both the O'odham and the Patronato.

>> Michael: Tomorrow on "Horizon", Arizona Supreme Court justice Ruth McGregor interviews her mentor, United States Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Thanks for joining us tonight. I'm Michael Grant. Have a pleasant one. Good night.