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Transcripts

November 4, 2004

Host: Michael Grant
Topics:
· First Thursday: The Governor on HORIZON;
· ASU research project on Parkinson's disease
Guests:
· Janet Napolitano, Arizona Governor
· George Stelmach, Professor of Kinesiology, Arizona State University

>> Michael Grant:
Tonight on "Horizon," four more years for President Bush and a stronger Republican presence in congress. There are also gains and philosophical shifts in the state legislature by Republicans, which may make things tougher for Governor Janet Napolitano, and the Governor calls for new water conservation efforts. We'll talk to Governor Napolitano about those issues next on "Horizon."

>> Announcer:
"Horizon" is made possible by the Friends of channel 8, members who provide financial support to this Arizona PBS station. Thank you.

>> Michael Grant:
Good evening, I'm Michael Grant. A high voter turnout Tuesday reelects President Bush. It also gives Republicans firmer control of the United States senate and the state's senate. Here now to talk about that and much more on "First Thursday, the Governor on Horizon" is the Arizona Governor. We call her Janet Napolitano because that's her name.

>> Governor Napolitano:
Yes, it is. How are you.

>> Michael Grant:
I shouldn't ask you, I know how you are doing. Tuesday was a pretty bad day at black rock.

>> Governor Napolitano:
You know, I've had better election nights, but I've also survived worse election nights, I think. So it's just, you know, it is what it is, and we go forward from here. I hope that President Bush is serious when he says he wants to try to bring people together. This was an enormously divisive presidential campaign. There is a lot of work to be done on that score. He doesn't have to run for election again. He really has that luxury. He can do some things that he may not have felt he could do his first term.

>> Michael Grant:
The counterargument, though, is hold it, I've got a mandate. And gee, aren't I supposed to carry out my platform that I got a mandate for?

>> Governor Napolitano:
It's like the left brain and left brain. One says I want to be a united not a divider and the other is I've got a mandate. We'll have to see.

>> Michael Grant:
Let's talk generally about the overall results on Tuesday. I saw an interesting interview with George Mitchell, former senate Democratic majority leader. He says the main problems with the Democrats right now is they have to find some way other than being a regional party, and it was a point I hadn't fixed on before, but when you look at that map that we saw for hours on end, you see blue here, you see blue here and you see this sea of red in between.

>> Governor Napolitano:
Red from Atlanta to California, and. I think he has a good point. I think Democrats should, as anyone should after an election night like the one we had Tuesday, need to regroup, take a deep breath, regroup, rethink and why is it that they are not being able to communicate with people about, you know, how they will work for they will. Obviously there is a huge failure of communication and motivation.

>> Michael Grant:
Here's a theory, and incidentally, take this one with a grain of salt because it comes from exit polls.

>> Governor Napolitano:
Yeah, they were really accurate.

>> Michael Grant:
I'm not sure how confident I am on exit polls.

>> Governor Napolitano:
Okay.

>> Michael Grant:
The exit polls indicated that the number one issue listed by 22% of the voters were moral values.

>> Governor Napolitano:
Right.

>> Michael Grant:
Democrats have a hard time engaging on moral values, do they not? Is that a partial explanation for this sea of red and regional phenomena?

>> Governor Napolitano:
I don't know whether Democrats have a problem engaging on moral values. I think Democrats have a problem communicating about moral values. I mean, you know, Democrats have values. It's not like values are held by one party, but the Republican party, and I think this was part of the genius of Carl rove who pushed that federal constitution on gay marriage, much to the consternation of moderates in his own party and Democrats who felt like he didn't have to amend the U.S. constitution, but it motivated that group of voters for whom that is an issue among a cluster of issues, and somehow, they associate those issues with the Republican party, rather than saying well, wait a minute, what are values, and how do those get expressed in public policy. That kind of communication is going to be a key challenge for Democrats in the future.

>> Michael Grant:
But the gay marriage thing I think is an excellent example, and I think that result certainly may have been driven in part by the fact that 11 states had a gay marriage proposition on the ballot and incidentally, they didn't -- it didn't go down. I mean, it went down by margins 2 to 1 and 4 to 1.

>> Governor Napolitano:
John Kerry took the position that he didn't approve of gay marriage. He was very up front about that, so did John Edwards, but that didn't seem to make any difference. I think the voters that were motivated by that is their -- as their issue, the polling will show, primarily voted for George Bush because George Bush owned that issue. We'll see whether that changes over the next few years.

>> Michael Grant:
Is it possible voters also had a problem with that position? I mean, just from the standpoint that, I don't want gay marriage, but civil union is okay, and somebody says well what does that mean?

>> Governor Napolitano:
Uh-huh. You know, it's hard to say. I think there will be a lot of second guessing. Once numbers become more final, then they are now, and you can get beyond exit polls into the actual numbers and match them up to different areas of different communities and whatever, I think there'll be some analysis about that, but I think, Michael, you're right. I think Democrats have values, maybe she they just don't talk about them enough.

>> Michael Grant:
Was John Kerry the wrong candidate?

>> Governor Napolitano:
If he had won we would have said what a great choice of candidate. There is really some Monday morning quarterbacking going on. John Kerry is a bright man who has a distinguished career in public service, strong leader, and I thought a very good candidate, and, you know, I think running against -- here's something else that nobody is talking about, but defeating an incumbent is not the easiest thing in the world to do, particularly during the time of war. The fact that this was even a close election and a close campaign in a time of war, I think indicates that the divisions in our country are perhaps deeper rooted than many would acknowledge.

>> Michael Grant:
Here's why I offer the question, because our polls certainly showed and I think nationwide they showed that a lot of John Kerry's support was not support for John Kerry, it was opposition to George Bush.

>> Governor Napolitano:
Right.

>> Michael Grant:
I don't know that that's a real effective candidate to -- it's okay when you are dealing with either side of the spectrum and the party cores, but I don't know that that's a good choice for candidate to pick up the 45-55% in the middle.

>> Governor Napolitano:
It's hard to say. I think this election had a lot of interesting twists and turns to it, you know, the war in Iraq, it's not going well. Revelations kept coming out, the economy is not going well. On any objective basis, this president was in trouble, but he managed to win and win fairly convincingly on Tuesday. So now he's the president for years, we move forward.

>> Michael Grant:
Tom Daschle lost. You know the interesting Arizona angle to that was that the last time that a sitting legislative leader had been defeated was Ernest McFarland followed by Barry Goldwater in '52.

>> Governor Napolitano:
I guess every 50 years that has to happen.

>> Michael Grant:
That's right, once every half century. How does that change the dynamics? Obviously Daschle was a very contentious senate minority leader against the Bush Administration.

>> Governor Napolitano:
I think leadership on both sides was contentious. I don't think Daschle was contentious because he wanted to be, I think he was contentious because the leadership in the senate was trying to force down some things down moderate and Democratic throats that they didn't want to swallow. It looks like Harry Reid, the senator from Nevada will take Daschle's place. He's been the assistant minority leader.

>> Michael Grant:
A little more temperate, isn't he?

>> Governor Napolitano:
Yeah, he's very good. What I really like about having senator Reid in that position is he's very familiar with some of the issues that are going to come up in the congress and in Washington D.C. over the next few years, transportation, where he and I were just at the celebration of two years of the Hoover Dam bypass, issues of water, the Colorado river, that's going to be a huge issue for the western states over the next --

>> Michael Grant:
That's an excellent point.

>> Governor Napolitano:
He's somebody whom I have a very good personal relationship with. I had a good relationship with senator Daschle, but I really worked with senator ready on some things. I think it will be good for Arizona.

>> Michael Grant:
Let me bring it down locally. An excellent staging year for the Democratic party, starting with the primary, the buildup to the early Arizona primary.

>> Governor Napolitano:
The operation was a success but the patient died.

>> Michael Grant:
You anticipated again where I was going, but continuing throughout, a lot of visits by the two people at the top of the ticket, their surrogates, closing with the debate in Tempe. Placing to one side the national result, you would think that would generate some local momentum, some local event coattails, if not candidate coattails, but it didn't seem to happen that way.

>> Governor Napolitano:
It didn't happen. We're going to be looking hard on why that wasn't. Edwards and Kerry were not here in august and September when it really could have, I think, impacted the result, and they, of course, pulled their media buy fairly early and made their decision that they would focus on New Mexico and Nevada and leave Arizona alone. So, you know, there was a consequence to that. The good thing is that Arizona had an incredible field operation in every corner of this state, and while we didn't win any major races this time, that field operation is going to stay in place, and it will be a framework for future races. So we are definitely now a two-party state and I think we will have robust and contested elections and I think those are healthy.

>> Michael Grant:
Governor I expect you to put the happiest partisan face on it that you can, but can you really look at this result and reach any conclusion other than perhaps your election and Terry Goddard's election and Bill Clinton's vote in 1996 was an aberration that Arizona is a true red state?

>> Governor Napolitano:
No, I don't think so. I think we also added a Democratic congressman a term ago to our -- to the one we had, pastor, we added Grijalva. And again, on the state legislative side, which I think you'll find we'll get to, part of that was driven by the fact that we don't have competitive districts. That's the problem with the map drawn by the commission that was used. If they had used the lines that the court had approved, at least the trial court, this legislature would be very different right now, but that's -- those are the cards that you are dealt. You play those, but by '06, '08 or certainly by the next census, those will be very different lines, because the population is slowly but surely changing.

>> Michael Grant:
State senate is now 18-12, probably more important than just the gain of one seat by the Republicans is a sharp philosophical turn to the right as Jake Flake obviously comes over from the house, Ron Gould elected to replace Senator Binder. I know that you say I can work with them, but that's going to make your job in terms of moving your agenda much more difficult, is it not?

>> Governor Napolitano:
Well, I don't know if I would say much more difficult. It's a different dynamic. I've spoken both with president Bennett and speaker elect WEIERS over the last 24 hours. I anticipate working with them. I think Arizonans elect to us come to the capitol to get something done and not to bicker. I think we've all said the right things to each other and I intend to give this my best. I believe that the things we've placed in motion over the last 20 months are good. They are good for Arizonans, and Arizonans want us to continue. We've balanced the budget yet we've been able to reform Child Protective Services, I object vest in education, invest in the universities. We want to continue down that road.

>> Michael Grant:
Realistically, though, the Republicans enforce pretty severe party discipline in the primary results. That's where that's buried in the house numbers, and to a certain extent, in the senate numbers. You couldn't have gotten the budget you got this year with this legislature as soon to be constituted, could you?

>> Governor Napolitano:
Yeah, but it would have been a different -- let me tell you, one of the problems with the house, which is where the revolt occurred, is that the Speaker of the House, Jake Flake, would never meet with me, despite many opportunities and invitations to do so to negotiate the budget. He needs some things, senate needs some things, Governor needs some things, there ought to be away for us to get together, and he never would do that. That left us only with the alternative of working member by member to get a budget vote, and he refused to meet with a lost his own members of his own caucus. That was why that revolt occurred. I think that we have a chance now to turn over a new page. Speaker WEIERS was the speaker before. He was generally well liked, and it was felt that he would move things along. He will sit down and work out compromise where compromise is necessary. And indeed, when you have divided government, as we do, and a Republican legislature and a Democratic Governor, compromise will be required by all of us.

>> Michael Grant:
Do you think that was a phenomenon of Speaker Flake or was it a phenomena of House Majority Leader Farnsworth?

>> Governor Napolitano:
It doesn't matter. It did revolt in the budget revolt last year.

>> Michael Grant: Let's turn to proposition 200. It passed. You were opposed to it?

>> Governor Napolitano: Me and virtually everybody else.

>> Michael Grant:
That's true. Bipartisan leadership opposition to it. Not withstanding that, though, it's been passed by the people of the State of Arizona. Will you see that it's carried out?

>> Governor Napolitano:
Yes, I will. I think it is the law -- well, it will be the law once the canvas is done and all of the technicalities are taken care of. I had a cabinet meeting this morning. I was blunt with them. I said we will enforce proposition 200. There are lots of questions about it, because the language is so poorly drafted. The attorney general is getting ready to issue some opinions as to whether it covers all public benefits or only public welfare benefits. That should be out late this week or early next week. But I've instructed the cabinet that we're not going to play games, this is the law and he will enforce it.

>> Michael Grant:
How does the Justice Department clearance process work? Does the AG handle that associated with the registration voting registration aspects of this?

>> Governor Napolitano:
The voting aspects of it. Yes, I would presume that the Attorney General's Office would submit prop -- the voting changes in Prop 200 for preclearance as they do other state election laws.

>> Michael Grant:
Okay. Oh, I know what I wanted to ask but. I'm doing this free form.

>> Governor Napolitano:
Okay.

>> Michael Grant:
Proposition 102, tech transfer. Have I got the number right?

>> Governor Napolitano:
Yeah, that's correct.

>> Michael Grant:
Went down.

>> Governor Napolitano:
Yeah, that was -- I have to say that even though Tuesday night was disappointing, it was not really a surprise. These things, you know, in the legislative districts where we were fighting, we were fighting uphill battles because they are not competitive districts by intention. On Prop 200, that was, you know, I think it was miraculous, actually to get over 07% down to what it ended up with, 55, 54, something like that.

>> Michael Grant:
Right.

>> Governor Napolitano:
102 was a surprise. And I think what happened, in my own speculation, when I finally went and read the language in the book, it was gobbledygook. I said shoot, no wonder voters don't understand what they are doing.

>> Michael Grant:
Burden of the no vote is that if people are confused, they are not certain, they vote no.

>> Governor Napolitano:
That's right. I think that's what it was. We're going to sit down with the leadership, business leadership who have been heavily supporters of 102. We're going to sit down when we've got the numbers with some of the political people and see whether -- and when this should be brought to the voters again, and perhaps better communicated with them.

>> Michael Grant:
In happier days, that was Monday, you were in front of the town hall. You popped your water conservation plan. What are the key elements of that?

>> Governor Napolitano:
It was more than water conservation. I talked about at the town hall about our need to preserve existing sources of water and the fight to retain our share of the Colorado river, which is going to require us to do some things over the next decade. I talked with them about reducing or controlling our demand for water through conservation and mechanisms by which we can and should do that, some of which I will ask the legislature to address in January. I talked with them about water planning and how we incorporate water planning, particularly outside of the five active management areas, which are kind of rural Arizona areas, how we incorporate water planning there so that we can continue to grow, and then I announced that we've been working with ASU and the U of A and NAU on the virtual water university which is we have world class expertise in each of those three institutions on different aspects of water and life and economic development in desert environments, and we're going to be working by 2006 to have -- I don't want to say a combination, but a way so we can brand those all together. If someone wants to know how to grow an economy in an environment like Arizona's, they are going to come here.

>> Michael Grant:
It sounds like a mixed bag of executive action, legislative action and for that matter, local action?

>> Governor Napolitano: Correct, which it needs to be, because water and water needs to be dealt with at each of those levels.

>> Michael Grant:
Okay. Well, you know, if we could just get out of this 9-year drought --

>> Governor Napolitano:
Yeah, if it could rain? We're good, we're not that good. I don't think it's going to be raining enough. It's going to take 20 years of average rainfall to fill our reservoirs again.

>> Michael Grant:
Keep your fingers crossed. There is a prediction of a small El Niño. We've had fairly nice storms in October.

>> Governor Napolitano:
That's great, maybe they will help us with fire season next summer.

>> Michael Grant:
Governor Janet Napolitano, we appreciate your time.

>> Governor Napolitano:
You bet.

>> Michael Grant:
George Stelmach has been studying Parkinson's disease for years. An ASU research project seeks to explain and some day prevent that disease.

>> Reporter:
The delicate stitching required for needlepoint can challenge even the steadiest hand. For Suzanne Miller, the challenge is sometimes overwhelming. She's been battling Parkinson's disease for 10 years and says there are days when her body feels like its at war with itself.

>> Suzanne Miller:
It can happy very quickly. I can be doing pretty well and then within about 10 minutes or so, you know, all of a sudden I've got a tremor, I'm very fatigued, I can't button buttons or put keys in locks, so forth.

>> Reporter:
Retired physical education professor art Wagner developed the disease 7 years ago.

>> Art Wagner:
I began to notice that my balance wasn't quite that good and eventually I didn't go to the ASU basketball games any more because I couldn't walk down the steps. There were no supporting rails.

>> Reporter:
People with Parkinson's disease shake and stumble because their brain lacks Dopamine. That affects the brain called basal ganglia and causes deficits like trembling, rigid posture, slow movements and shuffling, unbalanced walk. ASU exercise's science department led by Dr. George Stelmach has been exploring how Parkinson's disease affects motor control and movement.

>> Dr. George Stelmach:
I use it as a window to the brain so that we're not primarily interested in the cure of therapy, although indirectly we are, we are finally interested in how we can understand how the brain structure called the basal ganglia affects movement control.

>> Reporter:
Dr. Stelmach believes that the Dopamine deficiency turns signals from the brain to the muscles into noisy jumbled messages.

>> Dr. George Stelmach:
The idea behind this work is the idea that this noisy output prevents the system from completely parameterizing. If you can think of a muscle receiving an unclear signal, that unclear signal than translates into a discoordinated movement.

>> Art Wagner:
I don't have that much Dopamine being secreted which some people call the lubricant of muscle movement. And I don't have it and therefore, these fine muscles that I need for these adjustments aren't functioning the way they should because they are under tension all the time.

>> Suzanne Miller:
A bad day would be basically stay in bed most of the time because either the muscle con contractions would be uncomfortable enough that I can't concentrate on anything anyway, so I don't do much of anything, and the fatigue is overwhelming.

>> Reporter:
Dr. Stelmach has been studying Parkinson's disease in one form or another for the past 16 years. We first met him 6 years ago.

>> Dr. Stelmach:
We were primarily looking at the problems initiating movement in Parkinson's patients, and from some of our earlier findings, we were able to establish that one of the main obstacles of Parkinson's people have is in the initiation of movement, also in the control and coordination of it. So we've moved down the line into more tasks that utilize functional capabilities, such as reaching, grasping handwriting.

>> Reporter:
Dr. Stelmach project looks at the writing problem.

>> Dr. Stelmach:
The new project focuses on a series of experiments to identify what type of a control problem would generate mircrographia. And when you see it, it's really interesting, because as the size reduces, the spatial characteristics stay the same, so everything gets shrunk on a small scale and the patients claim they have virtually know control over this, so they write progressively smaller. Based on our earlier findings, we've moved into more complex tasks and utilized three dimensional recording devices to help us reconstruct the movements so we can understand it better.

>> What I want you to do is to reach with both hands to this object, and remove the top object from the bottom object. Good.

>> Reporter:
Researchers measure patient movements like pinching and grasping with the help of cameras and computers.

>> Dr. Stelmach:
10 years ago people in movement disorders recorded movement time, which is just the duration of movement and maybe some spatial errors at the end. Now because we have high speed recording devices, we can reconstruct a movement in real time and analyze it in terms of detail, either dynamics of movements, which means that we can reconstruct the movement and look at things like acceleration, deceleration, the jerk in the score.

>> Go back and forth.

>> Now the other hand.

>> Reporter:
The ASU team works closely with the neurology department at the Mayo clinic in Scottsdale. They share patients and Parkinson research data.

>> Dr. Stelmach:
Where we make our biggest contribution is helping understand the nature of the impairment, and from that, then that helps those who do interventions to target their intervention. It helps those people who -- or those physicians who utilize medication to help fine tune how the benefits of the patients might be achieved through certain types of medication.

>> Go.

>> Reporter:
Suzanne takes medication to regulate her Dopamine levels, but she's eager to find a better way to beat this disease. Being party of the research makes her feel like she's making a difference.

>> Suzanne Miller:
I didn't know if I would personally get anything out of it, but I hope that possibly something would come of the research that would help everyone.

>> Reporter:
Art Wagner agrees.

>> Art Wagner:
One insight creates another insight and we keep going from there. I read about things being done in research, but there is always that tag line, may be available to the public in 7 or 8 years. Well, I'm 81, so I hope they hurry up with some of these things.

>> Dr. Stelmach:
Research still has a long way to go, but I think we no more clearly what the potential roles are around how it effects movements. One of the things that we pursue vigorously and have used for a long time is that the basal ganglia is involved in the planning and coordination of movement. And if we can refine that in the next five to ten years so that we know specifically what aspects of planning are impaired, I think we'll be in a better place to target intervention therapies.

>> Michael Grant:
You can check out a transcript of tonight's show, see what's coming up on "Horizon" at our web site. It's www.azpbs.org. When you get to the home page, scroll down and click on the word "Horizon."

>> Larry Lemmons:
It was a party atmosphere for Republicans all over Arizona as the GOP gained members in the state legislature and voters helped give President Bush another four years in the Whitehouse. We'll look at election night and what's ahead on the Journalists' Roundtable Friday at 7:00 on "Horizon."

>> Michael Grant:
Thanks for being here on a Thursday. I'm Michael Grant. Have a great one. Good night. .

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