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Transcripts

September 8, 2003

Host: Michael Grant
Topics:
· Democratic and Republican National Committee Chairmen in Arizona;
· Analysis of the first Democratic presidential candidates debate
In-Studio Guests:
Jim Pederson, Chairman of the Arizona Democratic Party;
Jay Heiler, Republican advisor

>> Michael Grant: Tonight on "Horizon," the presidential primary campaign in Arizona. Republicans and Democrats want your vote. And we'll have analysis of the first Democratic presidential candidate debate in Albuquerque.

>>Good evening, I'm Michael Grant. National candidates courting Arizona voters like never before. Democratic presidential candidates are making regular stops throughout the stop. Arizona's Latino votes are considered a huge prize for both parties. The official debates have already begun, and we can look forward to our own in October. Producer Larry Lemmons tells us a tale of two chairmen.

>> Larry Lemmons: Two political counterparts coincidentally visit the Valley on the same day. A Democratic front-runner opens his Arizona headquarters. The first of several candidate debates, this one in Albuquerque, foreshadows what will occur in Phoenix October 9th. The 2004 presidential election is more than a year away but the campaign is heating up in a state that promises among many things a substantial Latino vote. In Phoenix the Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, stresses the importance of inclusiveness at this Republican fund-raiser.

>> Ed Gillespie: Just last year the Republican National Committee gave more than $750,000 in contributions to Hispanic non-incumbent candidates. This has never been done before. We have hosted four minority candidate seminars already this year. And we're launching a massive voter registration operation. Our new citizens' initiative begins with our presence at naturalization ceremonies across this country as allowed by state laws.

>> Larry Lemmons: Gillespie says Republican numbers have been rising among Latino voters.

>> Ed Gillepsie: Senator Bob Dole, an honorable, good man, was able to get 26% of the Hispanic vote in 1996. President Bush got 35% in 2000. And Republican candidates for the House and Senate across the country in the last election got 39% of the vote. The trend is moving our way because of our positive message.

>> Larry Lemmons: He asserts the President has a high job approval rating among Hispanics.

>> Ed Gillepsie: The President enjoys high job approval ratings among Hispanic voters because of his positive agenda and his record of achievement, which includes historic increases in education funding for Title I programs and for Hispanic-serving institutions, those colleges with 25% of Latino enrollment or more. His implementation of the first National Diabetes Prevention Campaign. Expanded health coverage to low income children, a five-year initiative to add or expand community health centers. And seeking to increase the number of minority homeowners by 5.5 million people.

>> Larry Lemmons: The Democratic National Committee Chairman, Terry McAuliffe, also visits Phoenix on the way to the Albuquerque debate. As expected, McAuliffe has a different view of the President's effect on Hispanic voters.

>> Terry McAuliffe: You know, President Bush talks a great game, but he dodn't deliver. He is all rhetoric. I refer to the Bush White House as pinata politics. You open up the pinata, you expect a lot of things to come out. Very few things trickle out of George Bush's pinata. He thinks Hispanic outreach is bringing a mariachi band down to the White House. All talk, makes big promises to Latin America, makes big promises to the Hispanic community, but he doesn't deliver. The numbers speak for themselves. 559,000 Hispanics have lost their jobs since George Bush became President. Unemployment in the Hispanic community hit 8.2% in July. That is the highest it has been since 1989. 40% of the Hispanic workforce today has no health insurance at all. And the gap between homeownership between the Hispanic community and the white community grew by 7 percentage points, the largest gap in the history our country.

>> Larry Lemmons: Both chairmen agree how close the 2004 election could be and the subsequent importance of swing states like Arizona.

>> Terry: What I have said publicly, in the electoral college map we start out with about 183 electoral votes. The Republican Party starts out with 179. We start out in our basket of states with California, New York, Illinois, Washington state, Maine, New Jersey, and several other states. Obviously key target swing states for us will be Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, all -- Florida, obviously is a key state for us. If you add the 27 electoral votes from Florida, we're 210. WE're getting awfully close. But the basket of states is about 20, 21 states.

>> Ed Gillespie :We have to start with what we ended with last time, and that includes Arizona. We lost New Mexico close. I think we can win it. But I don't -- we cannot take Arizona for granted, and it's important that we put the appropriate resources and effort into the state. That's why I've been working with Bob and others in the organization here to make sure our ground game is sound. We're getting our voters identified, not only Republican voters but Democratic voters who are Bush supporters, getting them to the polls. When you're in a situation where the electoral college is so closely divided, we obviously won the electoral college with four votes in the last election, everybody -- the Democrats draw their line and they have some that they assume they're going to win and we draw a line and some we assume we're going to win. We do not assume we're going to win Arizona. We assume we have to work it hard, ah and ah but we're optimistic we're going to carry it again, but it begins with locking down what we won last time and then expanding from there.

>> Larry Lemmons: Part of that expansion includes a goal of registering 3 million new voters for Republicans in this election cycle, a point stressed by Gillespie to these activists.

>> Ed Gillespie : If we follow our plan, we will unite America behind great leaders and important goals, we'll elect more Republicans to city halls, state capitals and the United States Congress, beginning here in Arizona, Senator John McCain, and your stellar Republicans and your congressional house delegation, we will make sure that George W. Bush wins a second term as president of the United States.

>> Larry Lemmons: McAuliffe is travelling with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chairman, Ciro Rodriguez from San Antonio. Rodriguez says there is a similarity between the actions of the President and the former governor of Texas.

>> Ciro Rodriguez: He basically did to this country what he did to Texas, and I served -- I was there as a state legislator when he was there. What he -- he reached out, cut a deal ah basically to cut taxes and beef up education. Well, the bottom line is that he cut the taxes so bad in Texas that there was no money left for education. Very similar to what has transpired on the federal level.

>> Larry Lemmons: Democratic Latino voters are currently split between nine candidates but McAuliffe says that will change.

>> McAulliffe: I can tell you there is a visceral dislike of George Bush. This is my seventh presidential campaign. I have never seen anything like it, the visceral dislike of the policies of this man, the right wing judges to his economic tax cuts for the rich, it's all he ever does. So I think we have an opportunity now more than ever to unify our party behind our nominee, and let the Hispanic community be split all over early in the primaries, that's fine, as long as when we bring them back we remember it's about beating George Bush and unifying behind the Democratic nominee.

>> Larry Lemmons: There isn't much, if any, visceral dislike George Bush in this room where Gillespie promotes the doctrine of preemption.

>>Ed Gillepsie: If you listen carefully to the rhetoric, understand, Democrats are moving away from pre-emtive self-defense in the world after September 11. We cannot return to a time when we certainly reacted to terrorist attacks. This is a naive proposition on their part. We can fight the war against terror in Baghdad and Kabul or we will fight it in Boston and Kansas. If we do not deal with terrorism, we will deal with its aftermath. The President is right. They are wrong. This is a debate they cannot win.

>> Crowd: We want Dean. We want Dean. We want Dean.

>> Larry Lemmons: These Howard Dean supporters in Phoenix feel differently. Arriving at the opening of his Arizona headquarters, the new Democratic fund-raising front-runner is given something akin to celebrity treatment as he navigates the media crush and signs autographs for prospective voters. Dean never supported the second Iraq war, a fact he continues to emphasize.

>>Howard Dean: I supported the first Gulf War intervention because I thought one of our allies had been attacked and we had an obligation to defend them. And I supported the Afghan war because 3,000 people of our people had been murdered and we had a right to defend the United States of America. But this time the President told us that Iraq was buying uranium from Africa. That turned out not to be true. He told us that he was making a deal with Saddam Hussein -- Saddam Hussein was making a deal with Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaida. I'm pretty sure there are more people in Al Qaida today shooting and bombing American troops and Iraqis than there were Al Qaida people in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was in charge. The vice-president -

>> Larry Lemmons: Dean began criticizing George Bush early in his campaign while his chief competitors refrained. But his success has encouraged a chorus of presidential disapproval from Democratic circles.

>>Richard Gephardt: This President is a miserable failier on foreign policy and the economy and he has got to be replaced.

>> Larry Lemmons: Republicans say the Democrats are only angry.

>> Ed Gillepsie: The Democratic Party of John F. Kennedy who extolled us to ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country, tell us not what they would do for their country. The once proud party of Franklin Roosevelt, who famously told us we have nothing to fear but fear itself all too often seems to have nothing to offer but fear itself. In place of solutions, they serve up raw emotion, and that emotion is anger. They are angry that they do not control a majority of the governorships in our states. They are angry that they do not control a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. They are angry that they do not control a majority of seats in the United States Senate. And they are angry most of all that they do not control the White House. As a result, they offer Americans a steady diet of protest and pessimism. They're still protesting the 2000 election.

>> Larry Lemmons: Democrats say the 2000 election began pattern.

>> Terry McAulliffe: They did it to us in Florida. They're doing to it us in Texas, they're trying to do it to us in Colorado, they're doing it to us in California. They can't beat us in the ballot booth so they resort to these types of activities in order to steal the elections. This is about power for the Republicans. Here you had Gray Davis who had 8 million people voted for him. Eight months later you have a right wing conservative put up $1.8 million to go get a recall. I think it's horrible. If it were a Republican governor, I would be as upset.

>> Larry Lemmons: Thanks to the earlier primary date, Arizonans now have an influence unprecedented in Arizona presidential primary politics. The rhetoric from both parties promises to become even more fiery as election fever rises.

>> Michael Grant: Joining me to talk about the rhetorical clashes and the significance to Arizonans, the Chairman of the Arizona Democratic Party, Jim Pederson, and he was the former chief of staff for Governor Fife Symington, the Director of Communications for Bush for President of Arizona in the 2000 election, Jay Heiler. Gentlemen, good to see both of you. We want to talk about the debate in just a couple minutes, but first let's focus on Arizona. Jim, if the election were held today, the primary, give me your feel on where Arizona is on this field of nine.

>> Jim Pederson: Michael, it's so early, this scenario changes every week. We have less than five months to go before the New Hampshire and Iowa primaries and the Arizona primary. Things are going to change. We have some great candidates. The field is going to narrow. I predict by March we should have a candidate -- we should have a presidential nominee in the Democratic Party, but to stand here today and predict who is going to win Arizona, it's impossible.

>> Michael Grant: Last poll I saw was, I think, a Rocky Mountain poll showed Lieberman with actually a fairly substantial lead. Do you think that's holding up or not?

>> Jim Pederson: Well, I think that's understandable. Senator Lieberman certainly has the name identification in Arizona from his vice-presidential run in 2000. He has visited the state more than any other presidential candidate. I think that lead, you can explain that. Again, whether that's going to hold up over the coming months we'll have to wait and see. But a lot of candidates are just getting their Arizona operations geared up.

>> Michael Grant: Jay, there is a dynamic going on here that has not gone on previously, and that's the attention that Arizona is getting from Democratic candidates because its moved up in the queue quite a bit. Obviously that brings exposure, those kinds of really long reports that we just saw, those kinds of things. That make it tougher sledding for George Bush in Arizona ultimately?

>> Jay Heiler: Yeah, you have my old boss Fife Symington to thank for that. We started that effort of trying to move Arizona's primary up earlier, and I think Janet and the Democrats I think wisely followed suit for this cycle.

>> Michael Grant: If I recall it helped your handpicked candidate, too.

>> Jay Heiler: I wasn't going to bring that up. Who is the guest and who is the host here? It's an important dynamic for the state and it makes us more of a player. We should be a player because we are sort of a bellwether as an independent western locale to sift through these candidates and start deciding which one we like. So it shouldn't all fall to the midwest and Iowa and the northeast and the south. We need an early state out here and we're it.

>> Michael: Republicans want Dean to be the nominee?

>> Jay Heiler: I think a lot of Republicans do. I'm of mixed emotion about that. I've known Howard Dean in his political persona for a long time. I used to observe him fairly carefully at national governors association meetings and I took him early on as somebody who would some day be walking across this stage. He just sort of had that M.O. But I think he's a candidate that the president sizes up well against, but I think he sizes up maybe even better against some of the others. I don't think it matters.

>> Michael Grant: Wesley Clark making noises he may jump in. How does that affect the dynamic, do you think.

>> Jim Pederson: Well, he would be a very attractive candidate. I think he will declare sometime in the coming weeks. Throws a whole new perspective on the race. You have essentially a non-politician, military man entering the race, we have a governor, we have members of Congress, and now we have a military leader in the race. So, again a new dynamic and I think it's going to be quite interesting.

>> Jay Heiler: I think his entry in the race fit comes helps Dean. The reason it helps Dean is on the one hand it dilutes the pro military angle Kerry would enjoy exclusively and just creates one more person among the large field to scatter un-decideds, and I don't think you're going to see too many of Howard's faithful leaving him to go jump on Wesley Clark's bandwagon at this late date.

>> Michael Grant: Speaking of things military, the first official Democratic candidate debate held in Albuequerque, of course, last week. Here you are four of the candidates offering their views on the war in Iraq.

>> John Kerry: What we know now is that being flown to an aircraft carrier and pronouncing the words "mission accomplished" does not end a war. And the swagger of a president who says bring 'em on did not bring our troops peace or safety. And I intend -- I will return -- I believe we need a president who understands how to get it right in the beginning. This is the third opportunity of the president to try to get it right. The first was when we originally gave the authority of force when he told us and Colin Powell told us they would go to the U.N. and build a coalition. The president didn't do it. He failed in his diplomacy. He rushed to war against our warnings. And he has now inherited the wind, so to speak.

>> Joe Lieberman: As president I would have listened to the American military when they said we need more troops to secure Iraq. I would have gotten off of pride and hurt feelings and gone to the NATO and the United Nations and asked them to join us in securing and rebuilding this country. I would have brought the Iraqis into control of the country. Let me say this to the question asked earlier... I didn't support the war against Saddam Hussein so we could control Iraq. Quite the contrary, I supported it so we could get rid of Saddam and let the Iraqis control Iraq.

>> John Edwards: We have young men and women in a shooting gallery right now, and the primary reason for that is because this president had no plan, and now he stubbornly continues to fight an effort to bring others in, to relinquish some responsibility, some control, in order to bring our friends and allies into this effort. This started a long time ago. It didn't begin on September 11th, and it didn't begin in Iraq. It began with his unilateral disengagement from Kyoto, unilateral disengagement from the biological weapons convention, a whole series of nuclear nonproliferation agreements.

>> Richard Gephardt: We get the help we should have gotten in the beginning. We go to the Turks, we go to the Indians, we go to the Chinese, we go to the Russians, the French, the Germans, and we work out a resolution consistent with all the traditions of the American military. We're not going to turn our troops over to U.N. command. We've done this in Bosnia. We've done it in Afghanistan. We can do this. But this president has to lead, and he is not leading. He's a miserable failure on this issue, and he must be replaced in the election.

>> Michael Grant: What do you think, Jay, as president, a miserable failure on this issue.

>> Jay Heiler: Well I think these guys have a little problem. I think they are now forced to almost literally preach to their choir in order to excite the audience they are trying to excite but the messages they are putting out there now about the president and the way he has led country through a very difficult period are playing well with the choir but they're not going to play that well with the broad middle of the American electorate.

>> Michael: Jim, it can be a tough issue, and it's one that both parties face perennially, the primary process will drive them sometimes too far left or too far right to get back in the middle in time for the general election. Any danger that that's going to happen on this issue here?

>> Jim Pederson: There is a danger of that, Michael, but that's why I think the Arizona primary is going to be critically important. I think Arizona is perceived to be very middle of the road and that's where elections are won because that's where most of the voters are. I think the candidate that really tunes his campaign, not necessarily to a narrow slice of our party, but to a broad majority is going to be the big winner. The first couple primaries I don't think are necessarily indicative of the rest of the electorate throughout the country, Iowa and New Hampshire, but I think Arizona is, and that's why there's so much focus on this state.

>> Michael: Jay, on the other hand, though, you keep reading headlines like 87 billion more for Iraq. Can Americans support weighing for the continuing effort --

>>Jay Heiler: Support can always wane if the leadership takes the wrong steps or fails to communicate effectively about what's doing and why, but this leadership has not taken the wrong steps, nor is it failing to communicate about them. The president went before the public just last night, explained to them what was happening, went over the heads of the press, as the president must sometimes do, presidents of both parties, and the public is going to support in the fullness of time the leadership that this president has shown and the accomplishments that we have racked up as a country in responding to September 11th are very real and very powerful and so far they've had great results. And once that story gets told in the push and pull of a campaign, the president is going to come out on top of that debate.

>> Michael: There is probably no greater issue that can make or break a president. At the Albuquerque debate four contenders offered their views on the economy.

>> Dennis Kucinich: We have to do everything we can to secure our manufacturing base, and that means giving a critical examination to those trade agreements that have caused a loss of hundreds of thousands and in some cases millions of jobs in this economy. As president of the United States, my first act in office, therefore, will be to cancel N.A.F.T.A. and the WTO and return to bilateral trade -- to return to bilateral trade conditioned on workers rights, human rights and the environment.

>> Bob Graham: One, we should repeal all the portions of bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 which went primarily to the upper income. Number two, we should use a portion of that money to give a tax break to middle income Americans by reducing the tax on the payrolls. That's a place where money actually will be spent, used and energized in the economy. Third, we should have an interstate-like program to rebuild America.

>> Carol Moseley Braun: We are witnessing for the first time in recent history embedded wealth, entrenched poverty and a shrinking middle class in America, and the only way we can turn that around is to end the trickle down economics that have given the wealthiest Americans more money than they can even reasonably use and give people opportunity to support themselves and their families. If you invest the masses of the people, you can create jobs and create the kind of stimulus for the economy that will give prosperity to everybody.

>> Howard Dean: We need to stop corporate welfare and start doing something for small businesses in this country. Small businesses -- [ APPLAUSE ] Small businesses create more jobs than large businesses do and they don't move their jobs offshore because they're rooted in their community. If you want to invest in America, we ought to invest in America and stay in America with those jobs and I agree with the infrastructure, and we also ought to invest in renewable energy because Lord knows we aunt to stop sending our foreign oil money to the middle east where it's used to fund terrorism.

>> Michael: Jim, we talked about how Dean had sort of seize add lot of momentum with the public criticism of the administration on the war. Is there a particular candidate that you think has sawed off the niche on the economy in this field?

>> Jim Pederson: Not yet, Michael, but I think the message is out there. If you read recent polls, the administration, people generally give high marks to the president for national security issues. Economic issues. You know, employment. Healthcare. Education. Very low marks. Then the other question, what do you think -- what do you think the next -- next year's election will be decided upon, national security or domestic policy in invariably they say domestic policy. Now whether bush's credibility in the war is going to sustain itself over the coming months we don't know, but we know his record on the economy and I think that's what Democrats are going to be running on next year.

>> Michael: The usual rule of thumb is Americans vote their pocketbooks. As you well know. I just wonder if the usual rule of thumb applies in a post -- at least fairly close post-9 11 environment.

>> Jim Pederson: I think it does because mainly the environment we will be facing. It's been two years since 9/11. I think people have settled in on what it's going to take to secure this nation, what security means. I think people are starting to understand that. Now we are to address the domestic issues.

>> Michael: As Yogi Berra said, is this deja vu all over again, 12 years ago, enormously popular in '91, losing an election in '92; 2003, 2004?

>> Jay Heiler: think that's sort of commonly heard seat of the pants anxiety, but there's virtually no comparison to the two situations. This president took over an economy that is empirically known to have been heading rapidly into recession when he took the oath. Then that economy was socked with a terrorist attack the likes of which the world has never seen. Through all that, our economy has endured, has not slipped into deep or lasting recession, and the NASDAQ today hit an 18-month high. So if the Democrats are planning on running campaigns based upon the president and his management of the economy, I don't think they're going to get much farther that with that than they're getting with this gas they're throwing on him about Iraq. It's not going to play. The public is not going to buy it. The public has stayed -- president has stayed engaged since day one on getting this economy going again and the results are starting to roll in now and they will continue to roll in over the next year.

>> Michael: Jay Heiler, thank you very much for joining us. Jim Pederson, appreciate the insight. Gentlemen, we'll check back. Here's what's coming up tomorrow night on "Horizon."

>> Arizona's new Director of Corrections inherits prisons that are overcrowded and understaffed. The director must deal with one of the worst staff turnover rates of any state agency and must contend with key lawmakers wanting to add more private prisons. Prison chief Dora Schrera Tuesday at 7:00 on "Horizon."

>> Michael: Wednesday, we'll be taking a look at the results from tomorrow's Phoenix city election. Thursday, the anniversary of 9-11. We will take a look at Arizona's homeland security department and also security at the airport. Of course, Friday, please join us for the journalist roundtable edition of "Horizon." We'll take a look back at the week's news. That's it for a Monday. Thank you very much for joining us. I'm Michael Grant. Have a great one. Good night.

 

 

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