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October 7, 2004

Host: Michael Grant
Topics:
· First Thursday: The Governor on HORIZON;
· Candidate Rhetoric
In-Studio Guests:
· Governor Janet Napolitano;
· Steve Corman, a co-developer of the crawdad campaign tracking dashboard

>> Michael Grant:
Tonight on "Horizon," the Valley continues to gear up for the third presidential debate to be held at ASU.

>> Michael Grant:
Governor Janet Napolitano vows to fight a proposed cut in Homeland Security funding. Plus, we'll tell you about a presidential campaign "mud meter" developed by two ASU professors. That's coming up 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, and welcome to "Horizon." Tonight, it's time for our monthly visit with Governor Janet Napolitano, which we call "First Thursday, the Governor on Horizon." We'll talk to the Governor about the latest issues affecting Arizona, including the upcoming presidential debates. But first, the Governor toured the big tent put up to hold journalists who will be covering the debate at Gammage Auditorium at ASU. She discussed matters of utmost importance to journalists.

>> Reporter :
Did you know, Governor, that the press doesn't have to use porta-potties?

>> Governor Janet Napolitano:
Nothing but the best.

>> Party pleasers.

>> You're kidding.

>> Governor Janet Napolitano:
On a more serious note, the Governor talked about what visitors to the debate will get out of their experience. Here now is Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano. First of all, they'll take away the impression that Arizona State University put on a first-class show and knows how to do it. Secondly, this will bring people to our state that haven't been here before and are relying on old stereo types when in fact, Arizona is making itself as we speak, because of its growth, because of its dynamism, because of all of the things that are happening. I think that people will come away with, perhaps, a greater perception of some of the political issues that are really important in the west and in particular in a border state like Arizona.

>> Michael Grant:
Interesting discussion about porta-potties.

>> Governor Janet Napolitano:
It was pretty funny.

>> Michael Grant:
I'll skip that. Debate site is really impressive. You were in the tent that will house 800 print journalists?

>> Governor Janet Napolitano:
At least 800. Spin Ally is an actual alley that runs down the length of the tent. In Miami where I was last week at this time, they had a room that they called "spin alley" but you've got that there, and you've got lots of places where television, radio and the journalists of the world will be here, as well as other leaders and so forth. So it's going to be an exciting time at ASU. It's a different kind of event. Tempe mayor Hugh Hallman was on last night. The tendency is to gage this in terms of Super Bowl national college championship, that kind of thing, but it's definitely a different kind of national and for that matter, worldwide attention.

>> Governor Janet Napolitano:
I think a lot of us have used the Super Bowl of politics as kind of shorthand, meaning it's the last biggest contest before the actual election. But, the stakes are so much higher, of course, than a football game, and particularly now where Kerry and bush are so close and all of the polls -- and the debates, I think, are being watched by record numbers of people and they are beginning to finally illuminate the differences between the candidates so that voters understand the choice they are going to be making.

>> Michael Grant:
Not close, however, in Arizona. Kerry going to lose Arizona?

>> Governor Janet Napolitano:
No, no, I don't think anybody can predict what's going to happen in Arizona right now. In this campaign on the ground is as intense a campaign as I've ever seen with actual voter outreach, and to just give you one example, I was home one Sunday afternoon and there was a knock on the door and it was some people canvassing from John Kerry. They had been bussed over from California to campaign for John Kerry. I think this race will be very robust in Arizona.

>> Michael Grant:
I understand as Governor and a member of the same party, you have to fight the good fight, but Kerry campaign pulled its ads in Arizona. That's not a good sign, is it?

>> Governor Janet Napolitano:
You can't judge everything by one part of the campaign pie, the media buy is one part, but you really can't ascertain all of the things that are going on in the campaign. Again, like I said, this is a robust campaign. Teresa Heinz-Kerry is here tonight in the state campaigning for her husband. I think thy we'll see more of the principals here. John Kerry will be here next week for the debate. What I think is happening with the debates, the first one last week in Miami, the one earlier this week between the vice presidential nominees and then the one tomorrow night and then of course ours. I think voters will really finally get to pierce through, you know, the advertisements and the spin and all of the stuff about people saying what the candidates think and they can listen to the candidates.

>> Michael Grant:
I have not heard anything, but I assume that neither one of the candidates, other than showing up for the debate, is scheduling any local appearances in conjunction with that?

>> Governor Janet Napolitano:
You know, I've heard various things, but you would have to contact both campaigns to find out. It wouldn't surprise me if one or both had some sort of rally after the debate for their supporters, but I'm sure they'll get that word out if that's going to be happening.

>> Michael Grant:
Since last we talked, instead of being the foreign policy debate, this became the domestic issue debate. Was that disappointing?

>> Governor Janet Napolitano:
No, I think actually starting off with foreign policy was good. At some point the 10,000 pound gorilla in this race, which is the war in Iraq had to be fleshed out. What are the difference between how the president has been handling this war for the last 3-1/2 years and how Senator John Kerry would handle the war. And I think that's incredibly important for us as we go forward. How we win the peace is an unanswered question from this administration in my personal opinion. So I think starting off with that, and getting to our major foreign policy issue where Americans are fighting and dying on a daily basis, was a good move.

>> Michael Grant:
Oh, and I think for both campaigns, it probably was the right choice. I was approaching it more from the local standpoint of not having that foreign policy debate here in Tempe, and instead having the domestic issues debate.

>> Governor Janet Napolitano:
Well, the domestic issues are very important, and I think, you know, kind of the spin, if I can use that word, was that having foreign policy go first was supposed to play for Bush's strong point. As it turned out, that was not the case. On the domestic side, we've got huge issues. We've got issues with the size of the deficit that we're building up, that these young men and women who are fighting in Iraq are going to have to pay for when they get back. We have issues with health care and the lack of affordability and accessibility to healthcare and a lack of a plan for providing for healthcare. We have issues about the economy and jobs and the future security of good jobs in the United States and how we fit into the global economy. So I think it's going to be a fascinating debate to see what these two candidates have to say.

>> Michael Grant:
Let me shift to Homeland Security. Apparently the budget congress has under consideration would cut Homeland Security funding. I guess Arizona's share of that cut would be about $12 million?

>> Governor Janet Napolitano:
At least $12 million. And this is where as a Governor, and I think on a bipartisan base circumstances the Governors of the country are saying what are you doing in Washington D.C. How can you cut Homeland Security funding for equipment, for firefighters, funding for training, funding for communications capabilities, all of the things that we need at home to increase and protect the safety of our people and need to be at the local level. How can you cut that? And at the same time they are doing things at the house this week, passed a bill to divide the 9th Circuit which Arizona is in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. It has a $100 million price tag. Why are we paying for courthouse. It defies logic what is going on in Washington D.C. right now.

>> Michael Grant:
38 Governors had written congress people or senators and said reconsider that idea?

>> Governor Janet Napolitano:
That's right. It was Democrats and Republicans alike. Like I said, if you are prioritizing where your dollars are going to go, and you want to make sure they are going to their highest and best use, you don't put it into things like building more courthouses, you put it into things like Homeland Security. And to date, we haven't been able to get the congress to listen. It's really a shame. It's going to have a real impact on the ground in Arizona.

>> Michael Grant:
Do you ever feel like you've got a little biological cloud following you around and hanging over your head?

>> Governor Janet Napolitano:
Well define "biological cloud"

>> Michael Grant:
You've had West Nile virus and the fruit fly

>> Governor Janet Napolitano:
Med fly declared emergency a couple of weeks ago.

>> Michael Grant:
And this week of course the flu vaccine problem. It just seems like -- I'm not making light of this, but it seems like we've had a real bad series of these biologically related problems.

>> Governor Janet Napolitano:
They are biologically related, but the difference is that with respect to West Nile and the med fly, these are, you know, these are insect borne diseases and what we were doing is taking care of those issues. This flu vaccine issue is human error. This is human error. This is the United States not having an adequate vaccine supply system, and the world indeed not having an adequate vaccine supply system. This is being caught off guard when the one laboratory that somehow manages to manufacture 50% of the flu vaccine at the beginning of flu season is declared incompetent to produce a safe vaccine?

>> Michael Grant:
Are they based in England?

>> Governor Janet Napolitano:
The parent company is in California. I think it's in northern California, but they purchased the company Chyron that is in great Britain which is where the laboratory.

>> Governor Janet Napolitano:
In this age of science and great research advances we are still producing flu vaccine the same way we've been doing it for decades, which is very laborious, takes a lot of time and is very expensive.

>> Michael Grant:
And we were talking before we went on the air here, it's been a problem a year for the past four or five years. This year's problem obviously being supply. You've called on people not in risk groups to not get the shot to try to leave that for children

>> Governor Janet Napolitano:
And the seniors.

>> Michael Grant:
But that's incredibly difficult to police.

>> Governor Janet Napolitano:
Well, it is. You have to -- you are really making an appeal to the public, to their sense of community and common sense. Everybody out there has someone they know or they may have an elderly parent or a very young child or no someone who has a chronic disease condition or an immune deficiency, for example, and we need to save the vaccine for those individuals. And we have to rely on people for the most part to self-police and hopefully, we'll get through this first couple of days where there is a run on the bank a little bit, and things will calm down and we will be able to get vaccine supplies shifted to those most at need populations. This can't be done by government edict, really, because of the way vaccine is distributed. It's mostly distributed into the private healthcare provider market, so we really have to rely on people to self-police and to say, you know what, I'm a healthy adult, I'm going to take in my infant child, I'm going to take my elderly mom and dad and my friend who has a chronic immune disease, I'm going to take them in for their flu shot but I'll hold off on mine.

>> Michael Grant:
But I'm going to pass. We talked last time you were here about the drought plan. I think I made the comment that there didn't seem to be a lot of there there, and I think awe greed with it. A lot of measures were toughened. Are you more satisfied with the plan in its current form?

>> Governor Janet Napolitano:
It was just approved last night, so I haven't gone through the revised version. I was unhappy with the original draft. I didn't think it had enough in it, and enough focus in it on conservation. I'm going to look at this final draft that the taskforce has prepared in depth and on the first of November, I'll make a major address at the Arizona Town Hall. I'm going to address the plan then.

>> Michael Grant:
Rural interests are already concerned that it's a one-size fits all kind of plan, not very well tailored for rural interests.

>> Governor Janet Napolitano:
We have two different kinds of water issues in Arizona, coexisting at the same time. We have the Arizona that has access to C.A.P. water, and the Arizona, the rural Arizona, parts of rural Arizona that do not have access to C.A.P. water and have to rely on ground water and surface water. So I need to be -- I'm the Governor of the whole state not just the C.A.P. part of the state and the non-C.A.P. part of the state. I need to make sure we have accommodated all of those groups fairly.

>> Michael Grant:
Protect Arizona Now. The polls continue to show proposition 200 winning handily, some movement in that, but still considerably ahead. You obviously feel people should vote against it.

>> Governor Janet Napolitano:
Do I.

>> Michael Grant:
Why?

>> Governor Janet Napolitano:
Well, first, let's begin, everybody agrees that illegal immigration is a problem in Arizona. There is no disagreement about that. Now, the question is, will this stop a single illegal immigrant from crossing our border? I don't think so. I can't imagine a poor father sitting in Mexico with no mechanics could, no money, no job, a hungry baby who needs to come to the United States to get work, saying oh, my gosh, I can't go through Arizona because I'll have to pro produce I.D.. It just defies lodge I can. So I don't think it will stop a single illegal immigrant. On the other hand, will it save us any money? I think in the end it will end up costing Arizona taxpayers. It's going to cost us in federal dollars that we won't be able to draw down. It's going to cost us an additional administrative expenses. We're going to have to incur because of the enormous paperwork involved with this initiative. And it's going to cost us with respect to a lot of, I think, very lengthy and expensive litigation. So we all have a problem, we understand that. The solution to the problem I believe is federal immigration reform, and the solution to this problem should be in Washington D.C. and not on the backs of Arizona taxpayers, but that's where Prop 200 puts it.

>> Michael Grant:
Incidentally, I don't know that many illegal aliens are running to register to vote either.

>> Governor Janet Napolitano:
We can't get anybody -- I mean, the problem in Arizona has been getting people to vote at all.

>> Michael Grant:
But intuitively, is there anything wrong, particularly given the understandable frustration of Arizonans on this issue to saying hold it, when you register to vote, not unreasonable to request proof of citizenship?

>> Governor Janet Napolitano:
I don't object to that, but the problem with the initiative is the requirement of I.D. when you actually vote. You have to ask the question, how does that work with vote by mail? Half of our votes vote by mail. A lot of seniors vote by mail. Our military overseas personnel vote by mail. 50% of the voters in this election will vote by mail. How can you carry out the requirements and have a vote by mail system? I think before you have to adjust the vote by mail system, you ought to have a persuasive case that there has been voter fraud going on. I've been a prosecutor for almost 10 years before I had this job, and we never had a case of voter fraud presented to us.

>> Michael Grant:
Governor Janet Napolitano, thank you very much. We'll see you two days after the general election.

>> Governor Janet Napolitano:
Yes, you will.

>> Michael Grant:
Every election mud gets tossed. Now two ASU professors have come up with a way to quantify the amount of mud tossing. We'll talk to one of them about their crawdad campaign tracking dashboard. First, Mike Sauceda tell us how it works.

>> Kevin Dooley:
This over here represents the amount of mud that Kerry is throwing at bush, and this side over here represents the amount of mud that bush is throwing at Kerry.

>> Reporter Mike Sauceda:
Arizona State University professor Kevin Dooley explains the crawdad campaign tracking dashboard. It uses an analysis that he and a fellow professor developed. They use technology to cruise the web sites of the bush and Kerry campaigns mining blogs for certain words.

>> Kevin Dooley:
The way that technology works, it looks at a text and extracts the sentences just like one did sentence diagraming in grade school, that's what the computer does. By identifying announce and adjective and noun phrases and you how they are related to one another, our technology creates, then, a complete picture of what the text is talking about. The words in the document b and then how those words relate to one another. The connections represent intentional connections by the speaker. And we find that the way that a person uses a particular noun or adjective says a lot about the way they are thinking and the arguments that they are trying to frame.

>> Mike Sauceda:
All of that complex applied linguistic theory is provided in the form of meters. The web site is located at www.crawdadtech.com.

>> Kevin Dooley:
What it is attempting to do is mesh the amount of negative language that is used in connection with one candidate talking about the other.

>> Mike Sauceda:
The Kerry side measures the amount of mud he's tossing at bush and vice versa. To the right of the meter are three bar gauges which he indicate the focus, tone and intensity of messages.

>> Kevin Dooley:
What we have here are three different ways of measuring the characteristics of the message. The first is focus. Something that is higher would indicate that the campaign communications are talking about a few things in a very focused way. Something that was lower on focus would indicate that more things were being discussed. And we can see right now that the two campaigns are relatively equivalent in their focus. The next measure that we have is tone, and this means exactly what you think it would. Things can be relatively positive or negative in tone. And then finally, we measure intensity, which measures how much positive and negative words are used.

>> Mike Sauceda:
Top words used by the candidates is the NIX panel.

>> Kevin Dooley:
What a user is going to learn from a word list is acrossed the vast amount of communications being done, what are the campaigns focusing on right now. We see that the content of their communications changes day to day, and so this gives a front page headline of what the campaigns are talking about. Over here, we have a panel that measures the number of words and the number of stories that are coming out of each news source. The one thing that sticks out here is that you'll see that the bush news site puts out a lot more words than any of the other sources. This has been true throughout the campaign. Thon panel, we show the two-week trends in the various measures on the campaign dashboard. We can see that in terms of focus, tone and intensity, that they have relatively remained the same over this two-week period.

>> Mike Sauceda:
The final panel on the dashboard uses graphs to connect words most recently used by campaigns to describe their candidate and the opposing candidate. Words in green boxes are the most recently used.

>> Kevin Dooley:
What this represents is how each campaign is representing, for instance in this case, the Kerry/Ewards campaign is representing George Bush and how the Bush campaign is representing George Bush. And so these words surrounding each of the candidates' names represent words that the communications are using to frame each candidate. So this draws a picture of each candidates.

>> Mike Sauceda:
Because searching and analyzing is done by computer, the dashboard provides an unbiased look that can be used by various people.

>> Kevin Dooley:
This gives people deep insight into the strategy of each campaign. But it's also aimed at voters, because the volume of communication is beyond what any typical voter is going to analyze or read for themselves, and because any analyst's interpretation of the communications is necessarily biased by their perspective, this gives people an ability to view what's happening, regular voters in an unbiased way.

>> Michael Grant:
Joining me to talk about the dashboard is Steve Corman, a co-developer of the technology.

>> Michael Grant:
Crawdad campaign tracking dashboard. How long did it take you come up with the name?

>> Steve Corman:
Crawdad is the name of a company that we spun out to market this text analysis technology. That's where it came from.

>> Michael Grant:
You know, one of the -- I want to get to some of the conclusions of the site. Let me first ask you, the data bank that you are analyzing here is essentially the press releases, the web sites of the two candidates?

>> Steve Corman: Right. What we do is we have a program that goes out to the official campaign web sites both for bush and Kerry about three times a day. It downloads anything new it finds in the way of press releases or web log posts and web logs are basically forums that people in the campaign can use to post essays about the campaign and in some cases supporters can make responses to.

>> Michael Grant: Before I get to the mud issue, I wonder if the site more measures negativity than mud, from this standpoint. If I follow part of what's going on here. President Bush could say about John Kerry, I think the senator was wrong and made a mistake when he voted for the war and then voted against its funding or conversely, John Kerry could say, I think the president was wrong and made a mistake in committing American forces to Iraq. Neither of those I would necessarily consider to be "mud," but certainly might consider them to be negative, depending upon my perception.

>> Steve Corman: Right, there are different ways you can define mudslinging one is the one you are describing where it's a direct personal attack. That's how many people would judge it. The problem is that really takes a human actually reading the text to make that kind of judgment. We have these campaigns putting out sometimes in a week 300,000 words in all of these press releases. So that's an awful lot for a human to read. Computers aren't yet able to make those kinds of judgments, so we have to look at mud in a slightly different way. It's negative campaigning directed at the opponent. So we're -- the President Bush might say I think Senator Kerry has the wrong position on Iraq in one case, he might say I think Senator Kerry has a terrible position on Iraq. That's putting the country at grave danger of a renewed terrorist attack. In the second sentence, he's really connecting a lot of words to George Bush that really give a negative -- or John Kerry that really give a negative impression of him. So that's how we're interpreting mudslinging in this case.

>> Michael Grant: Okay, and certainly Senator Kerry could say I believe the president is a war monger.

>> Steve Corman: Exactly.

>> Michael Grant: You would get a higher intensity scale with war monger.

>> Steve Corman: Absolutely, of course.

>> Michael Grant: Well, what's the overall -- what's our mud an analysis based on the crawdad analysis at this point in time?

>> Steve Corman: The mud analysis is the overall trend basically since the end of the Democratic campaign is that the campaign has been getting more muddy. Now, at any given week, we look at one, you know source might be higher than another, but overall it's been getting more money as we've gone over the past couple of months. Another interesting thing is that bush and Terry seem to have traded places in terms of who is the muddiest. Right after the Republican campaign bush was highest on the mud meter, then it switched off and Kerry went high and bush went low. It's switched off three or four times during the campaign. About the last week, ever since the first presidential debate, Kerry has hit a new record high as far as we've been measuring over the course of the campaign in terms of mud throwing. About a week before, a couple of weeks before that, bush hit a high. So they are really sort of going back and forth and escalating in terms of mudslinging.

>> Michael Grant:
It was interesting. I was reading some of the materials on the site and some of the conclusions. You indicated that the Kerry campaign seemed to go more negative once the new staff joined in early September.

>> Steve Corman:
Yes, that's right. There is a brief lull but then you know they joined it early September and we were coming up on the first presidential debate. That's where we see a really big spike in mud throwing for Kerry. Then it went down briefly for a day or two and right back up. Ever since then it's been coming down, but there does seem to have been some change with the new staff.

>> Michael Grant:
It's interesting, technology, Steve, unfortunately, web sites and those kinds of things haven't been around this long, so there is not much of a comparative database. I would not find it the least bit surprising that in the home stretch of a campaign, you know for the last couple of months, that it would get more intense.

>> Steve Corman:
And you are absolutely right. This is one of the first campaigns where the web has really been a big part of the campaign. They've used it a little bit in previous elections and so forth, but this has -- this is the first time it's been a major part of the communications campaign. So we really don't have a track record to compare this campaign too. I would point out, though, that most of the commentators have been saying this is the muddiest campaign ever and they are really going at it, so we do hope in future elections to use this as a point of comparison for what people are doing in the future.

>> Michael Grant:
All right, Steve Corman, interesting. Thanks for joining us.

>> Steve Corman:
My pleasure, Michael, thank you.

>> Michael Grant:
You can check out transcripts --

>> Larry Lemmons:
Gammage auditorium on the ASU campus is being red deed for the final debate. This is where President Bush and Senator John Kerry will square off. Find out where Arizona fits into the presidential landscape and what the debate could mean to the race. The Journalists' Roundtable Friday at 7:00 on "Horizon."

>> Michael Grant:
Thanks for joining us this Thursday. I'm Michael Grant. Have a great one. Good night.

 

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