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November 8, 2002

Host: Keven Willey
Topics:
The Journalists Roundtable
In-Studio Guests:
Mark Flatten, East Valley Tribune;
Robbie Sherwood, Arizona Republic;
Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services.

>> Keven: It's Friday, November 8th, 2002. In the headlines this week, Arizonans are still waiting for an official winner in the governor's race. Janet Napolitano continues to hold the lead over Matt Salmon with thousands of ballots still to be down. Following Tuesday's election, members of the Arizona legislature selected their new leader for the upcoming session. And two of the three gaming propositions were easily defeated on Tuesday while a third, proposition 202, is still winning by a slim margin. Good evening, I'm Keven Willey, editorial page editor of the "Arizona Republic" filling in for Michael Grant. Joining me to discuss these and other stories are Mark Flatten with the East Valley Tribune; Robbie Sherwood with the "Arizona Republic" and how word Fischer with Capitol Media Services. We went to the polls on Tuesday and we still don't have a winner. What are we Miami-Dade county here? What's going on?

>> Mark Flatten: People here apparently know how to vote better than they do in Florida. But, actually the problem is we made voting easy and we made counting it difficult. Maricopa County at the end of election night had 152,000 uncounted ballots. Statewide as of election night about 1 in five ballots had not been counted. As you mentioned, Janet Napolitano came out of election night with about 25,000 vote lead, statewide, over Salmon. Recorders have been counting ballots ever since. We've still got about 134,000 still out and at this point Janet is still ahead by about 17,000 votes.

>> Keven: What do you think will happen through the course of the weekend? Is this likely -- are we going to see a shift or is the writing pretty much on the wall?

>> Mark Flatten: I think the day of decision may well be tomorrow. Salmon's whole theory, the thing he is holding out hope for, is there were a large block of people that requested early ballots and showed up on election day. If you look at what's happened in Maricopa County, what they did is on Tuesday, on election day, they counted early ballots until about 2:00, and then they stopped. They had about 90,000 left at the end of that night. In the counting over the last three days they have pretty much counted those 90,000. Now they're going to get to the ballots that were turned on in election day. So we'll probably have a pretty good indication tomorrow whether Salmon's theory holds true.

>> Keven: From here on out for every two votes that Janet Napolitano gets, Matt Salmon has to get three, is that likely to happen in.

>> Robbie Sherwood: That just hasn't been happening. Item you that. Al Gore called, and he said, Matt, give it up. It's just not turning his way. He is making up ground, but the weasel in the wood pile here is Pima County. There is 30,000 votes sitting in Pima County that have not been counted and Janet killed him in Pima County and when those are counted maybe by the end of tomorrow, the expectation is that it's probably going to erase all, if not -- most of the ground that Matt has made up and she'll still win by 20,000 votes.

>> Mark Flatten: There's another 25,000 or so in rural counties and those went different directions. Some counties were heavily for Salmon, some were heavily for Napolitano.

>> Howard Fischer: That's the problem. If you look at the numbers tonight, I mean, this is after the 5 clock update, 17,000 votes difference between them, we've got about 87,000 left to count in Maricopa County. Matt has been running essentially -- he gets 11 to her 9. There's a 10-point spread between them. Which basically means out of 87,000 votes, if he keeps running at this rate, he will get another 8700, which is only half of what he needs. You factor in Pima County, which went 4 for 3 for Napolitano, you factor -- you assume the rest of the rurals are an even break, you can't get there from here. Tonight we're arguing about the point spread. That's what it comes down to. What's the number he loses by.

>> Mark Flatten: But there is still enough votes throughout to where he's got that sliver of hope. I think every day that comes by I think that hope fades quite a bit. If you saw the difference in Salmon between Wednesday and Thursday, he started to see the writing on the wall. That's why I say tomorrow will probably get a better idea whether this theory of his holds true, because if his theory is that the conservative voters, translate to that East Valley voters, showed one their ballots on election day and will start cutting into those ballots tomorrow.

>> Robbie Sherwood: The problem is, though, if tomorrow it shows that Matt has no chance, I don't blame him for taking some time off, we all need it, but he's not -- he's out of town and so he probably wouldn't concede the race until Monday. So the drama would extend.

>> Keven Willey: Is this the way our elections are going to be from here on out, and oh, five, six, seven days later --

>> Howard Fischer: This comes back to mark's point. It used to be if you wanted to vote absentee, you had to sign an affidavit I am going to be out of the precinct on election day and very few people did that. It wasn't that hard. You could say I'm going to work, I won't be there between 6:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. But nobody did it. Now with mail-in ballots where a third are being cast that way and with tight races where people don't want to vote it on October 5th when they can first cast the ballot, they want to wait until the last minute -- even if they intend to vote election day, they want to have it at home to go through the propositions. If you're going to get a third of the ballots turned in that way, that's the nature of it. You cannot count them. See, it's not like you go up to the voting booth now, you hand them the slip, it goes through the machine, poof it's counted.

>> Keven Willey: But it seems like there ought to be someway to speed up the voting. We're not a third world country here.

>> Mark Flatten: I think we in the media sit and wring our hands about now having a decision because we don't get to take a vacation until we get the final vote count.

>> Howard Fischer: Speak for yourself.

>> Mark Flatten: I don't think -- I don't think that "Joe Arizona," to borrow a cartoon character --

>> Keven Willey: Which --

>> Mark Flatten: The real "Joe Arizona," the ones from Arizona, I don't think they're chewing their finger nails off at this point. Obviously they would like to have a resolution, but I don't think they have --

>> Keven: How was turnout this time? It was pretty miserable in the primary. It was about three times --

>> Robbie Sherwood: It was almost like a presidential year and I think that was testament to the issues that were out there and the interest in the governor's race and the gaming props. They registered thousands of new voters. You had George Bush flying into Maricopa County to jazz people up for Matt. That worked. And you had president bill Clinton flying into Pima County, and that worked even better. The turnout out there was 60% plus when usually it's in the low 50s. That was probably key to Janet's victory.

>> Mark Flatten: The other thing you had was extreme efforts on behalf of both parties to get out the vote. That's been a problem in the past and frankly it's helped Republicans in the past because the Republicans have had a much more effective get out to vote campaign and the democratic party hasn't had much organization or money. This year both parties had certainly enough money to get out the votes, and they had very, very active efforts. I mean, that's one of the reasons Salmon is still optimistic is they said they were calling 33,000 people a day. Of course, the Democrats were doing the same thing.

>> Robbie Sherwood: With Martin sheen from west wing planting his voice on your voicemail, this was not yesterday's democratic party.

>> Howard Fischer: Part of the reason they were doing this had to do with the so-called clean elections system. The fact is while you could certainly launder the money and get it on behalf of the candidate, it was just as easy to have the party do get out the vote, do candidate-type things to do the whole slate and do on it their behalf and, therefore, it didn't count against that person's spending or didn't get matched by the other person.

>> Mark Flatten: It was much easier to do -- to wash the money through the part 18 it would have been for the candidates because, for instance, the democratic party chairman Jim Peterson was able to write a $2.4 million for the get out to votes which he never could have done for the candidates.

>> Keven: let's shift to the congressional races. For the first time Arizona will have eight seats in house and three will be brand-new, Rick Renzi, Raul Grijalva and Trent Franks.

>> Howard Fischer: Now we have --

>> Keven: Raul Grijalva to Trent Franks. What do you make of that?

>> Howard Fischer: A lot of that shows that given redistricting and creation of one party district, both congressionally and legislatively, you're going to have nominated the people who are from the fringes, you know, Rick Renzi and Trent Franks certainly in terms of representing a particular viewpoint within the Republican party, Raul certainly falls off center to the left in terms of the Democratic Party and then it doesn't matter at the general election time. As much as George Cordova might have had a chance before his campaign sort of self-destructed over his business dealings, essentially that was kind of drawn as a district where the Republicans would have an edge or the pinto Democrats who tend to vote Republican.

>> Mark Flatten: Frankly, your original question is what's that going to mean? What it's going to mean is the freshmen are going to come and be told to sit in a corner and vote the way they're told. I'm not sure either Grijalva or Trent Franks will do that. I don't know if the house clock will be fast enough to see -- to time how long it's going to take them to drop an anti-abortion bill in Congress. One of the other questions that comes up is how much of this was the presidential election? Because obviously the pin heads in Washington wanted to make this a national election, but if you look at both of those races, particularly the Trent Franks race, it gets back to the saying all elections are local, and once Trent Franks emerged from the crowd at primary, it didn't matter how right wing or left wing he was, the numbers in that district virtually assured he was going to win.

>> Keven: There are a number of other interesting and close state races from the Secretary of State to the Attorney General, although that that one wasn't that close, all the way down to school superintendent. The treasurer's race is still apparently too close to call. What's the most interesting out of those for each of you?

>> Howard Fischer: Well, I mean, the further down you tend to go on the ticket the more likely party matters. Right down to Jim Irvin. We can talk about him in a few minutes if you like. When people don't have issues -- I mean, what was the issue in the treasurer's race, I'll keep your money better than she'll keep your money. So people --

>> Keven: The Democrat from Ruth Solomon from Tucson is just behind by a few -- is that going to change?

>> Mark Flatten: The difference, her margin is closer than the governor's race, but the difference is, if I am Matt Salmon a Republican banking on votes out of Maricopa County, I've got a lot more hope than if I'm Ruth Solomon, a Democrat, banking on democratic votes out of Maricopa County.

>> Howard Fischer: That's the assumption, the numbers in Pima would have to be very strongly in her favor and Ruth does ok down there, but nothing like -- I mean, she's -- it's not like Harry Mitch null Tempe, gee, I'm Harry Mitchell, vote for me.

>> Keven: Terry Goddard won pretty easily for attorney yen. He had a hard time getting much support out of Maricopa County in past races. What was the issue?

>> Howard Fischer: The difference was there was an issue. And his opponent. You looked at Terry and then you looked at Andy Thomas, and you listened to Andy Thomas' ads and you started to realize, waits a second, this is just so much manure in terms of what he is throwing here that it's hard to buy. Terry managed to convince folks, look, I am not going to do away with the death penalty. I am not going to put sex offenders on the streets. And I am not going to make abortion illegal in this state.

>> Mark Flatten: Something I think that helped Goddard and Napolitano, but since we're talking about Goddard's race, he's been around a long time, people know him. People are comfortable with him. He was -- as Mayorn't a rabid liberal or a rabid partisan -- well...

>> Howard Fischer: Andy Thomas said he was.

>> Mark Flatten: But it's the same thing with Napolitano. I mean, people knew her and they knew she wasn't some fire breathing dragon, the same with Goddard. He's a familiar face. I don't think he has very high negatives. I don't think he had a lot of trouble attracting some moderate Republicans.

>> Keven: Let's keep working our way down the ballot.

>> Robbie Sherwood: I think that Jan Brewer will hold on to her slim margin insect of state's race, too, and like Howie said, it's Rs and Ds, that race, although I think it probably lacks issues, too, it got pretty nasty at the end, and it's one of the testments to negative campaigning can work, I suppose, because she did win. I think with her one heartbeat from the governor Janet Napolitano might be doubling her security detail, but --

>> Keven: Have we seen the last of Chris Cummiskey?

>> Mark Flatten: Who knows.

>> Robbie Sherwood: He's a young man, and he's -- I'm surprised we haven't had six press releases since election day.

>> Robbie Sherwood: He's young. I think you'll see him in some capacity in the pretty near future.

>> Keven: School superintendent, any surprise that Horne beat Blanchard, the Republican over the Democrat?

>> Howard Fischer: Wait a second, this is the Tom Horne in the primary the republic said was a scum suing bottom dweller but by the general he was your candidate.

>> Keven: You always gauge the candidates against their opposition.

>> Howard Fischer: That's what happened this time. I mean, Jay is a very bright person. But I don't think he raised a good race. I don't think he enunciated issues to the point where voters said, of course, and here is Tom promising if you want to call it back to basics to a certain extent, promising to focus on English language instruction, promise to say the AIMS test has meaning, I don't see this as a mandate for AIMS but I think people are comfortable with the idea of some sort of touch stone, a test for kids to get out of high school, and then we're simply down to voter registration.

>> Robbie Sherwood: I think Tom Horne also played the clean elections law with more -- astutely than any other candidate in a statewide race against his appoint because he was privately funded. He did a scorched earth $500,000 campaign against Jaime Molera who couldn't match witness his paltry clean elections money and then he spent almost nothing in the general so Jay Blanchard couldn't get any money to come back at him and only came in at the last minute with a TV ad and basically rode a 10 point margin to the finish line.

>> Keven: Keeping going down the ballot here, Corporation Commission, three Democrats ran as a team. Probably three of the most credible and articulate candidates we've seen in a long time from the democratic party for this particular seat. It looks as though two for sure and possibly all three have been dusted. What do you make of that?

>> Howard Fischer: Let's start off with Jim Irvin.

>> Mark Flatten: With the fun one.

>> Howard Fischer: With the fun one.

>> Mark Flatten: Only in Arizona.

>> Howard Fischer: Only in Arizona does name I.D. -- the old saying it doesn't matter what you say about me, just spell my name right. Here is a man who has been facing civil litigation with a lawsuit that's actually started on trial two weeks before the trial, who the day of the trial, you know, news reports on how his wife may have fabricated evidence.

>> Mark Flatten: Day of the election.

>> Howard Fischer: Sorry. Day of the election. Who was under investigation by the U.S. attorney's office, by the county attorney's office, whose defense at a civil trial is, I'm stupid, I didn't know what my handpicked aide was doing and even when I went to California to lobby for one buyer of southwest gas than the other I was doing it for the public good, and he got elected. Is that just name I.D.? Sit that far down the ticket that people say, I've heard of this guy, as opposed --

>> Mark Flatten: I think it's more probably of the R/D split.

>> Keven: How many would have anticipated the Corporation Commission next year would be 5-0 Republican.

>> Mark Flatten: I am certain when the Democrats pushed expanding it from three to five, they had no idea. They pretty much --

>> Howard Fischer: It wasn't the Democrats who pushed that. It was actually a result of a spat between Karl Kunasek and Jim Irvin. The whole place has been brought to a screeching halt. But the Democrats I think would have rather had it elected by district and then had a fighting chance of maybe one being elected. Cunningham could still pull it out. The numbers are within a thousand. Again, now we're back to Tucson with votes -- which votes strongly for George but you have this massive Maricopa County vote and a Tucson Democrat trying to pick up that difference here, same problem Ruth Solomon has, going to be tremendous tricky.

>> Keven: The likely Republican winners in those cases are going to be Jeff hatch-Miller out of the legislature and Mike Gleason also out of the legislature. Very good.

>> Howard Fischer: Another retirement for former lawmakers, oh, good.

>> Keven: Speaking of the legislature, how about legislature going completely Republican, both chambers, and electeding their legislative leaders this week. It.

>> Robbie Sherwood: Went very solidly both ways -- even more solidly in the house because one of the democratic pickup scenes was JENNY Chen flipped. Collette LAZATI a conservative, pulled that one out. The new leaders in the house, no surprise, representative Jake flake from snowflake, majority leader, noted -- I won't say it. Eddie Farnsworth of Mesa. Noted coalition builder. And Randy GRAFF from Green Valley and on the Senate side you have Ken Bennett from Prescott, Tim bee from Tucson and Marilyn Jarrett from other Mesa.

>> Keven: I can't remember a time when both the house speaker and Senate president have both been from rural counties. At least not in recent years. Does that portend anything for the relationship with the new governor? How is that going to work?

>> Robbie Sherwood: Well, it's one of the things that you have to throw into the mix, because there is a Chip on the shoulder from rural lawmakers because the big beast is Maricopa County, and they control so much of the agenda. But also, philosophically, the legislature took a little turn to the right there, and so you're going to see a huge battle that could gridlock the legislature over the budget because Janet Napolitano campaigned on the idea of closing tax loopholes and getting new revenue in addition to cuts to balance the budget and most of these folks are ardently opposed to any hint of tax cut. Into.

>> Howard Fischer: There is no way of underestimating how far to the right of the party people like Farnsworth and Randy GRAFF are. These are people who basically believe everyone should carry a gun and a Bible. I mean, this is what the house is going to be like for the next two years in terms of the Republicans --

>> Mark Flatten: What's going to be interesting, if Napolitano does, indeed, hold onto her lead and win, is going to be the dynamic, and actually I don't necessarily think it's going to get as ugly as a lot of people it will. If you looked at the Napolitano budget plan, take out the tax end and just look at the budget, the spending stuff, she was not dramatically different from Salmon. They both wanted 10% across the board budget cuts, consolidation of functions, things like that. So I think in terms of cutting the budgets, I think they will be able to find some agreement.

>> Howard Fischer: One of the interesting things on this is, just real quickly, is that the business community, I'm not talking about the small business, the NFIB folks, but the chambers and things like that, are looking at the budget and looking at the fact that if you cripple the universities, if you cripple K-12, you eventually undermine what they're trying to do and they're going to be, in a funny way, the voice of the moderation, as opposed to the lawmakers.

>> Robbie Sherwood: I have pretty low expectations for this session because I think that Janet, if this was just an ordinary session with no big billion dollar deficit, Janet could play the Bruce Babbitt role and the Alfredo Gutierrez role, work the middle, get your concessions or hold things up, but you need a two-thirds majority now to get any sort of new revenue, and you need a three quarters majority to undo the voter funded mandates that have two-thirds of the budget locked up.

>> Keven: It's a different era. In addition to the candidates at the election, there were also several ballot propositions on the ballot. Most of the attention was focused on the three gaming issues. Propositions 200 and 201 were easily defeated while prop 202 narrowly is winning. Howie, what would you say the chances are of 202 just pretty much cleaning up and being declared the winner this weekend.

>> Howard Fischer: I think the trend seems to be headed in that direction but now we're down to what we were talking about earlier, what were the last votes in Maricopa County to be counted? Are these, in fact, Matt's East Valley religion, antigaming folks and if that's the case, then the margin becomes right within that 1250 votes you need for an automatic recount. Again, I don't see the trend working that way. I think that 202 will pass, not by a lot, but enough to allow, if the mandate from the 9th circuit is lifted and Governor Hull can sign a new gaming compact, I think that will be one of her last acts.

>> Keven: What was it that came home to roost here. He we had three very complicated gaming propositions, two went down 8-1. One voted. The voters were discerning --

>> Mark Flatten: I think they probably understood that the one that passed -- or appears it's going to pass, is pretty much what we've got now. I think people are pretty comfortable with the way we have Indian gaming now. The other two would have taken it to a new realm. I don't think people wanted to go there.

>> Robbie Sherwood: And I think that with the ubiquitous ads they could smell the desperation in the last weeks of the campaign that the 200 and 201 ads were focused to drag down 202 and I think that became a turnoff to voters.

>> Keven: The other thing on the ballot that was so interesting in the propositions was 203 and 302, the two drug propositions. Of course, we always turn to Howie.

>> Howard Fischer: I want you to know, I am in mourning.

>> Keven: 203 actually went down, and 302 passed.

>> Howard Fischer: 302's passing is less of a surprise. Essentially what you took was the 1996 law that says if you are arrested for small quantities of marijuana first or second time, you are placed on probation and supposed to get counselling. The flaw in that is if you don't go for the counselling, they can't do anything. This says we can use probation as a condition of counselling and if you don't go, then, in fact, we can put you in jail. Now, 203, the problem with 203, is it was a bridge too far. It was essentially three parts, two which would have passed. Number one -- eliminating the criminal penalty for marijuana, making it a fine, I think would have passed. I think telling doctors they can recommend marijuana to their patients and making that a decision between doctors and patients would have passed. Having the DPS give out two ounces of dope to anybody that shows one a card and says "where's my stuff, dude," that went right over the edge. It was something that was a stupid addition.

>> Keven: Why did they put that in there? Was somebody on dope when they were writing that?

>> Howard Fischer: Quite possibly.

>> Mark Flatten: What do you think?

>> Howard Fischer: The argument was, if you're going to allow doctors to recommend marijuana, people have to get it somewhere. Do you want to send them on the streets to look for dope dealers? Do you really want folks hanging around 24th Street and Broadway to get their medical marijuana or do you want to go to DPS? I think -- that makes sense on some levels but I think if you are going to come back with something in 2004, it has to take out that distribution.

>> Robbie Sherwood: How about Walgreen's?

>> Mark Flatten: My theory was they probably actually had a lot more people that would vote for it but they didn't get off the couch and show up until Thursday.

>> Howard Fischer: That's only because there were no must not cheese at the polls.

>> Keven: There you go. What was so interesting is in recent election Arizona voters, surprisingly to some people, have shown a tolerance for drug reform, possibly move that towards decriminalization. This one got beaten but we don't know fit symbolizes voter turnaround or the DPS thing.

>> Howard Fischer: I think it's the DPS thing.

>> Robbie Sherwood: There's a Libertarian streak in Arizona that runs through both parties and I think that's where you see it, is on drug laws.

>> Mark Flatten: I actually think it's more than that. I think what happened when the two prior ones passed they pitched it as medical marijuana, and they didn't talk about this other stuff. I think people have realized, oh, gee, there was more in those initiatives and that's why they saw the possibility of jail time as a way to essentially take what we've already passed and turn that into what we're -- we were promised.

>> Keven: Lottery passed and cigarette tax passed. Either those surprise you?

>> Howard Fischer: There was no organized opposition to either of them. Jeff actually was a parallel measure but essentially the idea of gambling is bad for Arizona. Again, people are comfortable with what we have. They see no reason they can't scratch it rich. My basic belief is you can't win even if you do play. Anybody that scratches and thinks they are going to win big money is better off playing a parking meet arear.

>> Mark Flatten: Didn't Groscost call it a tax on the stupid?

>> Howard Fischer: Exactly. The Philip Morris, had looked around and done early polling about, sit worth us spending $20 million to try to kill something we're not going to kill here? No. So they basically said, let's just roll over and play dead.

>> Robbie Sherwood: It's only the sign of budget relief horizon, never mind fit works and people stop smoking, there won't be money for programs.

>> Keven: We are out of time. Thank you very much for joining us. To see a transcript of tonight's show or share your views or to contact us, please visit Channel 8's website as www.kaet.asu.edu. Click on "Horizon" on the left side of the screen and follow the links. Monday on "Horizon," join us for a Veteran's Day special. By Tuesday we should have a governor, and he or she might object "Horizon" that night. Wednesday, a look at the need for getting private industry more involved in public health programs. And Thursday, an update on the first 100 days of the genomics consortium now known as T-GEN. Thank you very much for joining us tonight. Have an incredibly good weekend. I'm Keven Willey. Good night.