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September 23, 2003

Host: Michael Grant
Topics:
· KAET-ASU Poll;
· Immigrant workers Freedom Ride;
· Arizona State University's Insititute of Human Origins
· Profiles of Success: Glendale's assistant city manager Chris Zapata
In-Studio Guests:
ASU Professor Bruce Merrill, Director of the KAET-ASU poll

>> Michael: Tonight on "Horizon," how did Arizona voters rate Governor Napolitano's handling of the gas crisis, just one of many questions on the latest KAET poll. Good evening, I'm Michael Grant. Welcome to "Horizon." Tonight we learn that embattled Corporation Commissioner Jim Irvin had quit this afternoon. Irvin, of course, the subject of a house impeachment investigation by the house judiciary committee for unethical conduct. Commissioner Irvin had been hit with a $60 million punitive damage award by a federal court jury last year for his role in the attempted sale of Southwest Gas. The state also settled a libel suit against Irvin by a former Corporation Commissioner -- commission staffer. Irvin had reportedly offered to resign last week if the report by a special investigator was not made public. That report is expected to be given to legislative leadership later this week.

>>Michael: Governor's handling of the gas crisis, price gouging and the initiative that would ban benefits to illegal immigrants, those are the topics of the latest KAET/ASU poll.

>>Reporter: Overall 66% approved of the job Governor Napolitano is doing. 19% disapproved. 15% did not have an opinion. When asked how they thought Governor Napolitano handled the recent gas crisis, 9% surveyed strongly approved of the way she handled that situation. 48% approved. 20% disapproved. 9% strongly disapproved. 14% had no opinion. Support for a proposed antigouging law was strong. 79% favor an antigouging law while 15% do not, 6% didn't have an opinion. Finally, there was also strong support for the protect Arizona now initiative, which would deny government services to illegal immigrants and require proof of citizenship to vote. 34% are very supportive, 36% are supportive, 14% oppose it, 6% are strongly opposed, 10% have no opinion.

>> Michael: Joining me now is ASU Professor Bruce Merrill. He is the Director of the poll. Bruce, good to see you again.

>>Bruce Merrill: Good to see you, Mike.

>> Michael: Governor's approval rating pretty darn good.

>>Bruce: She's doing fine. With those -- with those that have an opinion she got a 78% rating. That's pretty good. That's the highest she's had is about 82%. I think Jane Hull at one point early in her administration had about an 85. Any time you get up into near 80 for these politicians, that's very good. She's doing a very good job.

> Michael: Now, of course, the big question was in the wake of the kinder Morgan pipeline break and the gasoline crisis and that kind of thing, would that approval rating be impacted? We've already talked about the fact it remains strong. And most people thought that she'd handled the pipeline gas crisis pretty well.

>>Bruce: She did. By about a 2 to 1 margin people felt she did a good job in the way she handled the crisis. I thought she kind of stumbled, in my opinion, the first day or so when she said she didn't consider it to be a crisis and I think a lot of people did see it as a crisis. I think after that she just got stronger and stronger and the poll would verify that. As I say by a 2-to-1 margin people approved of the job she did.

>> Michael: Now, you ran an intensity scale, though, on this particular one, and about the same number of people felt very strongly about it on the extremes?

>>Bruce: It was 9% felt that very strongly she did a good job and about 9% very -- felt very strongly she didn't do a good job. But overall, among -- if you combine the very strong, approval and -- she did about 60% compared with about 25% and about 15% had no opinion. That's very good. She did fine. I think this was an important one, Mike, for her because after the Piestewa situation, our polls here showed that that did hurt her, the way it was handled, cost her about 10, 12% of the vote. I think if she would have had two mistakes or two bad showings, I think it would have hurt her for a long time and I think the fact that she did come back and show strongly on this kind of wipes out that earlier black mark she had a little bit.

>> Michael: Of course, you know, one of the questions I always have -- as you know, in lifetiming is everything. If we had run this poll let's say within days after the gas crisis, do you think that would have been a skewed a little more the other way?

>>Bruce: It could have been, but I think that the so-called crisis itself lasted long enough, and I think she showed very well after the first day or so. I mean, she was very active. She was all over the state. I think she put a lot of focus on kinder Morgan as the problem instead of anything that anybody in her administration did. I thought that was very effective. I think she had crisis management within her staff that was very effective.

>> Michael: Now, certainly a related issue that came up was price gouging. There were reports, I guess, at some locations the prices got as high as 4n't 50, 5 bucks and there's a lot of discussion about whether or not we'll move to some sort of price gouging statute and we polled on that. First, though, that's a tough question to phrase, isn't it, to keep it neutral so you don't drive the result by the question?

>>Bruce: Yeah, we spent a lot of time kind of phrasing that question because if you use the term price gouging, that is such an emotional, strongly negative thing, that you kind of ask yourself, well, who wouldn't be in favor of an antigouging law. So the way we did it, we just basically explained, would you be in favor of or opposed to a law that would impose penalties on businesses that provide service or products if they raise their prices unfairly during the time of a crisis or an emergency. So we tried to stay away from the gouging -- the word itself and not surprisingly I suspect almost 80% of the people in Arizona would be in favor of that. Many states have that type of a law. When we did the crosstabs, this is kind of an interesting one, says something about the Libertarian right wing group of people in Arizona, the only opposition really came from that group, from the most conservative Republicans and the Libertarians who, of course, don't want the government involved in almost anything. So I think we can say there's a consensus that people would like this kind of a law.

>> Michael: The initiative that is being circulated currently similar to something passed in California, I want to say about eight years ago, basically would deny state benefits to illegal immigrants. We polled on that, and, boy, the support for that was overwhelming.

>>Bruce: It was, Michael. Frankly, it was a little higher than I would have predicted having done polls in the state for 30 years. I think we have to be very careful with that. About 75% of the people say that they would favor that. I feel that a lot of questions today -- fielded a lot of questions today from reporters does this show there's racism in Arizona or what's going on here? My own opinion is I don't think it's about racism as much as it is about economics. I think a lot of people in Arizona, when we've gone through what we've gone through, the economy down, people worried about their jobs, the cost of government, I think a lot of people are concerned about the cost of having illegal immigrants in the state taking jobs. If you just look at the legislation in terms of fact people that are here illegally can go to any hospital, to the emergency room, and they can't be turned away. They have to be treated. That alone in Maricopa County last year cost the hospitals something like $200 million. So there's certainly costs associated with it, and when I think when you have a tough economy people are aware of that and I think that's why they're reacting so much. In fact, we don't have a large enough sample, Mike, to really pull out Hispanics, for instance, who would be the group most affected by this. But when we looked at what data we had and some other research I'm doing in the university, you have to keep in mind that within the Hispanic community there is some conflict between the Hispanic families that have been in Arizona for many, many years and have been more incultureATED here and a large part of the Hispanic community is not favorable to providing a benefits to the illegal people.

>> Michael: In fact, Bruce, if memory serves, it cleared by about 60% in California when it was on the ballot there and I believe as a subset that substantial portion of Hispanics voted for the proposition in California.

>>Bruce: Yeah and I think you would be surprised at what a large proportion would here. I think the other dimension that's kind of fun about this is notice that both political parties, the leadership of both political parties, are against this and I think it kind of shows something about the amount of disconnect in the average Republican or Democrat out there and the establishment people that are Republicans or Democrat. The Republicans obviously don't want it because they don't want an issue on the ballot that is going to mobilize potentially Hispanics and bring them out. That's what happened in California.

>> Michael: Bruce Merrill, director of the KAET poll, we appreciate very much the information. We'll have some statistic later in the week. We did some polling on President Bush and some fascinating results.

>>Bruce: A bit of a teaser, it's fascinating and just a quick thanks to the volunteers. They did a great job this time.

>> Michael: Always. Thanks, Bruce.

>>Michael: Hundreds of people gathering at state capitol this afternoon to show support for a nationwide effort to change U.S. immigration policy. Members of various local unions want immigrant workers to be recognized for their contributions to society by getting more rights. That rally was held in conjunction with the immigrant worker freedom ride. Almost two dozen Arizonans will join people from other states on a cross-country trip to the nation' capital. Their goal is to push Congress towards amnesty for many immigrants, allow family members to come to the United States, improve rights in the workplace, and protect civil rights and civil liberties.

>>Carlos Duarte: We're here organizing a rally to welcome the bus riders that are coming from L.A. and all the way to Washington and New York. This is a freedom ride and we are pushing for legislation -- actually for immigration reform dealing with four issues. One would be reunification of families, the protection of workers' rights, regardless of their immigration status, legalization for workers that are already here and a clear path to citizenship.

>>Martin Hernandez: Part of the accomplishment is to send a message to people in Congress that it's time to do something about what's going on with immigration laws, but also we know that this is not something that is going to happen overnight but at least it's going to be -- it's going to follow a path.

>>Herman Brown: My organization, the Jewish labor committee, both nationally and the Arizona chapter, fully supports the immigrant workers' freedom right. We were an immigrant community, our Jewish community, we went through the hell of the depression, somehow many many of our people made it, but still we know what our grandparents and parents went through, and we have to support what is happening here to the immigrant workers.

>> Michael: The so-called freedom ride will leave Phoenix on a bus tomorrow and they will be hitting about 70 cities on their way to Washington D.C. An Arizona State University the institute of human origins is working toward finding where man came from. Here's more on what the institute does.

>> Reporter: This is the barren windswept desert northern region in Ethiopia. It can be inhospitable at times, with temperatures reaching 125 degrees but mostly it's a place of pilgrimmage where the paleoanthropoligist who comes because of the unique geology and high rate of fossil discoveries.

>>Donald Johanson: Did you hear the hippo? It was very close to our tent.

>> Reporter: Camp is set near the river. Daily meetings and breakfast and out to survey by 7:00. Donald Johannesen, ASU professor of anthropology and director of the institute of human origins, has made many trips.

>>Donald: My first trip was in 1972 when I first came here in a very quick short exploratory trip. In fact, I only stayed in this area for probably 4 ore five daze, and it seemed to be -- four or five days and it seemed to be almost a fantasy. The geological deposits are extraordinary, fossil rich, and I knew that the site was older than 3 million years. If we could find human fossils of such an age, I had a sense that we would really open up a new chapter in terms of human evolution.

>> Reporter: And that's just what Johannesen did. In 1973 he made his first discovery, a knee joint that set off a whole series of extraordinary excavations and explorations in the region. What was most astonishing was finding the fossil knee in deposits which were significantly older than 3 million years. Detailed analysis showed it was from a creature that walked upright. The knee was clearly from an early human ancestor.

>>Donald: In 1974 when I finished my Ph.D. at Chicago I told my committee that I was going back to Ethiopia and I was going to find something exciting. Little did I know, but that November I found what is now known as the Lucy skeleton.

>> Reporter: Johannesen new immediately it was human, very old and very complete. Over 40% of the skeleton was recovered. Lucy's species opened up a major new window into the study of human origins. Up to that point, few human fossils dated back more than 3 million years. With Lucy being older than 3 million years, her discovery allowed scientists to glimpse far deeper into our ancestral past. Bill Kimble, associate professor of anthropology s director of science at the institute of human origins and co-directs the research expeditions.

>>Bill Kimble: Every year we go we have a series of scientific questions we want to address, and the research that we undertake in the field is geared towards trying to provide answers for those questions. At the end of the 1970s we still didn't have a really good idea about the time frame represented by the evolution of Lucy and her species, and with the advent of new techniques of radio isotope dating, we have been able to refine the tame frame for human evolution between around 3.4 and something less than 3 million years ago. Equally outstanding was we didn't have a single complete skull of Lucy species. In the 1990s we remedied that in 1992 with yellow rocks, discovery of the first complete skull.

>>Reporter: It's those questions that send the institute team back to the country year after year. Today much is known about Lucy herself. But many questions remain about the world in which she lived. Kay reed, assistant professor of anthropology, is a paleoecologist and surveys the landscape for evidence that will tell her what the environment looked like and what other animals lived alongside our ancestors millions of years ago.

>>Kaye Reed: Hoping to find some new carnivores and other animals. Since we haven't been to that area in a long time, I'm sort of blazing a trail here with the help of the AFFAR in the back.

>>Report: They are the guides and general support and without them the work would be almost impossible.

>>Kaye: This is this? Big?

>>Man: It's big. This is small.

>>Kaye: Oh, okay.

>> Reporter: Using satellite maps, reed is able to locate potential sites for survey.

>>Kaye: 3 million years ago it looked a lot different than what you can see behind me now where it's very barren. Probably based on the animals that I found here, it was a lot more -- there was a lot more rainfall. So when you get a lot more rainfall, you get a lot more trees. So along the river you had the forest today that's about 20 meters on either side, probably extended 200, 300 meters. A really dense gallery forest.

>> Reporter: Reed can discover a great deal about our ancestors' world by looking for the more plentiful remains of the other animals that lived with them.

>>Kaye: The other animals can tell us a lot more about early environment. Many of the bones here that we find are chewed by carnivores. So we know the sabertoothed cats, big hyenas were chowing down on them a long time ago.

>> Reporter: Virtually every animal has its own diagnostic feature. So many animals can be identify bide a single tooth.

>>Kaye: We work with them on what they're supposed to bring or find. I try to sit down with them and work with them and tell them this is a carnivore, these are two different kind of CARNIVORES, this is how they are different and how the teeth of shape.

>>Donald: In 1981 I founded the institute of human origins which was located in Berkeley, California and now is associated with Arizona State University in Tempe. This is a place which is dedicated solely to understand human origins.

>> Reporter: The successful collaboration between the institute and ASU resulted in anthropology graduate student Elizabeth Harmon becoming one of the first students to join the research team. >>Elizabeth Harmon: I have gotten to do a little of everything. I have done some excavation with the elephant bone bed and I've gotten to do a lot of survey. I've seen probably every reach of the area, and I have gotten to do fossil processing, every aspect of this field work I've been a part of. Every morning there is an opportunity to find an HOMONID. I haven't, but they've been found. There's CARNIVORES a to find. >

> Reporter: Fossils blend in with their background and are easily camouflaged. The only way to find the fossil is to search on foot, head down and eyes focused. Thousands of specimens from the smallest rodent to elephants have been collected. But early human fossils are incredibly rare. One morning Charles Lockwood, a paleoanthropologist with the institute was surveying in an area which something caught his eye.

>>Charles Lockwood: This specimen was found in one of our surveys early in the morning before 9:00. We had been surveying about 30 minutes and one of the expedition members called us over to series of low hills had that bone fragments scattered in various places. On one of these low hills there was a pretty large scatter of bone fragments, lots of different animals, and in the center of these fragments I found this piece here. The combination of that tooth plus the shape of the bone around it was enough to tell me this is part of a HOMONID mandible.

>> Reporter: Lockwood found the jaw in deposits dated about 3 million years. The team needs more time before a conclusion can be reached. By the end of November, about two dozen new HOMONID specimens were added to the total for the season. Fossils of monkeys, horses, the first camel and a new species of Impala were also recovered.

>>Donald: So often the limelight falls on me because of my discovery of Lucy, but none of this would have been possible without the dedicated efforts of extraordinary number of individuals, geologists, paleontologists, archaeologists, it has given us an opportunity to include people really from all over the world, and most gratifying to me, really, has been the opportunity to train African nationals.

>> Reporter: This man is a paleoanthropologist and is working with the team.

>>Zeresenay Alemseged: One of the things the institute of human origins does is helping African students to work in the field of paleoanthropology and to go to the field. My work with the IHO can be considered as part of the collaboration between the institute and the national museum of Ethiopia.

>> Reporter: Every fossil from the tiniest fragment to the most complete specimen found during the season must be carefully cataloged before being checked into the national museum the capital of Ethiopia where all fossil discoveries remain. Casts of all the important HOMONID fossils are fabricated and sent back to ASU for further study and evaluation.

>>Donald: Lucy was found 25 years ago and yet she still is perhaps the most intriguing, approachable, familiar human ancestor fossil that's ever been found. Even though older and much more complete fossils than Lucy have been found, she still is the most celebrated of all the discoveries, and in many ways she is -- she has led the research here in Ethiopia, no matter what we find, Lucy will continue to be an extraordinarily important discovery.

>> Reporter: Mohammad, an elder, was there the day Lucy was discovered. . (translated).

>> Reporter: The AFAR prepared a special tribute to honor the 25th anniversary of Lucy's discovery. She has touched their lives in immeasurable and practical ways. Many have acquired land, sent their children to school and learned about their homeland in ways that helps them understand their personal heritage. To them, there is much to celebrate.

>> Michael: Valle del sol is a community organization that serves the behavioral health needs of the Valley's Hispanic community. Each year it honors Hispanic leaders for their contributions to that community. 12 news Lin Sue Cooney profiles Glendale's assistant city manager Chris Zapata who went from a small Arizona town to a big-time stage.

>>Chris Zapata: Glendale is very much a community where there is this can-do attitude.

>>Reporter: Can to can be seen near the loop 101 and Glendale Avenue.

>>Chris: I said, dad, it's like America West Arena and Bank One Ballpark but bigger.

>>Reporter: Chris Zapata, Glendale's assistant deputy manager can't help but be excited about the new hockey arena and football arena and the role he played in the development.

>>Chris: We spent $67 million on the you a Reba and of that 6.4 million had gone to women and minority owned business.

>>Reporter: His current success is built on a foundation that began many years ago in towns much smaller than Glendale.

>>Chris: As a manage inner a small city n a rural city, what I have seen when you go there, you truly are seen as the expert and people depend on you to move the town.

>>Reporter: He has lived in Eloy and superior, small towns that were the right choice for his career and his family.

>>Chris: The tradition there, the neighborhoods, are such that it's like when I was a kid growing up.

>>Reporter: When he moved to the Valley, Chris came with a broad set of skills.

>>Chris: The way I see it, it's all about people and it's all about relationships and it's all about trying to do the right thing.

>> Michael: Here is a look at what's on tomorrow's "Horizon."

>> Reporter: What is the priority for improving transportation in the Valley? Easing freeway congestion, fixing the roads, public transportation? How about the idea of double decking the I-17? The regional transportation plan has some hurdles to pass before going into effect. We look at regional transportation Wednesday on "Horizon."

>> Michael: Then on Thursday, we're going to take a look at a ballot proposition which would create a special hospital district for Maricopa County and, of course, on Friday we'll have the Journalists Roundtable edition of "Horizon" where we'll talk about the week's news events including but not limited to today's resignation of Arizona Corporation Commissioner Jim Irvin. Thank you very much for joining us on this Tuesday evening, I'm Michael Grant. Hope you have a great one. Good night.

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