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Transcripts

November 5, 2002

Host: Michael Grant
Topics:
Election night coverage
In-Studio Guests:
Political analysts Democrat Bob Grossfeld and Republican Chuck Coughlin

>> Michael: Good evening. Welcome to a special edition of "Horizon." I'm Michael Grant. Tonight we bring you results and analysis of Arizona's general election as we find out who our next governor will be and which Indian gaming proposition, if any of them, gets voter approval. The program tonight scheduled to run for one hour, however, in light of the tight raise expected we are prepared to be on the air longer if need be. Here to talk about the results, several other things, is Chuck Coughlin, Republican political analyst from the political consulting firm high ground. Also here tonight is Bob Grossfeld a democratic political analyst from the political consulting firm, the media guys. And, of course, elections, election 2002 being no exception, is all about results that. Let's go immediately to the results we have for you starting with the governor's race, which was expected to be tight and the early returns are showing -- actually, this is the Secretary of State's race. So let's jump slightly out of sequence. You can see Jan Brewer is leading that race 50% to 46%. If we can roll it back to pick up the governor slide, Janet Napolitano with 46%, 45% edge on Matt Salmon, 72% of the precincts reporting. A gross vote lead of about 8,000 in a universe of about 800,000 or so. Moving onto superintendent of public instruction, Tom Horne right now leading Jay Blanchard by four points. 68% of the precincts reporting in that race. In the race for Attorney General, Terry Goddard is now leading Andrew Thomas by a point, about 11,000 votes, however, that has narrowed in the past 15, 20 minutes. In the race for Corporation Commissioner, there are two two-year seats at stake as the Corporation Commission expands from three seats to five. You can see the two Republicans, hatch miller and Gleason, are leading the two Democrats at this point in time. Cunningham and James. Then in the race for the four-year term Corporation Commission, that is a race between incumbent Jim Irvin and challenger Jim Walsh, if we can get that one called up. Apparently we can't. Let's go to proposition 200 now. These, of course, the gaming propositions. Not unexpectedly proposition 200 sponsored by the Colorado River Tribe is going down about four to one. Proposition 201 has been sponsored by the racetracks. That also is going down about four to one. But somewhat surprisingly, proposition 202 -- now, we were checking this result earlier. I am advised that that result is wrong. Chuck, you have that at 53% yes and 47% --

>> Chuck Coughlin: Roughly 52-48 with about 63% of the pre-precincts reporting.

>> Michael: Proposition 203, this is the latest marijuana initiative, decriminalize it, also have the Department of Public Safety distribute so-called medical marijuana. Arizonans for the first time saying no to that proposition at this point in time. 53% to 47%. Of course, various forms of that have passed twice before. Now let's go up to the race for United States Congress district 1. That's the new district up in Northern Arizona, and Rick Renzi with a substantial lead over George Cordova, 58% to 36%. That has been one of 10 or 12 key races in the Congress as Democrats tried to take from the Republicans but they clearly are not getting that job done at the current time in U.S. house CD-1. In CD-2 in the Valley's west side and over to Kingman, Trent Franks, the Republican candidate with 59%, Randy Camacho trailing with 38%. And we're going to keep track of some key legislative districts focussing on the 15/15 split which currently exists in the state Senate. House speaker Jim Weiers looking to move from the house over to the Senate. As you can see, he's leading democratic challenger Judy Kennedy by about 9 points at this point in time but only 20% of those precincts reporting in on the west side. In Senate district 12, I believe, is the next one that we'll call up. That is where Blendu is also seeking to go over to the Senate against Peter Mahoney. Blendu, I think you indicated, was leading.

>> Chuck Coughlin: He is. He has about a 1200-vote margin at this time with 92% of the votes counted.

>> Michael: Let's cycle back to the governor's race. I think the two of you have thing that appeal to you in those results from a very partisan standpoint. Bob, I think you think Matt Salmon did not get the bounce off the early ballots that he had to get, right?

>>Bob Grossfeld: No, clearly. When the -- the early ballots came in, it was immediately, I think, obvious to anybody who had been closely following it. There had been reports probably for the last two weeks or so the polling among those who had voted early was showing about a 50-50 split. However, the number of ballots going out were about 3-2 in favor of going to Republicans. So it was clearly an indication of a crossover vote for Napolitano when we started to see the numbers come out.

>> Michael: Particularly key perhaps among Republican women polling was show young a significant gender gap in Janet Napolitano's favor?

>>Bob Grossfeld: Absolutely. And if you add to that the difficulties that Republicans -- moderate Republican women ran into within the Republican primary, it made them a very vulnerable group, and very vulnerable for an attractive Democrat to come in and pull them over and it looks like she did that.

>> Michael: Now, Chuck, I think your take on this is about 85% or more of Pima County, the traditional democratic stronghold in the state, is in, significant parts of Maricopa County remain to be counted, it's narrow race and you think Matt Salmon's got some life.

>>Chuck Coughlin: Well, a couple things. There's a lot of late ballots that have been returned and Matt had a good trend line at the end of the campaign with closing up the race. Bob's absolutely right that traditionally speaking Republicans have won early ballots two to one and in a traditional election I would say that would be cause for grave concern. I don't necessarily share that in this cycle. I am not trying to be overly optimistic but I am saying with the late ballots -- this election matured very late. There's still a good number of absentee ballots out. The line late in the game was that those ballots were going Matt' way. Additionally you have Mohave County still not in, you have a good chunk of Maricopa County still not in, and it's not a comfortable margin given what she has. If it was a wider margin, I'd say it would be comfortable, but I think we're going to be looking at this thing for quite a while.

>> Michael: Everyone kept wondering who Dick Mahoney hurt. We just saw the stats, Bob, 7% or so. I heard theories on both sides, that he was pulling equally from Sam un and Napolitano, no, he's hurting Napolitano slightly more. Do you have a theory on that?

>> Bob Grossfeld:I think the best theory is he hurt himself more than anybody else. But the -- the very early polling, even Dr. Merrill's polling, was showing that he was pulling from the Republicans, and I haven't seen a whole lot that has changed over the course of the campaign. There was some ebb and flow and he went up and down and started appealing in different ways, but I think at the end of the day we're going to seep he principally hurt Salmon -- see that he principally hurt Salmon. The idea that he was a Democrat running -- at least a former Democrat running against a Democrat just vanished. He is no long ear Democrat. I don't think anybody was thinking that he was.

>> Michael: Let me move down the ballot to Secretary of State. Why don't we call up the latest results on that. Chris Cummiskey had been leading in that race. Jan Brewer, the last statistics we saw and indeed these results showing currently, had taken back over. Chuck, as you move deeper down the ballot, party loyalties tend to attach. You reading this result as any different than that?

>> Chuck Coughlin: No, I think as we get down the ballot, Republicans are staying home more consistently than they did with the more visible race in the governor's office. I think the thing we need to remember here is our first cycle through with clean elections. The democratic party spent an inordinate amount of money supporting their nominee for governor and they also, interestingly enough, spent a great deal of money on Mr. Cummiskey's race. Apparently, though, there's a lot of things you could say, I think voters traditionally look at that race as a female office holder. It's traditionally been held by female office holders, the exception being Mr. Mahoney I think was the last male to own that race. I think voters are traditionally comfortable with a female in that office. The other thing Mrs. Brewer had going forker in this race, she came to the race with a solid constituency. She had a real good record on the west side of representing a good part of -- good chunk of Maricopa County on the board of supervisors, and that translated, I think, well into good solid support statewide and not enough money to undermine it.

>> Michael: Bob, one of the other things that I think Democrats did very well this election cycle is they limited their primary battles. They picked candidates. They did marshal resources. And certainly in Chris Cummiskey's case, he has been running for this office for two years or so.

>> Bob Grossfeld: He's been certainly building a credible record and public persona from which to run. The thing, Michael, I'm see young now is what appears to be at least, what,:45, what is a pretty clear indication of either -- depending on how you want to look at it, either an absolute rejection of Salmon in favor of Napolitano or just this massive crossover for Napolitano, because you look at the rest of the ballot at the top positions, they're all leading now, if not starting to pull ahead for Republicans.

>>Chuck Coughlin: There's no spin to be had here, because all votes are in, but Yuma is still out, a good chunk of Maricopa is still out and Mohave is still out. Those are traditionally good solid Republican places. And there's a good chunk of, as we pointed out earlier, a good chunk of late absentee ballots in Maricopa County out. The margin on the screen right now is 13,000 votes.

>> Michael: What about Bob's, I think, core point, which is hold it, you have some Rs further down the ballot that are clearly doing better than Matt Salmon is doing at the top.

>> Chuck Coughlin: Let's look what happened in Matt's race and there's a lot to talk about, but Matt was outspent in this race with the contributions of the democratic party nearly two to one in ads, advocacy ads on behalf of the firefighters, on behalf of the democratic party, advocacy ads on behalf of Janet herself. Matt had to spend a good deal of his money fund raising. I think if Matt had to go back, I have hadn't an opportunity to talk about this, I'm sure we'll have an opportunity, if he had to look at that clean elections decision again, Matt is a guy who has made his choice on principle, he made his choice on principle I wasn't going to run on taxpayer money but it was clearly a handicap in this race to him. Spent about a third of his money fund raising and then ended up getting outgunned by the 2.5 million that the party chairman and I'm not blaming him for that, not one of these guys that says that's bad thing, Jim Peterson threw the democratic party on his back and he is trying to carry it over the goal line. He may end up for a governor.

>> Bob Grossfeld: But it's too late for spin.

>> Chuck Coughlin: That's true. The voters can look at the numbers themselves. I think this thing is going to tighten up dramatically.

>> Michael: If he hadn't made that decision it does seem to me that a decision to run in a publicly financed campaign would be so inconsistent with the certain core principles that I think lot of people associate with Matt Salmon, that would have opened him up for an election issue all itself.

>> Bob Grossfeld: Except for the fact they might make that association now, but they didn't then. Back then nobody really knew him. He was just another short-term member of Congress who didn't have a particularly illustrious career other than a flare-up when he thought Gingrich was leaning too far to the center. But back then --

>> Chuck Coughlin: I don't think that was it but we'll let it go. Center of his body, maybe --

>> Bob Grossfeld: But at that time -- at that time he could have carved out a position any which way. There were plenty of Republican candidates, as a matter of fact, most of them, accepting clean elections.

>> Michael: Would his core constituency has been as enthusiastic for him --

>> Bob Grossfeld: They probably would have been enthusiastic enough to get him through the primary, and then he would have had a relatively even playing field if you assume that there was --

>> Chuck Coughlin: What I see on those kind of decisions is, you know, we make a big deal out of it in our discussions about whether -- how much money somebody takes or whether it's a clean candidate or a traditional -- it falls way down thar scale of interest. I mean, traditionally, God bless John McCain for making it an issue, but he really has thrown that issue on his back and made it an issue and particularly in Arizona it's been an issue, but generally speaking, voters care about education, voters care about security, voters care about healthcare, voters care about their tacks, voters care about, you know, protecting those can that least protect themselves. Way down the list, transportation is even above election funding issues. So it may be a compromising decision to be made in a primary, but I think he, like Carol Springer, talk about somebody who walked away from a principle, and chose to run that way, but I don't think it would have really hurt him that much in the primary.

>> Michael: Let's go to Attorney General. Is Andrew Thomas too conservative to scramble back sufficiently to the middle to win a general election?

>> Chuck Coughlin: I'm telling you, I am legitimately surprised by Andy's run tonight. I will say that. I will tell you that with the aforementioned votes that are still out in Maricopa, Yuma and Mohave, I'm going to tell you that that race is going to change and I think Andy Tom us is going to end up on top of that thing.

>> Michael: Something, Bob, does seem to be happening there. Certainly all the polls -- I think the closest one I had seen had shown Terry up by 5 points. That's not 5 points that we're seeing.

>>Bob Grossfeld: No, and I think that's consistent with what we're seeing with the rest of the statewide offices. I mean, a very clear decision to vote either not for Salmon or, I think, probably vote for Napolitano, and then everybody then went back to the parties so far. At least that's -- I don't see any other way of explaining it with the exception of the mine inspector unless that number changed. .

>> Michael: Same explanation for superintendent of public instruction. Tom Horne leading the last time I saw it.

>> Bob Grossfeld: Now starting to see with that Secretary of State. The Corporation Commission for both sets of terms. These are starting to look like party line votes with just some rare exceptions.

>> Michael: Let's go to some of the --

>>Chuck Coughlin: I just thought of something else, Michael. District 5, which is the Northern Arizona, at least on the house side, is not reporting at all -- or on the Senate side. That's the would-be speaker of the house Jay flake's districts, which again you would count that Northern Arizona rim area as a heavy Republican area. There was a chance of a democratic pickup there, but we'll see how that plays out during the night but people need to continue to look at that district 5 race up there and watch how that impacts the overall race.

>> Michael: Let's go to the propositions, most notably the gaming propositions, and let's make a disclaimer, Chuck, that obviously you were --

>> Chuck Coughlin: I come to the table with some bias.

>> Michael: You were very deeply involved in proposition 201. 200 and 201 just seem coming in precisely the the polls had been indicating the --

>> Chuck Coughlin: Fairly closely. We knew when we got into this race it was an uphill climb. I will tell you the thing that surprised me and that was the decision on the part of the 17 tribe coalition to go negative early on in the race in September. We came up with our Joe Arizona spots, and 200, and it was clear to us that we had a lot of ground to make up. They made a decision, a tactical decision, which I think was a mistake, and that was to go negative on us, which prevented them from moving their own number up. You'll see now that 202 is at 51-49. The other flip of that coin is that by going negative on us, they allowed us to get critical of them and we all know that the top vote getter, 50% plus one was always going to be the one that was going to set stage.

>> Michael: Was the Arpaio ad in late September when 202 made that campaign vote for 202, vote no on 201 and 200.

>> Chuck Coughlin: The first contrast ad that was made during the campaign, it opened the door and they spent, as we all know, an inordinate amount of resources pushing and 201 down and we really never -- neither of those propositions were able to get a significant amount of traction.

>> Michael: Bob, the big question on the gaming propositions was, well, how are they going to impact other races, in particular the Salmon Napolitano race, and I don't know that we have enough data to start sorting through that answer.

>>Bob Grossfeld: Not yet. We have some preliminary anecdotal stuff and that's mostly the number of new voters they managed to get registered, and that's something in the order of 50,000, 55,000, as well as an enormous get out the vote effort and aimed at their constituency which they saw as a natural alliance with Democrats mostly.

>> Michael: One of the concerns was, though, of course, the Navajo nation is the largest tribe however, the Navajo nation has voted down bringing that casinos to that reservation. So even though more were registered, the issue was, is perhaps some significant amount of that constituency not very motivated to go to the polls?

>>Bob Grossfeld: I don't think so. And the reason for that is that there was a bonding, if you will, among the various tribes about what was good for them on a statewide basis and across tribes. Clearly with the exception of the Colorado groups. . I think there was an incredible level of solidarity between the Navajos and the gaming tribes, if you would. They weren't going to block it, clearly and I think they were principally pretty supportive of it, and certainly were supportive of the goals and the objectives that they were trying to get to.

>> Michael: Chuck, let me cycle back to one last question that sort of picks up the theme with the negative campaigns. A lot of people scratching their heads, and here you can be kind of a disinterested but obviously well informed observer, scratching their heads over the Colorado River strategy both in putting a competing proposal on the ballot against the 17 tribes 202 and as well -- they really came out in the last two, three weeks with guns blazing on vote no on 202. What's the strategy there?

>> Chuck Coughlin: Well, I think that you can not discount the legitimate discontent that was contained within the tribal leadership at the Colorado River Indian tribe over their exclusion from the table. They had a point of view, the point of view essentially was we didn't want to share any resources with the state. They wanted to maintain a pure tribal sovereignty relationship with the state, and they saw that the other tribal governments were willing to compromise on that issue. They did not feel that was legitimate. That was the first disembar indication point, I would say the second one and the one that made a difference in this race is when the 202 people decided to go negative on a fellow tribe. That was an icebreaker, and I think it caught the 200 people by really -- it was like a gut punch because they felt they were do the right thing, they felt some righteousness in their position, and then to be criticized by their fellow Native Americans, I think, just was hard to understand from their point of view and quite frankly from a tactical point of view I thought it was a huge mistake of 202 to criticize them.

>> Michael: Seems to me, though, that for both 200 and 201, the more you punch back, the deeper the hole you dug.

>> Chuck Coughlin: That was my point earlier. If they had gone up and sold their measure as the 17 tribe coalition, as the majority of Native Americans, the soft strings, the nice pictures and just stuck with that message, I think it would have driven their message a lot better. We been in a much more difficult position because we would have been criticized for the media for going negative on them if they had not gone negative on us. They went negative on both 201 and 200, laid the road up for us to go negative on them. The same issues which they lost at the legislature are the same issues on a philosophical sense that they're compromised on the ballot, that being the openness of their financial records and the duration of the compact. Both of those issues I can tell you, because I lobbied them down at the legislature, a majority of lawmakers found problematic. They felt that the books -- even people who supported the Native Americans their effort were hard-pressed. The republic who spent barrels of ink selling it said in their own he had tore annuals that they, too, were concerned -- it was not their favorite aspect of the proposition. And the duration of the compact, I think, people felt that it was too long at 23 years.

>> Michael: Bob, let's go up to Congressional District 1. George Cordova puts together a masterful primary campaign against some real giants up there, including Apache County attorney Steve Udall, comes out of the primary with a significant and I think somewhat surprising victory, including but not limited to those surprised, the democratic national committee, and hits a brick wall. What went wrong?

>> Bob Grossfeld: What's the name of the brick wall? Sounds like -- this is like a campaign -- it's like the S.S. minnow hit land and then it's like now what. They're stuck on their island, they can't get off of it. They were just plane outgunned. It was an incredibly high profile race. It was even before there were any candidates in it. I mean, as soon as it was carved out, because of the closeness of the majority in the house. As soon as, I suspect, as soon as the Republicans in Washington saw that it wasn't a Udall, it wasn't a Duval, one of the other probably more prominent Democrats winning, they just said, we can get this one. Let's go after it, and just poured it on.

>> Michael: Whereas the democratic party nationally, I don't know necessarily at the state level, couldn't seem to make up its mind. It first decides to walk away, then it commits resources, then I heard late in the campaign it pulled back some resources.

>> Bob Grossfeld: I think there was -- clearly some hesitation, and in the first week post primary there was obviously just shock and not knowing what to do. And in that week Republicans managed to get it together very quickly, cut the checks, get the people in, and took a guy who was doing a very credible kind of campaign to begin with and just boosted him on up and that's Renzi.

>> Michael: From that standpoint, I think the timing of President Bush's first visit was key.

>> Chuck Coughlin: The president was enormously helpful and I think what we'll see at the end of the night was that the president's visits around the country will have bolstered both their prospects in the U.S. Senate and strengthened their position in the house. And, I mean, if that was his goal, it was well done. And their timing out here post primary solidified Renzi as a real candidate after a pretty tough primary fight and gave him the resources that he needed to communicate that message. Cordova ran a great primary. He spent a year-and-a-half in houses on the Navajo reservation. It was a grass roots campaign but it needed to mature into something bigger and it never matured into that.

>> Michael: All right. Well, as promised, we will keep you up dated on the latest numbers from the Secretary of State's office, and let's take a look at the latest full set of election results right now. .

>> Michael: I'm Michael Grant. Welcome back. It's about seven minutes after 10:00 and I am joined by a couple of fine Republican and Democrat political consultants, Chuck Coughlin for the Rs and Bob Grossfeld for the Ds. Want to do a Haas race rundown. Indications are Democrats have had a little bit of a surge in the past 10, 15 minutes, which leads, Chuck, to my question, and one of the things that makes this much more an art than a sigh on election night, and that is the eternal question, where are the votes coming from? What information do you have for us?

>> Chuck Coughlin: I am looking at the Secretary of State's web page. Indicates that a good half of Apache County still out. That's the White Mountain area. Cochise County is completely out. That's Southern Arizona. The -- generally votes Democrat on state houses. We generally get a Republican out of there. But on statewide offices they generally go Republican. Coconino is about a third in. That would be Flagstaff. Navajo is not in at all. A large D stronghold. Yuma which traditionally -- has gone Republican recently is 11 of 41 precincts reporting or about 26%. 12 of 65 precincts, or only about 20% reporting.

>> Michael: Give me a Pima-Maricopa number.

>> Chuck Coughlin: Maricopa is 98 in and Pima is 94 in. So we've seen quite a bit of the activity that we're going to see out of those areas.

>> Michael: But, Bob, here is the joker in that stack, at least in the case of Maricopa County, there's a lot of early ballots that remain to be counted.

>> Bob Grossfeld: There might be as many as 150, 150,000 that are sitting in a box somewhere, secure with I would assume, that are just going to outweigh a whole lot of those other ballots in small areas that are not yet turned in. Now, what we've seen so far is the vote mail ballots seem to be favoring at the gubernatorial level, seem to be favoring Napolitano where they have a crossover of the pep votes. Of the roughly 385,000 that are coming in, there were about 3-2 -- sent from Republican voters. And so if that continues, that clearly is going to be more good news for Napolitano. When they get counted. Of course, Chuck doesn't believe that. But it may be a long night for him.

>> Chuck Coughlin: Right. My point on that score was, consist lent -- consistently the track numbers I was looking at which were both out of Washington, demonstrated that Matt was closing in the last few weeks. I would imagine those kind of trends also translaid into the early ballot audience. I would expect to see Matt do much better in the late early ballots, if one can say late early in the same sentence without sounding like a complete idiot.

>> Michael: And the answer is, we probably aren't going to know the answer in the next hour-and-a-half or two hours, because if we're dealing with a universe of 50,000 ballots, it's to take a while.

>> bob Grossfeld: That's the bad news. The good news is we don't have little pieces of Chad to deal with at all.

>> Michael: Let's run through the key races and bring you up to speed on how the picture looks right now. As you can see in the race for governor of Arizona, Janet Napolitano, the Democrat, with about a 14,000-vote lead on Matt Salmon, 46%-45%. I'm doing some rough math here. I guess I have maybe close to 900,000 votes cast. There's 2.2 million registered voters. The estimated turnout was roughly 50%.

>>Chuck Coughlin: South of that.

>> Michael: 48%. You would be expecting something maybe in the million-50, million-one total votes for the race. Would that indicate you still have perhaps that 150, 200,000 votes out. In the next race for Secretary of State Jan Brewer continues to lead Chris Cummiskey by two percentage points. Raw vote total of about 19,000 votes. That race has close add little bit in the past half hour. And the race for superintendent of public instruction, Tom Horne with about a 30,000 vote lead on Jay Blanchard, the Democrat, 50% to 46%. 81% of the precincts reporting statewide. In the race for Attorney General, Terry Goddard, the former Phoenix Mayor, 52% of the vote, Andrew Thomas 45% of the vote, and I believe Terry Goddard has picked up some votes in that race again over the past half hour. The race for state treasurer, David Petersen, Republican with 15, 17,000 votes on Ruth Solomon. 51%-49%. Again you see at the bottom of the screen, 81% of the precincts reporting. In the race for the two two-year Corporation Commission seats, these numbers have remained, I think, perfectly constant over the past hour. The two Republicans, hatch miller and Gleason, 28%-26%. Then the two Democrats, cunning him, Rollin James. Corporation Commission four-year term, Jim Irvin is the incumbent, the Republican. He has about 17,000 votes on former legislator Jim Walsh. Proposition 200, Colorado River gaming initiative going down -- I don't think I can multiply that fast. It looks about 6-1 to me. Handily is how we describe that. Proposition 201, Chuck is opening a vein at this point -- that's going down 80%-20%. That's only a four to one --

>>Chuck Coughlin: Appreciate that Michael.

>> Michael: And proposition 202, about 25,000 votes called, 52%-48%. It is the only one of the three that is succeeding at this point in time. And we'll cycle back perhaps to how that may look based upon where the votes are coming from. On the marijuana proposition, that is being fairly handily defeated by Arizona voters 57% 43% and I think we can safely call that one dead, which would be the first time in three tries that Arizonans have voted that proposition or form of it down. Moving back up to Northern Arizona, the race we were talking about just a few minutes ago, Rick Renzi, looks like he is well on his way to securing this seat in Congress, 54% to George Cordova's 41%. And in U.S. house CD 2, again, this was a hotly contested Republican primary, Trent Franks winning handily over Randy Camacho 59-38% in a district, which if recommend me serves, Republicans had about an 18 point registration advantage. Taking a look at some of the Senate district races, there had been some buzz late in the campaign that perhaps house speaker Jim Weiers was having some trouble moving over to the Senate. That does not appear to be the case. Right now he's got 9 percentage points on Judy Kennedy.

>>Chuck Coughlin: There was a lot of money spent in that race, and they were doing their best to move Ms. Kin deinto the ranks but doesn't appear to be working.

>> Michael: We have 98% of those precincts reporting. Senate district 12, again, this is a representative, blob Blendu, trying to move over to the Senate and right now, although the narrower margin than Jim Weiers, looks like he is succeeding in that effort against Peter Mahoney, the Litchfield Park city councilman, right, Bob? Senate district 17, good, we picked this one up. This was also considered a key race in the 15-15 split in the Senate. Incumbent Harry Mitchell, the former and, of course, very popular Mayor of Tempe, looks like he is quite handily defeating Laura Knaperek, who is attempting to make a move from the house to the Senate. Right now Harry Mitchell has a 10-point spread and about a 3,000-vote margin. 100% of those precincts reporting. Again, we caution, there are some early ballots remaining to be counted, but I would not expected sufficient early ballots to --

>>Chuck Coughlin: Looks like in the -- I believe f I'm doing my math right, that, and give me a break, I'm a liberal arts major, we're looking at a 17-13 Senate split with Republicans picking up one seat, holding onto the Blendu seat and Weiers moving over -- I believe that's the number. I would have to go back and do my math, but it's clearly 16-14 and maybe 17-13.

>> Michael: And, Bob, of course, it's very difficult to keep track of all the house races. There wasn't a whole lot of movement on the existing split, 36 Republican, 24 Democrat.

>> Bob Grossfeld: There might be some slight fluctuation, and we have talked about this before, because of the way the redistricting commission carved out the districts, most of these races are now coming in about where the voter registration split is. The -- the ones we just looked at, Harry Mitchell has run far beyond what the voter registration split is. That's only marginally -- it's not even democratic district. It's 51% to 49% Republican. So he managed to flip that around. The other ones are all Republican districts.

>> Michael: Chuck, if I recall, and I'm also a liberal arts major, but in the aftermath of redistricting, Republicans seemed to hold the edge on 18 of the districts, so actually if it ends up to be a 17-13 split in the Senate, it's somewhat of an underperforming trend by the GOP, although clearly a net gain from the 15-15 split.

>> Chuck Coughlin: When you have a statue of somebody in front of city hall, it's a little difficult to take him out. I think that would be the one where we would quote-unquote underform.

>> Michael: And Laura Knaperek lost a lot of her key base on the east side.

>>Bob Grossfeld: She lost a good part of the southern part of the Tempe and gained a northern part of -- a southern part of Scottsdale, which really was to Harry Mitchell's advantage and I think that's where -- we're seeing that tonight in some of the numbers.

>> Michael: Let's cycle back to the governor's race. Janet Napolitano -- have you been tracking trends there? Has that race moved significantly one way or the other in the past 45 minutes to an hour?

>>Bob Grossfeld: It has started to narrow a bit, but basically it's staying pretty much neck and neck. The thing that I keep looking at is the relationship between Napolitano over Salmon, for instance, right now at 46-45. Drop down to Secretary of State, Brewer, the Republican 49-47 over the Democrat Cummiskey. And on down the line. It's almost a party line flip. Clearly voting for -- or against at the top of the ticket and cherry picking their way down. At this point, I would not be at all surprised if at the end of the day we wind up with Napolitano and Goddard and Republicans taking all the rest of the statewide offices.

>> Chuck Coughlin: I would say it's a bit premature with those early ballots out. I would tell you that the Republican party under Sean noble's work and some other folks down there did an outstanding job of calling all those late Republican ballots today. If the trend line would continue, you would expect those late ballots to break Matt's way with the momentum and closeness of the campaign, Republicans tend to go home late in the campaign. So we're talking a 14,000-vote margin here and with 150 without -- I just checked, Mohave County is a little bit in. Yuma County still out. Navajo is still out. You may get a wash out in the rurals, I doubt it though, I think Matt will win in the rurals in those areas, and -- that margin is not sufficient if late ballots break Matt's way.

>> Michael: Our polls indicated, Bob, that Matt was performing well in the rural areas. But also indicated that Janet was doing better than you would normally expect in Maricopa County and, again, particularly with Republican women.

>>Bob Grossfeld: And, again, you know, none of us should be misled by the trends in the last two weeks of an election. They always narrow. If you're ahead, you always drop down a little bit. If you're behind in a close race,ier' always going to go up a little bit. By definition, it has to narrow because the undecideds go away. They either don't vote or make up their mind or do some other such thing. So this one is going to be close and we all knew that. It's a matter of at the end of the day where did the undecideds go, did they vote d they not vote, and I have no reason to believe that a targeted constituency is going to just somehow go the other way at the last minute. Doesn't work that way.

>> Michael: Comment was made to me by a number of people in the final 10 days, two weeks of the campaign that Matt Salmon did a better job of staying on message.

>> Chuck Coughlin: I Matt closed his campaign in a fashion which made everybody proud. He was on message more. Matt, the reason I love the guy so much, is because he is such a nice guy and politics is sometimes not a nice game and you have to draw hard and fast distinctions. Matt was a bit uncomfortable with that early in the campaign but found that rhythm late in the campaign on drawing distinctions and contrasts which brought Republican voters home. And, you know, it's like everything in politics, it's a maturing experience, and he did find his stride late in the game, and it may be enough to turn this.

>> Michael: Let me shift to superintendent of public instruction. Bob, there was some feeling -- of Republicans very unhappy with Tom Horne's defeat of current superintendent Jaime Molera in the primary. Some feeling that any fact were so unhappy with that result they would cross and vote for Jay Blanchard. These numbers don't seem to indicate, at least enough of that. Is that a phenomenon that just was very difficult to capitalize on?

>> Bob Grossfeld: I think this is one where we're clearly -- where clearly the differentiation between the clean elections funding and writing a check yourself made a big difference. Horne had built up -- or put in terms of gross rating points, the television terminology, thousands and thousands of impressions during the primary alone, and just brought it on back, I think, during the general. The second thing is, there just wasn't much engagement on any of the campaigns. There wasn't much coverage almost anywhere of substantive issues with the exception, frankly of the newspapers, public television, by, it was pretty much ignored.

>> Michael: Which, Chuck, surprises me a little bit, particularfully a race like superintendent of public instruction,. Poll after poll indicates that education is a very key issue to the voters. Lord knows, there's enough to talk about with vouchers and charter schools and drop-out rates and those kinds of things. It's tough to get air time. But there wasn't --

>> Chuck Coughlin: I would disagree to some extend. -- extent. Tom ran a hard Republican primary. He was not fearful of making distinctions. He gained a lot of support within traditional Republican reform constituencies. That was not his M.O. in the legislature. He was not the kind of guy when he was in the state legislature that you'd expect to pick up the reform banner and go with it. I think what people found in this race was when you drive a distinction and made the argument with regard to choice and public education w regards to very difficult issue that he took on in the primary on the language issue, Spanish in the which is a room Tom Tom was not fearful of making those kind of contrasts and I think what we're seeing here today is payoff for that. You know, we underestimate voters sometimes, and people want to hear what people think and too often we follow sound bites from guys like me and Bob, we'll say it this way, it's a nice way to say it. Tom never did that. Tom went at it. Some would call it a jugular campaign. I think what you're saying is the payoff for that. People want to hear that honesty. They want to hear honesty about the most public issue, and that's public education. >> Michael: Bob let's touch on proposition 203, the marijuana proposition. You a little surprised by this result or not?

>>Bob Grossfeld: Not really. They haven't mounted the kind of campaign that they've done in the past, hadn't done the kind that was just wall to wall coverage. And I think there was just enough of voter -- just generally we don't -- we're -- we're inundated with all of these propositions. When you looked at the ballot, if you didn't have something with you, like a cheat sheet to take along with you, you might not know what anything was.

>>Chuck Coughlin: Here's the difference this time, I think, there was funded opposition. The county attorney picked up the ball early on in this case and began making an issue, in fact, made the issue of putting prop 302 on the ballot, created a distinction in this campaign. He did that. He rallied traditional Republican support for that. I remember in 1998 when we were running the juvenile justice initiative, one of the things that the people were running against the last medical marijuana initiative was they complained they didn't get any attention, air time because the juvenile justice issue dominated the proposition debate. This time that was not true. This time, despite the fact that there was a good deal of money spent, obviously on the Indian gaming propositions, this one also grabbed a good deal of attention. There were full-page ads in the "Arizona Republic," Republican party put it on every piece of mail that they sent out to -- on their slate mail, was the only proposition the Republicans spoke to, which I for one am saddened by, wish they would have spoken more, but I think that their participation, Rick Romley's leadership and the delegation support of the anticampaign on this one paid off this time.

>> Bob Grossfeld: Let me just -- to continue with that, the other thing is the fellows who wrote this one, I think screwed up again.

>> Michael: DPS?

>> Bob Grossfeld: Yes. Two years ago when they wrote it, they just -- they messed up so bad, they just had to throw their hand up and say -- we won't even vote for it. This one, now they've got the Department of public safety guys passing out dime bags. I mean, that was -- that was a fundamental error in the way they crafted it.

>> Michael: Plus, they required them to wear pink underwear while they're distributing marijuana.

>> Bob Grossfeld: Yes.

>> Michael: I think --

>>Chuck Coughlin: You could get arrested for impersonating a law enforcement officer if you did that. But to that -- back to that point, the other thing that was working in that campaign was that for the first time -- again, we've never voted on a strict legalization of marijuana issue out here. Again, they dumped other substances, other controlled substances, into this, and tried to butter that over with just the medical marijuana issue. I think that's a problematic thing. It's another drafting error that I don't think they fully appreciated.

>> Bob Grossfeld: I got to tell you, a number of us have had this conversation, and speaks to what Chuck was saying, that particularly giving the aging of the baby boomer generation now, I suspect when -- within five, ten years in this state, maybe less than that, if a straight up or down decriminalization, make it a $10 fine and let it go at that, were put on the ballot, that it might very well pass, but all of these attempts are coming at it from very bizarre angles.

>> Michael: Bob Grossfeld, Chuck Coughlin, I'm Michael Grant, you are watching election 2002 on KAET Phoenix, and as promised, we'll keep you updated on the latest numbers from the Secretary of State's office. Let's take a full look at the latest election results right now.

>> Michael: Some of you may now be tuning in to watch "boulder city," the story of the town that grew out of the Hoover dam project. We preempting that program to give you continuing election of election 2002. Let's look at some of the national trends. Chuck, it seems in the battle to retake control of the United States Senate and hold onto control in the United States house, it looks like things generally are breaking pretty well for the Republicans.

>> Chuck Coughlin: Yes, there must be smiles on the faces of Senator Kyl and McCain tonight. We'll be looking at committee chairmanships. Looks like it's a pickup for Republicans in Missouri, pickup in Georgia, held in New Hampshire. It looks like Minnesota at this state is going to go Republican.

>> Michael: Mondale was down by 9 points.

>> Chuck Coughlin: And looks like the Democrats will hold South Dakota and pick up a seat in Colorado, and they'll hold Arkansas and I think the last time we checked was Missouri was also a Republican pickup. So two or three seats depending on how things shake out towards the Republican column.

>> Michael: Bob, it obviously bucks the historic trend of the party in power in the White House losing seats in the off election. President Bush put a lot of time and effort and prestige on the line.

>> Bob Grossfeld: Oh, sure.

>> Michael: You think that's the key?

>>Bob Grossfeld: Absolutely. That, coupled with a year-long state of seige, fighting terrorism, 9/11, the CAUCAPHONY of it was probably too much to nationalize an election with a domestic issue, which Democrats were hoping to do, and do that based on the economy. All of the polling was showing anecdotally state by state by state that the economic issues, the pocketbook issues were really bothering people, but clearly not enough to unite people across parties and states in order to make a clean sweep of it.

>> Michael: And in time of international crisis, Chuck, there is a fairly consistent voting trend that voters do want to say to the president in a variety of different ways we support you, we want -- don't want to send any conflicting signals to the other side.

>> Chuck Coughlin: And I think he ran that knowing that he was playing that card with the electorate, and I think it paid off for him. It was a good strategic move. They spent a lot of time and resources. If it had not gone that way, I can tell you there would have been a HUE and cry, and the next two years would have been difficult for him had he not succeeded in this gambit. So it strengthens the Republicans' hand, strengthen's the president's hand but now, the own us of leader -- ONUS of leadership will fall on him.

>> Michael: Meanwhile, back at home, President Bush, of course, visited the State of Arizona a couple of times in the last month on Matt Salmon's behalf. So let's take a look at the latest statewide race results, because right now Janet Napolitano continues to lead that race, if we can call up that slide and get the latest results on the governor's race. The last time I saw that was about 46%-45%.

>> Chuck Coughlin: Been holding pretty stead at at -- steady at 46- 45.

>> Michael: We got another 2 or 3%. Were you able to figure out where the votes were coming from?

>> Chuck Coughlin: I was still hammering on that when we talked about that and looks like some more of Pinal County came in. Mohave County is still out. Yuma County is still out. Navajo County is completely out. La Paz County is about half in. Cochise is still completely out. Apache is about 3 quarters in. Then anything -- in that ballpark, or maybe a bit tighter, is going to be subjected to the vagaries of those late ballots, and if those late ballots break as early -- the late numbers were indicating, you're going to have a barn burner and we're not going to have a governor -- a new governor tomorrow morning.

>> Michael: Bob, obviously people dialing around catching different coverage, that kind of thing, it bears repeat, our information is that there is a universe of perhaps 150,000 early ballots which will remain to be counted? Bob Grossfeld: Sure, and that could swing it, if it's very, very close, within one point, at it seems to be, yeah, it's possible. I'm thinking of one of the congressional races a few years ago, Hayworth and Owens, which that stretched on for a week counting ballots that had come in late. And I -- technology has changed a bit, so I don't think it's going to take that long but I don't think it's going to be resolved tonight.

>> Michael: Secretary of State's race, let's pull that one up and take a look at the latest returns where Jan Brewer is facing Chris Cummiskey. Jan Brewer with a 2 percentage point and about 20,000 vote margin on Chris Cummiskey, the Republican leading there.

>> Chuck Couhglin: That would be a hard margin for Chris to try and close this late in the game, being that far out with Maricopa County, which Jan was doing rather well in on the earlier numbers.

>> Michael: On the other hand, in the race for Attorney General, I think that's the next one coming up, Terry Goddard the former Phoenix Mayor rather handily defeating Andrew Thomas. Bob, there was some speculation that Terry could have taken the month of October off. Do you think that was a little overly pessimistic on the Andrew Thomas viability chances?

>>Bob Grossfeld: I think it might have been a bit. You know, given -- Terry Goddard should know of all people that you take nothing for granted. You run straight through to the finish line.

>> Michael: Superintendent of public instruction where Jay Blanchard is facing Tom Horne, Tom Horne having beaten the current superintendent of public instruction in the primary, and Tom Horne, 83% of the precincts reporting with about, oh, 30,000 or so of -- vote lead on Jay Blanchard, the state senator, sometimes referred to as the giant killer because he knocked off Jeff Groscost a couple of years ago.

>> Chuck Coughlin: I think Jeff knocked himself off.

>> Michael: Had a little bit of assistance from the alt fuels --

>> Chuck Coughlin: I think Mr. Horne may have put an end -- at least at this juncture, that rising star may have been dimmed a bit.

>> Michael: A race that we had not talked about a lot is the race for state treasurer, Ruth Solomon facing David Petersen. David Petersen with a 14,000 vote margin. Bob, it is exceptionally difficult for a Democrat, particularly from Tucson, to win a statewide race?

>>Bob Grossfeld: I think it's -- not necessarily from Tucson. I'm not sure that that matters all that much anymore, given the utility of media, and certainly with enough money to run a statewide campaign. I think the real problem that we're seeing here is you have to be an exceptionally well-known, high profile Democrat to overcome what is a Republican leaning.

>> Michael: of course, one of the best ways to get that profile, though s to develop that profile in Phoenix. It's a little bit like, why do you rob banks, because that's where the money is. Maricopa County is where a lot of people are.

>> Bob Grossfeld: Follow Willie Sutton for the next time --

>> Chuck Coughlin: The point being that most of the folks that you're seeing being successful have come to the race with a constituency. We talked about with that Jan Brewer before. Clearly the current Attorney General is not running for governor. Both had considerable constituencies they brought to the table. Terry Goddard had a constituency he brought to the table. Petersen has a constituency, it's East Valley, conservative based group he brought to the table. No constituency -- the top vote getter of all time, we would be remiss in not talking bit, our lovely state mine inspector, who would go against Bob's thing of you can sleep through four years and just show up with the name Doug Martin on the state mine inspector list and go home. I'm thinking about mine inspector for a career.

>> Bob Grossfeld: What I'm seeing again is that's not about the name, that's about the party designation.

>> Chuck Coughlin: It's more -- he's getting more votes than anybody else. He always does that.

>> Michael: Because there is another phenomena that happens here, there's the party magnet, but there's also ballot drop-off. People occasionally people will stop voting in that --

>> Chuck Coughlin: Not the case. Gets 455,000 votes -- unbelievable.

>> Bob Grossfeld: I don't know if this is on that topic or not and this is my disclosure, because I was involved in the Corporation Commission races, but I look at Jim Irvin at this point at least still edging out Jim Walsh and the man is in federal court on the day of the election, and he's involved in a racketeering lawsuit, his wife is now swept up in possible charges of tampering with evidence, and he still is running ahead.

>> Chuck Coughlin: He's still running ahead.

>> Bob Grossfeld: Now, is that because he has great name I.D. or because people are voting for Republicans.

>> Chuck Coughlin: That's a Republican lean but, again, you get -- I look -- he has -- Mr. Irvin has 408,000 votes, which is less than anybody else running for statewide office. So it did have an impact. It drew him down more. Whereas Martin has 455,000.

>> Bob Grossfeld: You're a Martin fan, aren't you?

>> Chuck Coughlin: No, I'm just amazed. You can just hang out --

>> Michael: I'm advised we've had a change on the two-year seat and, in, we have, Jeff Hatch-Miller, Republican, still in the lead 26%, but James has surged, 11,000 vote differential, but 26% of the vote. Mike Gleason dropping to 24%, and George Cunningham falling to 24% as well. That's a significant change --

>> Bob Grossfeld: That's a big bump.

>> Michael: -- in that race. I wonder what has happened, because it doesn't seem that there's a significant differential in the number of precincts reporting from the earlier return.

>> Chuck Coughlin: No, it's stuck at 83. That's a significant bump in the number of votes there.

>> Michael: If memory serves, James has come from fourth, Bob, to second on this latest return.

>>Bob Grossfeld: And this is a set of numbers that -- good for Roland, but I think we're going to be well served to kind of keep an eye on that one. That one is running counter--- counter to awful the polling and this might be a intermediary stop rather an final.

>>Chuck Coughlin: I can't see where those votes came from. I went back to the Secretary of State's screen and I'm trying to find out where they popped up and nothing has significantly changed. That's an interesting development.

>> Michael: Election night just wouldn't be election out in without us scratching our heads and wondering what in the world is going on there. Let's folkness on some of the propositions that we have not touched on very much this evening f I can get those called up. Let's take a look at the latest result on proposition 101, have thating to do with the state's ability to exchange trust lands. That has gone down, if memory serves, five times before and it is -- seems to be going down again for a sixth time. This is the fifth time I guess it's been on the ballot. It had gone down four times before. Bob, Arizona voters just don't seem comfortable with the concept of authorizing the state to exchange trust land.

>> Bob Grossfeld: No. I think what we're seeing is a condensation of environmental beliefs, conservation beliefs among -- that just is across party lines and it is going to become increasingly difficult, I think, to do anything with the trust lands, even something that is well crafted and hammered out and negotiated between all the relevant parties, because the public has just so embraced a value of protecting the land.

>> Michael: Interestingly enough, Chuck, they've looked for a different formula on this particular issue, and this time around it was restricted only to exchanging for public land.

>> Chuck Coughlin: Government to government transactions.

>> Michael: That tweak obviously, if this result holds up, didn't work.

>> Chuck Coughlin: You know, it didn't. And that's disappointing to me, because you've got all the checker board land in Northern Arizona that could be consolidated and managed in better ways. You have -- but, you know, in addition to the issues that Bob raised, there's also this fundamental distrust of government swapping land, and, you know, it's just a difficult thing to try and communicate with the resources in a campaign. I think it was a well funded campaign to get a shot at it, but it's always one of these that sort of doesn't get much attention and then people have questions, as in the jury box, as you will, and if they have a doubt, they vote no. I think that's the burden of proof that they have had to make and they have not yet made it.

>> Michael: Proposition 411 is the jail tax. You had approved it once to construct the jails, and now the county was coming back asking you to approve a continuation of that tax so that they could operate the jails, and we'll see if we can pull up the latest results on proposition 411 to see how you are voting on that proposition. Obviously having a little difficulty. Anybody got it --

>>Chuck Coughlin: Negative.

>> Michael: It is going -- you don't have it on your screen?

>> Chuck Coughlin: Don't have it.

>> Michael: Let's try proposition 303. That's the proposition to increase the tax on cigarettes and Arizonans just like that a lot. That is passing 2 to 1. I can't say, Chuck, I'm particularly shocked.

>> Chuck Coughlin: No, 273,000 is about the number of smokers, I would think in Arizona that would be objecting to that in additional tax. That's about -- I think national numbers run about 25% of the population smokes, and you get your antitax crowd in there and you end up with 33%.

>>Michael Grant: Earlier we talked about Proposition 203, which was the marijuana proposition. There was sort of a companion to that, proposition 302, which would allow judges to use jail time basically as a stick to enforce probation for a drug treatment and Arizonans clearly like that idea. That's being passed 2 to 1. Interesting set of results, Bob, on 203 and 302 indicates maybe a tougher to do on drug enforcement and treatment than perhaps you might think.

>> Bob Grossfeld: Yeah, I think so. And I think this is an -- clearly this is a major victory for Rick Romley, both the orchestration of the one that is passing so handily with 302 as well as the defeat of the other. This is that man's crusade, and he took it on and took it on, I think, when nobody else really was too terribly interested in it, and has done a remarkable job.

>> Michael: We're down to about 90 seconds or so. Let's go back to the latest governor's slide and see what result we have got. Election 2002. As you can see the race for governor remains quite close, 46% for Janet Napolitano, the Attorney General, and 45% for former congressman Matt Salmon, a 16,000 vote or so -- raw vote lead, and we can't stress strongly enough that about 100, perhaps 150,000 or so ballots remain to be counted, and obviously 16,000 votes can either evaporate or enlarge --

>> Chuck Coughlin: 2,000 just did, on the screen I am looking at here, just tightened up a little bit, 395,000 to 409,000. So there is a 2,000 bump on Matt, and the percentage didn't change. So --

>> Michael: Chuck Coughlin, thank you very much for your insight. Bob Grossfeld, we appreciate your input as well. Gentlemen, nice job. Thank you very much for joining us for our election 2 coverage. We don't know hoot governor will be. We think the Republicans have regained control of the state Senate, and we'll look for other results throughout the night. Thank you very much for joining us this evening. I'm Michael Grant. Have a pleasant one. Good night.