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September 6, 2002

Host: Michael Grant
Topics:
The Journalists Roundtable
In-Studio Guests:
Mark Flatten,East Valley Tribune;
Bob Rob, Arizona Republic;
Howie Fischer, Capitol Media Services


>> Michael: It's Friday September 6, 2002. In the headlines this week, both the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor making one final push for votes. With the primary election set for next Tuesday, along with the governor's race, there are several key races involving the state legislature that will be decided next week. And Governor Hull is warning about the budget problems faced by those who will take office next year. Good evening, I'm Michael Grant. This is the journalists roundtable. Joining me to talk about these and other stories are Mark Flatten with the East Valley Tribune, Bob Robb, columnist with the "Arizona Republic," and Howie Fischer of Capitol Media Services. On Tuesday Arizona will hold its primary election. Four of the five top statewide elected offices have no incumbents running for reelection. Governor Jane Hull will not be on the ballot due to term limits. Mark, let's start with the governor's race, how do you think the D and the R sides shape up?

>> Mark Flatten: Well the old rule I usually follow when looking at polls is don't look at the numbers, look at the trends. In this case, the trend has been a flat line all the way through. The Democratic side seems pretty easy to call. Janet Napolitano has led that race 4 to 1 throughout most of the campaign. It closed a little bit toward the end, but it may only 3 1/2 to 1 now. It's pretty clear that the Democratic primary, unless something truly bizarre happens, is pretty well closed. The Republican side has a lot more potential. Betsey Bayless is still trailing by every poll, not as quite as much as on the Democratic side, but the trend line is just holding flat. Salmon is staying way ahead. Bayless doesn't seem to be moving. I mean, she came out a couple weeks ago with a series of sort of "Matt's a bad guy" mailers, for a litany of reasons, and you could make the argument he may have dropped a notch or two but the problem she has got is she hasn't come up. The wildcard in this is Carol Springer. She qualified for clean elections very late, August 20th I think is when she got her late first check. So she is sitting here on August 20th with a million dollars for campaign ads..

>> Howard Fischer: The problems is that while Betsey slapped Matt, has yet given anyone a reason why to vote for her. There has been a few central points in her campaign, I'm going to get rid of the business personal property tax. Now there's a sexy issue for individuals, particulary if you understand if businesses pay less everyone else pays more. She says, I'm going to increase classroom funding by 10 cents on the dollar, except for the fact when you push her she says, Well, I don't know if we can really do that sort of a goal. There's been no central theme, no bold vision out there to go ahead and talk about, in fact, even today what was she doing? She was attacking Matt's plan for cutting the budget, but, again, no central reason why vote for her.

>> Bob Robb: Her central reason was, and I think is, a restoration of competence in government, which I think there is a hunger for and a feeling that the Arizona state government has been mismanaged and is headed in the wrong direction. The problem is that while that is a powerful urge on the part of voters, it is a fairly ephemeral theme and she doesn't personify it. Each though she is someone who competently handled a variety of different positions in state and local government, when she talks about issues, she doesn't project competence. So there's been a disconnect between what her rationale for her election is and what she projects to voters in public appearances.

>> Mark Flatten: Even beyond that. Certainly it's a good message to say things are all messed up, we need to fix them, but let's look at who Betsey is. She was appointed to her job by Jane Hull, who I think most voters probably a lay a lot of the blame for.

>> Bob Robb: Although surprisingly to me the Hull-Bayless connection hasn't been nearly as big of a part of this election dialogue as I expected. I think Gutierrez has done more on the Democratic side to try to tie Napolitano to Hull than there's been any effort to tie Bayless to Hull.

>> Mark Flatten: It's a little tough for the Republicans to try to tie Betsey to Hull, it's almost like speaking ill of the dead sort of thing.

>> Howard Fischer: There's Mark's point about Carol. We have seen one TV ad for Carol. Interesting ad --

>> Bob Robb: Over and over again.

>> Howard Fischer: Starts off in black and white and throws out terms like "alt fuels," "budget mess," "Hi, I'm Carol Springer. I single-handedly solved the last budget mess." I seem to remember we were flush with money. So I don't know what she exactly solved back then, but with that kind of money, if she has the media buy in the can, the people she appeals to are the people who tend to go to the polls last, the Sun City folks, the folks who are the very fiscally conservative and she could make a difference.

>> Michael: Bob, it's interesting, this is the week, obviously, before the primary. Usually you would be talking about races, issues, those kinds of things. We spent the whole week talking about clean elections. I am in the process of reading your column on accrual accounting in relation to publicly financed campaigns.

>> Bob Robb: On an accrual basis.

>> Michael: I'm doing it two paragraphs at a time. I hope to finish by Christmas. But I was hoping you could tell me how it turns out tonight.

>> Bob Robb: Confused, which is the way to describe the commission, the staff and, I think, the entire political world. Two weeks ago the commission had considered basically the same issue, which is, when did Salmon need to report reimbursed expenses? And concluded on a 5-0 vote that dealing with them on a cash basis, which is the way he was doing it, was appropriate, no reason to look into it. Suddenly a week later, we launch an investigation on a comparable 5-0 vote on basically the same issue of facts and suddenly the commission has decided, that's not acceptable, you have to report these expenses when they are incurred. The problem is that the commission itself never has articulated an accounting methodology that it can explain to candidates as to what they need to do in order to be in compliance, and virtually everybody reports reimbursed expenses the same way Salmon did, on a cash basis, and they have no explanation why of all the campaigns out there Salmon's is the one that they've decided to investigate.

>> Howard Fischer: And this is where it gets really curious. It's not even a question of one week. A meeting Tuesday, a week ago Tuesday, the commission votes 5-0 to say there is no finding of probable cause. 11:58 p.m. that evening, Colleen Conner sends an e-mail to Matt Schaefer, who is the deputy director, the guy who did the probe, the guy who looked at it, the guy with the MBA, the guy who has worked for the governor's office of strategic planning and budgeting, and essentially says I want you off this investigation and don't talk to the press. Next day he gets suspended. Day-and-a-half later we get a press conference saying, we found $484,000 worth of late reporting which turned out to be $147,000, but it's only a few hundred thousand among friends. What seemed to be the triggering factor in there, and, again with no real witnesses on the people involved, is that somewhere in there Colleen Conner, who seems to have any basic understanding of campaign finance, had talked to someone between the time the commission made its first vote and she went 180 degrees.

>> Michael: Was the someone Jessica Funkhouser?

>> Howard Fischer: That seems to be it. Jessica Funkhouser did talk to her. Jessica does report to Secretary of State Betsey Bayless. She is the state elections director. Jessica said I was over there on other issues and to talk generally about if you're going to have some policies on reporting I would like to be involved with them. She says she didn't prompt anything. I don't know how much to put any blame on any one person.

>> Michael: Mark, here is the real problem with all of this, and certainly -- clean elections fired up two years ago. This is its first full cycle with all the statewide offices and those kinds of things, but there seems to be an awful lot of making up of rules as we go along.

>> Mark Flatten: You know, frankly I -- even if you assume everything possibly that you could is in favor of the clean elections commission and Colleen Conner, you are still stuck with the underlying issue which is she wants to hold Salmon to an accounting standard which she says now is clear as crystal that she by her own admission didn't understand a week ago. That's what Schaefer's point is. He isn't alleging that Bayless is somehow pulling the strings of Conner. He's saying I just don't think Conner understands the law.

>> Michael: So does this play with any political impact on the Republican primary or not?

>> Bob Robb: Not on the primary. I think this is very much inside politics. It involves arcane accounting terminology and things that aren't central to people's lives.

>> Michael: I promise to read the column.

>> Bob Robb: And I am going to hold you to that, Michael, but it may, if -- Salmon will probably begin the general election with relatively little money, potentially the subject of independent expenditure campaigns against him and a publicly financed candidate that gets her money, assuming Napolitano is the candidate, or Gutierrez, immediately, and under the cloud of an investigation, which won't have dissipated by that point. So it may have some lingering effect in the general election. And unfairly so.

>> Howard Fischer: You make a good point that the rules can be made up as we go. Well, to a certain extent new laws require that, which is part of the reason that house speaker Jim Weiers today said, look, we need an independent group, not lawmakers, not politicians, not people with a stake in this, to sit out there and look at this and figure out what laws need changing, what regulations need changing and if the statutes need changing, take it back to voters in 2004. Jim is no fan of clean elections. He is also a Salmon supporter, but he said if you do this right, we can fix the law so we make it work if we are going to have it.

>> Bob Robb: These ambiguities have always existed. The difference is now they're consequential because they may or may not trigger matching funds.

>> Mark Flatten: I disagree with Robb on the impact in the primary for a couple reasons. One, I think Republicans tend to be more suspicious of clean elections laws than the Democrats do. So there's already sort of a suspicion there. And had Carol Springer been the sort of nemesis to Salmon, I don't think there would have been much damage but I think this is actually going to end up hurting Bayless. It was her people that went over and met with Conner. Her campaign manager seems to have this wonderful wealth of information about everything going on at the clean elections commission. And whether Betsey had anything to do with it or not, the circumstances just keep pointing towards her.

>> Michael: I want to at least touch on some of the other statewide offices. How about the superintendent of public instruction race? It actually has sort of a clean elections tie as well.

>> Bob Robb: It does. Privately-financed Tom Horne is outspending the incumbent Jaime Molera by a 4-1 to 5-1 factor because he has outspent the matching fund caps for clean elections. So there has been a scramble by Molera supporters to try to bridge this disadvantage. It began kind of traditionally with people getting money together to run an independent expenditure campaign. It took a strange twist this week. Which is a ballot proposition on gambling. The 17 tribes, Jane Hull initiative, has been running an ad that features 30 seconds of Jaime Molera looking into the camera saying, "I'm your superintendent of public instruction, I care about education, and this proposition is great because it will give more money and be good for education." Now, any direct contribution would be illegal, and --

>> Michael: But the air time --

>> Mark Flatten: It's hard to argue given the timing that this doesn't benefit Molera lot more than it benefits Proposition 202. >> Michael: Attorney General race, Republican side again, Mark, that one has been kind of down and dirty. How do you size that one up?

>> Mark Flatten: Well, that one has been probably the biggest mudslinging race of the whole thing. It's like pulling no punches. Andrew Thomas, ironically, the one clean elections candidate, has basically been running lot of ads and based his campaign on John Greene is backed by the homosexual lobby and Foster Robberson once represented Finkel and a child molester, which in both cases are, I guess, technically correct but certainly stretching the truth. Seems to be working. The Merrill poll that came out shows Thomas is ahead and Greene and Robberson don't seem to know what to do.

>> Bob Robb: Thomas has obviously been very hard-edged on those subjects, but he has also made a broader appeal to social conservatives who are an important part of the Republican primary constituency, and I think he has done a good job of identifying himself as the social conservative candidate. He probably has put himself, if he is to eke through a victory here, in a great deal of difficulty for the general.

>> Howard Fischer: That's exactly the point. Essentially, if the Republicans elect Andy Thomas as their nominee, hello, Terry Goddard.

>> Bob Robb: I have a feeling whoever the Republicans nominate the odds are it's hello Terry Goddard.

>> Michael: Who are the Republicans going to nominate for Secretary of State?

>> Howard Fischer: Well, this has also been fairly tight. It's been Sal DiCiccio leveling charges at Jan Brewer. Jan Brewer leveling charges at Sal as to who violated what laws and you've got Sharon Collins sort of sitting out there saying, I'm the technical expert, I've run the office in Tucson for both the Governor and the Secretary of State, and she could end up sliding right through this thing as the other two are so tainted with mud.

>> Michael: Along with statewide races, every congressional legislative seat up for election this year 2002. Arizona, of course, adding two congressional seats to bring the statewide total to eight. Bob, let's start up north, that big new rural district. How do you see the R and the D side of that?

>> Bob Robb: On the Republican side, the race, up until recently, has been dominated by a big spending campaign by Rick Remzi who graduated from NAU, and in his early years did some professional work in Arizona but since 1987 has lived, worked and voted in Virginia. There seems to be some indication that that story is beginning to catch up with Remzi and he's in a bit of a meltdown.

>> Michael: And that's a district that's very sensitive to that --

>> Bob Robb: Well, they lobbied the redistricting commission incessantly to get a district that was totally untainted by any urban influence whatsoever. Then you get this guy from Virginia dropping a whole bunch of money. As I said, he appears to be in at least some kind of a meltdown. The most likely beneficiary is thought to be Louis Tinney, a Navajo County supervisor, who has run by all accounts a very good campaign. 60% of the Republican vote is in Yavapai County, and the Yavapai County candidate, Alan Evert, Mayor of Sedona, does not appear to have really caught on, which may create an opportunity for another nonrural Arizonan, Sydney Hay, who has conservative institutional ties to maybe become a factor. So I think that's getting less clear and more up for grabs as we approach the election and there is not the record of early voting in the rural areas there is in the urban areas. Much more of the vote is out there to be grabbed.

>> Michael: D side, Steve Udall, the Apache County Attorney, generally regarded as the person to beat. What do you think?

>> Bob Robb: He's got the magical name. He's got the gift of story telling that goes with the name. But, again, by most accounts, he has not run a very effective campaign and hasn't been much on top of the issues.

>> Mark Flatten: He's also got cowboy boots and Levis that's he's actually worn before he started the campaign, unlike his chief rival.

>> Michael: Let's come back down to the Valley. Mostly the Bob Stump CD2 district which goes up into Kingman, that kind of thing, heavily contested Republican primary there. Mark, what do you think?

>> Mark Flatten: You know, that's one of those races that pretty much everybody in the district is running. Lisa Atkins, I guess, has been sort of the handpicked successor to Stump. I guess he is actually putting out a fairly well done brochure. She's running on his name. Scott Bundgaard is running into some trouble. Keegan has gotten McCain on board. So that's almost like figuring out if your spaghetti is done. You throw it against the wall and see if it stick.

>> Howard Fischer: The other funny part is every candidate, "You need me to save Luke Air Force Base." Somehow "Only I can save Luke Air Force Base" and nobody really discusses the underlying issues how you do that.

>> Bob Robb: The way the things are breaking at the end are to Bundgaard's disadvantage. He was campaigning in the churches. He was trying to get the social conservative vote. Another social conservative in the race, Trent Franks, is coming on like gangbusters.

>> Michael: Spending a lot of money.

>> Bob Robb: And I think that if anyone's advantaged by the way things are breaking, it's Keegan, because he is the only pro-choice candidate in the race, a social moderate, and I think he benefits from what's occurring, although Lisa Atkins has run a pretty good campaign, does have Stump's very --

>> Howard Fischer: A few interesting last-minute things going on. Scotty has been all over the air on this Castle Adult Bookstore trying to go in on I-17 near Deer Valley and you turn on the TV and there's Scott saying, "I'm fighting the city council for you." Well, wait a second, aren't you a state senator wanting to go to Washington? So --

>> Mark Flatten: Another one of the responsibilities of a member of Congress is to shut down the peep shows.

>> Michael: Let's just touch on District 7, the new one down in Southern Arizona. That Democratic primary again, I think, seven or eight, but two people mentioned --

>> Howard Fischer: Essentially, Pima County supervisor Raul Grijalva appears to have the leg up. Elaine Richardson had gone into the race early with a fair amount of money. She is an Emily's List endorseee. They have thrown a lot of money her way. She tried to use her position on the Senate Judiciary Committee to build her name I.D., but the district, part of it is the Hispanic base in the district and part of it is that Raul has a local name. I think he's got the leg up.

>> Michael: Too much to talk about. Let's at least get to a few legislative races. District 11, the Senate side, has got to have set a new world record for mailings.

>> Bob Robb: I'm -- I live in the district and I'm deeply disappointed if I go to my mailbox and even Barbara Leff or Sue Gerard has chosen not to write me that day.

>> Michael: And you haven't been disappointed one day in the last three weeks.

>> Bob Robb: This is one of two races that's thought to have a heavy influence on the ideological character of the Republican caucus if it does regain control of the state Senate. Leff is running a very aggressive campaign saying Susan Gerard is a liberal, she votes more like a Democrat, she's using Jon Kyl and John Shadegg's endorsement over and over again to try to reenforce that message. Gerard has an interesting strategy. She is not responding in kind, which is uncharacteristic of the Sue Gerard that we all know. She's instead playing the wounded victim and has sent out several mailers decrying the negative politics and there's some sense that the tide is turning against negative campaigning. If Gerard wins, and it's in part attributable to that tactic, that might be an indication of it.

>> Howard Fischer: There's another factor at play here. You've got essentially two de facto incumbents running against each other. Redistricting created this very unusual district. North Central Phoenix is a moderate district. Jane Hull comes from there. Burton Barr came from there. You know, going back, Frank Kelly. And Sue Gerard sort of fits into that. Barbara Leff comes from the Paradise Valley area, always been a much more conservative. Suddenly they're kind of thrust into the same area and what we don't know and haven't had a chance to analyze is who are the people who come out and vote in that district?

>> Michael: Wes Marsh cut a deal with clean elections. That's what District 7 Senate --

>> Mark Fischer: Up in Scottsdale. He is going to pay a thousand-dollar fine for missing a clean elections debate which you're required to attend. He's pretty much missed the entire campaign.

>> Bob Robb: He has been hiding out --

>> Mark Flatten: He has been hiding in his home, which any one of five addresses could be where he's hiding. This is another -- we could do a whole show on clean elections stuff but this is another one of those things where you've got them sort of playing policeman of the elections.

>> Michael: All right. One of the first problems the new legislature will face is a budget crisis. This week Governor Hull warned new lawmakers have no idea what they'll be facing next year. Howie, what is the Governor saying about the current budget situation?

>> Howard Fischer: Essentially she is saying the same thing she has been screaming since she refused to put her signature on the last budget, which is we're in deep kim chi, folks. You cannot keep spending at this rate with the revenues undermined as much as they've been. Sales taxes, which is 47% of the revenue of the state, the bottom has fallen out. People are not buying things. Income tax, which is another 37%, which has to do with jobs, we are in a negative job growth situation in Arizona, something we have not seen in this state in years. So the revenues are just not keeping pace. Originally the Governor had said, well, we need to do something, but wasn't sure she wanted to do anything, you know -- certainly not before the election, not even after the election. I think the pressure is building from people like Randall Gnant to have a session, even if it's a lame duck session after November 5th, because it's unfair and unwise to leave this for the next law -- next legislative session.

>> Michael: Understood, Bob, but, man, tremendous legislative turnover. You talk about a lame duck session, you're going to have a lot of lame duck --

>> Bob Robb: Very lame ducks.

>> Bob Robb: And Hull has been right about state finances for the last year-and-a-half, but we only have one month's worth of fiscal year '02 to '03 results in. And I think once the dust settles, even though right now there is this sense of panic, there's going to be a view that we only have one month and maybe it's premature to be making a 12-month projection as she did and to say that revenues rather than increasing the 4% that were anticipated are in fact going to decline by 2%.

>> Howard Fischer: At the risk of raining on your little parade, first of all, we have the second month, we have August, and they are worse than the July numbers. Second of all, even the Department of Economic Security, which predicts that sometime in '03 things are going to go up, even pulled those figures down in terms of job growth. There is almost no way you can make up -- we're talking about, for the '03-04 budget, forget about even balancing this year, we're talking about a billion dollars. We have a $6 billion budget of which half of it you can't touch.

>> Bob Robb: JLBC estimates that you would have to have a 5% growth for the rest of the year in order to catch up. It's unlikely. They've got a problem. But presumably the economy is going to turn around at some point and life changes.

>> Howard Fischer: Where did you get those rose-colored glasses?

>> Michael: Howie, we're almost out of time, but I wanted to turn to you, our resident marijuana expert, and ask you --

>> Howard Fischer: Speaking of rose-colored...

>> Howard Fischer: I've never exhaled.

>> Michael: -- will the United States Government supply marijuana to Arizona if Proposition 203 passes?

>> Howard Fischer: Not willingly, no. Obviously part of Proposition 203 is the idea that the government is growing the stuff at a farm back East and that they would willingly say, "Of course, because you've declared medical marijuana to be legal, here, here's the truckload." Essentially I think everyone understood there was no way, A, the feds were going to do it, and, B, you're crossing state lines. But what they have is a backup, and they think will keep the feds out, is the DPS still will be seizing marijuana and therefore there will be a stash somewhere and people will be able to go in, "Hey, man, I'm here for my lid, you know."

>> Michael: Well, on that positive and upbeat note, we'll see how it turns out on Tuesday. Panelists, thank you very much. To see a transcript of tonight's show, although I don't know why, or to share your views or contact us, please visit the Channel 8 website at www.kaet.asu.edu, click on "Horizon" on the left side of the screen, and then follow those links. Monday on "Horizon," comprehensive election coverage continues with an interview with independent candidate for governor Dick Mahoney. Tuesday, "Horizon" moves from its regular time slot for a full hour of primary election results, along with expert analysis. That starts at 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, more primary election analysis, along with professional advice on how to deal with the anniversary of September 11. And join us Thursday for a wrap on the Cardinals stadium "thing." Thank you very much for being here on a Friday evening. I hope you have a great weekend. I'm Michael Grant. Good night.