Other transcripts

Transcripts

November 19, 2004

Host: Michael Grant
Topics:
· The Journalists Roundtable
In-Studio Guests:
· Robbie Sherwood, "Arizona Republic;"
· Paul Davenport, Associated Press;
· Le Templar, "East Valley Tribune"

>> Michael Grant:
In the headlines this week, supporters of a statewide smoking ban in Arizona announced plans to take the issue to the voters in 2006. Former congressman Matt Salmon announcing he wants to take over for Bob Fannin as the chair of the Arizona Republican party next year after Fannin leaves his position. And Governor Janet Napolitano already back on the job after undergoing surgery earlier this week. That's next on "Horizon"!

>> Michael Grant:
Good evening, I'm Michael Grant. This is the Journalists Roundtable. Joining me to talk about these and other stories are Robbie Sherwood of the "Arizona Republic," Paul Davenport from the associated press, and Le Templar of the "East Valley Tribune." Looks like smoking is going to be one of the hot issues in the 2006 election. This week supporters of a statewide ban on smoking in public places announced plans to pursue a ballot initiative in the next election cycle. Robbie, it's a pretty broad appeared wide-ranging proposal.

>> Robbie Sherwood:
Yes, it is. If it passes, what you will see if anybody is familiar with Tempe's smoking ban, which is probably the most comprehensive in the state, it will be a version of that give or take a few details they haven't worked out yet statewide. That means no smoking in any enclosed public work space, any enclosed bar or restaurant, including accessory bars off of restaurants. A lot of places where smoking is allowed now in various degrees in a lot of other cities. And they're still haggling over details whether or not -- to what extent smoking might be allowed in hotels, whether any hotel rooms, entranceways, outside of places, places where people go now who are disallowed from smoking go outside to smoke now, some of those might be disallowed under the language.

>> Michael Grant:
Any internal debate at all to attempt to moderate the language to try to make it more appealable to a broader base or do they just simply think that the public opinion polls indicate that the time for this idea is now?

>> Robbie Sherwood:
I don't think there's any internal debate of the four main components, workplaces, bars, restaurants, you know, on that. Perhaps there's going to be some on the extent to which they do hotels, motels, rooms, and outside of structures, public venues like stadiums, sports arenas, that sort of thing. But on the main components, I don't think there's any public debate. The reason why they're going to the initiative is because they didn't want to compromise on those components.

>> Michael Grant:
Now, the -- I know one of the discussion items is often how close outside can you smoke to the door or whatever. Is that one under discussion?

>> Robbie Sherwood:
I think that's what they're going to be haggling about in their efforts to write the initiative over the next -- because they haven't written it yet. They just know the main components they want in it. That's one of the things I think they'll have --

>> Paul Davenport:
They say that process is going to take about six to nine months because they've got all the coming year to do this and do the petition circulation drive well into 2006 to get on the ballot. In the meantime, we may see some activity at the legislature if some of the industry groups want to try to get a competing measure on the ballot as a referendum. That could either be this coming session or even the next year.

>> Le Templar:
They've already suggested they're looking into that. The problem they're going to have is this happened in Prescott, this last year, anti-smoking advocates got an initiative on the ballot, city-wide in Prescott. Bars and restaurants responded with their own slightly weaker initiative. Both passed but the anti-smoking one, the stronger one, got more votes, so it became law, and that's going to be an issue here if both of them are on the ballot.

>> Michael Grant:
Although the legislature could obviously act in either the 2005 or 2006 session. Wouldn't you think their natural inclination would be, particularly since this is a work in progress, perhaps to hold off until 2006 and actually see what the proposal specifically is?

>> Robbie Sherwood:
I don't know that that's necessarily what's going to happen, but it seem to make sense. I think that the hospitality community themselves are watching to see what's in this, to see what their countermeasure is, because there's a lot of worry in there about what this might do to tourism, to business. It hasn't had -- the hop Scotch way we do it city by city now has had some negative effects on businesses. You hear anecdotal evidence from bar owners like for instance in Tempe who saw their business go two miles down the road to Scottsdale once that passed. Now, a statewide ban seems to be a better route to go than that because then everybody's playing on the same playing field.

>> Michael Grant:
Well, Proposition 200 passed, Le, breaking news, we always try to stay right occupy top of these things. The Attorney General, of course, issued his opinion a week ago today saying fairly narrow interpretation on the term state and local public benefits. Prop 200 supporters, at least a portion of them, filing a suit to try to broaden that.

>> Le Templar:
The leader of the yes on the 200 committee, which was the best funded group supporting 200, and his main backers, the federation for American immigration reform, went to court yesterday seeking a judge's opinion that Proposition 200, particularly dealing with state and local benefits, follows the federal definition of public benefits included in the federal welfare reform act of '96. The idea being, that is the act that spells out some types of welfare are not eligible for illegal immigrants. States can have the right to enforce that. Since that makes reference to public benefits and has a definition for it, this he want to argue the state law should follow that definition versus the much more specific definition that the Attorney General came up with referring only to title 6, which is the state welfare code and programs listed in there that aren't federally funded, because that's where Proposition 200 was physically inserted.

>> Robbie Sherwood:
Is it true that Randy Pullen of the yes on 200 campaign is saying that he never said on the campaign trail that he wanted a narrow definition of this thing, that he's been pushing for the broader definition all the time?

>> Le Templar:
I can't go that far. He's saying he never intended it for it to be limited in the way that Terry Goddard says it is.

>> Robbie Sherwood:
All I know is I covered a debate between Pullen and grant woods, head-to-head debate on this at a breakfast sponsored by Valley partnership in which grant woods brought up the same worry that supporters of this are going to say they want a narrow definition on welfare and then once it's passed they're going to try to spread it to all kinds of things based on the federal definition. Pullen at that time said, this is a scare tactic.

>> Michael Grant:
It has been interesting, though, over the past couple of weeks to watch people on both sides of this proposition literally flip their pre-election position.

>> Paul Davenport:
And next week we're probably going to see the filing of a lawsuit by opponents and I wouldn't surprise if it has them argue that the focus should be limited. These would be the folks that had the commercials and debate arguments that it would be very expansive is passed. The governor said it will be a week or two after Monday's election canvass before she does the required proclamation putting it into effect. So there's still some time before government officials around Arizona are supposed to implement this thing.

>> Michael Grant:
Speaking of a election related things. A record turnout a couple weeks ago.

>> Robbie Sherwood:
Yes, 77 -- I believe 77, 78% turnout in Arizona, and anybody that went to the polls saw that. There were lines a lot of waiting. Set a lot of conventional wisdom on its heels. I think the Democrats in the state and nationwide were thinking that that was the key to their success. But a lot of Republicans who apparently may have sat out the last election for whatever reason were energized and came to the polls in even stronger numbers, too, and blew some holes in the long held theory that higher turnout equals more success for Democrats.

>> Michael Grant:
Well, in fact, I think what make it even more remarkable is if memory serves I think you had about a half-million voter registration increase from 2000 to 2004. So, I mean, even with that large increase, you got a better than three quarter turnout.

>> Robbie Sherwood:
I think it answers some questions we all had as election an analysts, journalists, prognosticators on, where do our independents fall? Because this huge voter registration has been coming in about a third independent. It's been split. One-third, one-third, one-third. The independents, we didn't know where they were, what they were going to do. Now we know they probably leaned Republican, at least they liked George Bush better than John Kerry.

>> Michael Grant:
I thought maybe of the things about this election is the new voter isn't all that much different than the old voter. One final footnote on the prop 200 challenge, Randy Pullen had earlier indicated that he was going to pursue a legislative strategy to expand the benefits. Why aban abandon the legislature and run to court?

>> Le Templar:
I think the main issue there is he wants to try to frame the debate on the scope of the legislation, start with the broadest definition possible, and see how far the court is willing to go versus starting with the Attorney General's much narrower definition and see whether that was constitutionally valid or not. I'm not sure, but the thinking might be, even if we don't get everything we're asking for, as long as it's constitutional, it will probably turn out more than the Attorney General had put in his opinion.

>> Michael Grant:
The argument here, Paul, would be particularly perhaps well received by this new in coming legislature. You know, under voter protection act you can't cut it back, but you can enhance it, and voters pretty substantially approved this thing. So you ought to broaden the benefit base assuming that the court strategy fails.

>> Paul Davenport:
Right. The thing with the court strategy is that may not play out for a while, and then there's this complicated wrinkle where the opponents said they will file in federal court. This one group of supporters has filed in state court. That's at a crossroad right there, figuring out who is going to be doing what.

>> Michael Grant:
Arizona GOP chairman Bob Fannin shutting it down.

>> Robbie Sherwood:
Deciding to step down, not going to run for reelection to a second term. Has been there for about two-and-a-half years -- two election cycles, anyway, he started right before the 2002 election cycle. Immediately stepping into fill the void, throwing his hat in the ring, is Matt Salmon, the unsuccessful 2002 candidate that ran against Napolitano. Kind of surprise add lot of us because a lot of us thought Matt was looking to get back into Congress and they were grooming another guy, a guy named Frank rich, a early for California congressman, who has settled in Arizona for that position. I think that rich might be now backing away from that the road is clearing for Matt to run the party in the he next election cycle.

>> Paul Davenport:
And to have a thankless volunteer post and all that goes with it.

>> Robbie Sherwood:
Quite a pay cult from his previous job. It's a volunteer position.

>> Michael Grant:
Obviously one of Bob Fannin's clear strengths was a as a party fund-raiser. Matt Salmon bring the same kinds of credentials --

>> Robbie Sherwood:
No -- I'm not saying he doesn't. He's going to have to prove that. I think Bob was hired because he was this lobbyist and came from this long political tradition and everybody knew that's what he would do and he did it. Matt has to prove himself in that arena.

>> Le Templar:
But he does bring a public face that Bob Fannin didn't for the past two years. He can get media attention because media will want to quote him as a former congressman and candidate for governor.

>> Robbie Sherwood: A bit more of a fighting spirit, I think, from Matt. It's not Bob Fannin's style to mix it up. Coming from the lobbying corps, it didn't come natural to him.

>> Michael Grant:
Continuing this game of musical chairs, Bob Fannin leaves, Matt Salmon steps up, clearing the way for Jeff flake to say, nah, I think I will run for another term.

>> Le Templar:
I think that was a factor. He knew Jeff flake was looking to break his promise to serve only three terms and leave in 2006. Congressman flake made it official today, but the indications have been out since August he was looking at this. And basically says, I made a mistake in 2000 when I committed in my run for the Congress to only serve three terms. Seniority is too important in Congress in order to have influence on the big issues. He ticked off Social Security and immediate care reform and immigration as examples today. And he wants to be influential. The announcement comes now because we're making committee assignments for the next two years in Congress, and it let's people know he plans to be around for a while.

>> Paul Davenport:
This comes after a reelection campaign where this question was being raised and he danced around it the entire time saying I'll let you know after the election.

>> Michael Grant:
How do you think, Robbie, this plays with his base, certainly strong conservative base, term limits coming out -- you know, the '94 contract with America, or have voters --

>> Robbie Sherwood:
I expect to see this in -- as part of the campaign for whoever steps up to run against him. I think he probably will have a challenge from at least one or two different people. Just because it amounts to a broken promise. They'll use the flip-flop phrase on it. Whether or not it will stick, I don't think it will. I don't think that Stan -- Stan Barnes had some issues, just not enough money, and couldn't make anything stick against Jeff in the last go around, and I think his incumbency will only make him stronger and less vulnerable.

>> Le Templar:
One gauge of that is I learned today that representative Tom TANKRETO from Colorado, who is also conservative, although they disagree on some issues like immigration, did the same thing, promised in '98, in fact was leader of Colorado's term limits, got to six years later and said, I want more influence in Congress and I think I'm going to break my promise and hang around. He caught a lot of flak for it nationally because of his role in term limits movements. Continues to be reelected from his district.

>> Michael Grant:
Governor Janet Napolitano, couple things, number one, she is running in 2006, I guess that's not breaking news, but more importantly, she underwent surgery this week.

>> Paul Davenport:
Right. As you say, the -- her comment to an audience in Scottsdale early in the week that she's going to seek another term is no surprise. She made illusions to that before. However, on Tuesday she started feeling some pain while on a trip to Flagstaff on state business and by the evening had to have medical treatment, was hospitalized, and late that evening had surgery for removal of an ovarian cyst and one of her ovaries. She is out of the hospital by Thursday morning. Apparently very busy while in the hospital and back on the --

>> Michael Grant:
Back on the job today.

>> Paul Davenport:
Making public appearances.

>> Michael Grant:
I think I would have at least taken the weekend.

>> Robbie Sherwood:
That was the consensus among the state house press corps. We would have milked that --

>> Michael Grant:
Listen, it wouldn't be a "Horizon" program without speculation about what John McCain is doing in 2008. He is back in New Hampshire this week. I think we're getting signals here.

>> Le Templar:
We're getting signals. I think the best thing to say is he is going to explore it for a while, see what his potential is for claiming the Republican center stage once -- the problem he has is how far right will the Republican party move with the second term of George Bush? Can he win the Republican primaries out there? Because he seems to have broad appeal for a general election depending who the Democrats will be putting up.

>> Michael Grant:
But you have to clear the hurdle --

>> Robbie Sherwood:
You have to clear the hurdle --

>> Robbie Sherwood:
The conspiracy theorist in me believes that John McCain campaigning so hard for George Bush clears a lot of hurdles. George Bush as the head of the most Republican in America can --

>> Michael Grant:
Verifying his bona fide -- enlisting his aid and support.

>> Robbie Sherwood:
Keep challengers at bay, that sort of thing.

>> Le Templar: But if he avoids getting pinned down on gay marriage or votes against the amendment, if he finds him any way opposing judges who might repeal or weaken abortion laws in this country and some of the other things that make him not in line with George Bush and that philosophy, they're not going to forget about it just because he campaigned for the president this year.

>> Paul Davenport:
Is there a possibility this could just be a positioning move to get him influence in Washington even if down the road he doesn't run for president.

>> Le Templar:
Absolutely. I think that's certainly the calculation there.

>> Robbie Sherwood:
And if he accidentally ends up in Iowa in the next few months, that's it, I'm just saying he's in.

>> Michael Grant:
He spends a lot of time on CNN. Hearing held this week by the Arizona Corporation Commission on power problems last summer stemming from a fire at a substation in the West Valley. Paul, what kind of reception did utility company executives get?

>> Paul Davenport:
A hot one. They were testifying for five, six hours this week. The second of what promises to be several hearing. The commission wanted to know why the utilities that own that substation, SRP and a couple others, had not installed walls between the transmission units that would have stopped the fire from spreading from unit to unit to unit. The utility representatives said they were thinking about it, talking about it, studying it and hadn't quite got there yet and the commission expressed plain dissatisfaction with that.

>> Michael Grant:
Certainly the economics it turns out would have supported installing the firewalls, just given all the various costs that were created, including additional utility --

>> Paul Davenport:
They had to bring in a unit all the way from cash state by barge and then slow moving truck convoy from California. It was quite the expensive proposition.

>> Le Templar:
They estimate it cost $21 million to deal with this problem when it would have cost a million dollars to put in firewalls. I thought the most compelling issue in that hearing, Paul, was the fact they could have really focused on their timing and the need to be careful about the design, but the executives kept talking about, well, we were thinking about it but it just wasn't a priority at the time. I had trouble believing they thought that's what state regulators looking for somebody to blame for this problem wanted to hear.

>> Robbie Sherwood:
I wasn't there, but you guys can confirm, what I thought jumped out at me was how the story from the power companies changed in the morning from the firewalls could have prevented the damage to in the afternoon suddenly they decided they wouldn't have prevented the damage.

>> Michael Grant:
Speaking of fire, water is frequently used to put out fire, and we had a big water story this week.

>> Le Templar:
That's correct. Congress is has now adopted massive legislation to transfer water rights to the Central Arizona Project to a number of the tribes here in Arizona led by the Gila River Indian community. The heart of this is it settles a decades old lawsuit going back almost 30 years where the tribes combined had claimed nearly 2 million acre-feet of water that they thought they were entitled to going back to federal treaties in 1909. The legislation brings it back down to only 665,000 acre-feet, protects a lot of other water rights for cities. Also guarantees the rights of the tribes to lease the water to cities or the rights of the cities to negotiate the lease of the water. A lot of this water is being used now and/or it's guaranteed against a drought now but now they can protect their right to water and later on the tribes can find uses for it.

>> Michael Grant:
It provide a lot of certainty.

>> Paul Davenport:
And as a political note, it's a feather in the cap to Senator Kyl. He worked on this one back -- in back rooms and negotiations at the White House and with other people in Congress for years on this one. Hopefully it will make some legislate egg go away at the Arizona Supreme Court so I won't have to cover it.

>> Michael Grant:
Paul, what kind of reform senator jack harper pushing for as the new chair of the -- sit the government reform committee?

>> Paul Davenport:
Yeah, there's a new committee, one of several in the state Senate announced by Senate president Bennett in the reorganization after the election and sophomore -- incoming sophomore senator jack harper gets a committee. It's a government reform and accountability. He says the first focus of this probably for the year, next session, is going to be the department of corrections. He's tossing around some ideas like more reliance on privately prisons. Maybe even putting one of them in Mexico. We have a lot of Mexican nationals in our prison system.

>> Michael Grant:
Any lingerings from the hostage situation, standoff, last year? I know the legislature was not completely satisfied with some of the answers that came out of that, and then, of course, you had the grand jury situation that didn't quite work out the way they thought it would.

>> Paul Davenport:
Yeah, they didn't set up the situation to get questions asked and answered in a way that would do that, and they ended up confirming the corrections director before they had all those questions.

>> Robbie Sherwood:
I predict that will be retried --

>> Michael Grant:
That would be my hunch.

>> Robbie Sherwood:
Harper, senator harper, was asked if he wanted to get into something like cost saving measures like sentencing reform or something like that. Oh, no, oh, no, we're not going to look at that. It may be a situation, we'll see, he has his conclusions and now he has his committee to go and round up the facts to support them.

>> Michael Grant:
Incidentally, does the Senate have its committee chairs in place now, Paul?

>> Paul Davenport:
The Senate does, Senator Harper being one of them. The house, we're still waiting on them. The expectation is early next week.

>> Michael Grant:
What did a Cristian legal group file a lawsuit against ASU this week?

>> Paul Davenport:
Yeah, it's one of several, actually, across country. There was a coalition, the alliance defense fund and the Cristian legal society has teamed up to do religious freedom lawsuits on a higher education campuses and ASU is one of the first ones out the chute. The group -- the campus chapter, their lawsuit says they should be a recognized student organization without having to allow non-Christians and gays as members. That's counter to the university's student organization policy as approved by the Board of Regents.

>> Michael Grant:
So does the university not allow them to operate at all or not allow them to operate with that kind of restriction?

>> Paul Davenport:
They don't give them the recognition as privileges that recollect recognized student organizations get, that's use of certain facilities, mailing type of privileges, photocopying, support.

>> Michael Grant:
I see. And this suit was filed where, what court?

>> Paul Davenport:
I think that was in U.S. District Court and it's on constitutional ground of freedom of expression -- religion, speech.

>> Michael Grant:
Okay. Well, panelists, we are out of time. Thanks very much. If you would like to see a transcript of tonight's program, please visit the website at www.azpbs.org. When you get there, click on the word "Horizon." That's going to lead you to transcripts, links, information on upcoming shows.

>> Larry Lemmons:
Studies indicate air quality could mean the difference between life and death. Maricopa County takes action. Congress has given approval of the most far-reaching Indian water settlement in American history. And a conversation with one of the most significant playwrites in American theater, Edward Alby, Monday night at 7:00 on Channel 8's "Horizon."

>> Michael Grant:
On Tuesday the results of the latest KAET/ASU poll. This time we focus on why Arizonans voted the way they did in the presidential race. Also we'll tell you what Arizonans think about Phoenix's move to protect its workers from lawsuits filed under Proposition 200. Thanks very much for joining us on a Friday. Have a great weekend. I'm Michael Grant. Good night.

Back to the top