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September 7, 2004

Host: Michael Grant
Topics:
· New law that allows prosecutors to go after the assets of immigrant smugglers;
· Independent voters
In-Studio Guests:
· Attorney General Terry Goddard;
· Bob Grossfeld, political consultant:
· Wes Gullett, political strategist who worked on John McCain's 2000 campaign

Michael Grant:
Tonight on "Horizon", a new law allows prosecutors to go after immigrant smuggler much the same way they target organized crime. I'll talk to Attorney General Terry Goddard about the use of civil laws to seize the property of so-called coyotes.

> Michael Grant:
Plus on this election day we'll look at the increase in the numbers and the possible power of independent voters as well as the role they will play this year.

> Michael Grant:
Good evening, I'm Michael Grant. Welcome to "Horizon." The polls just closed throughout the state and early ballot results should be released within the hour. More than 160,000 people turned in early ballots before today. However, overall voter turnout expected to be very light, under 20%. "Horizon" will feature post election analysis tomorrow night at 7:00.

> Michael Grant:
Law enforcement has a new tool to go after those who smuggle immigrants through Arizona, a new law passed by legislators went into effect late last month. It gives prosecutors the power to go after the assets of smugglers similar to the RICO laws that apply to organized crime. Authorities estimate immigrant smugglers or coyotes make more than $300 million a year from bringing immigrants across the border and then holding them until friends or family pay a fee ranging from several hundred to a few thousand dollars. Here is a snapshot of some of the violence associated with immigrant smuggling. Authorities blamed immigrant smuggling with the deaths of 61 people in just a nine-month span in Maricopa County last year. There were also 623 incidents of extortion, kidnapping and home invasions from 2002 to 2003. Joining me to talk about the new coyote RICO law is Terry Goddard. He is the Arizona Attorney General. Terry, it's good to see you again.

Terry Goddard:
Good evening, Michael.

Michael Grant:
Boy, this is a couple of statistics -- this is a major -- far reaching - problem.

Terry Goddard:
It's a huge violent explosion we've had in Maricopa County and throughout Arizona. So much of it is directly attributable to the coyote traffic that legislative leaders and our office thought we've got to try to something, and I wish this bill was a knock-out punch. I'm not making that claim. There's no way it could be. But it clearly targets some of the critical assets that keep coyotes in business and we're out to do as much damage to their organization as possible.

Michael Grant:
You know, I had not realized the extortion aspect of this until fairly recently, the phenomena I mentioned, which is they not only bring them across the border, basically you got to buy it twice.

Terry Goddard:
Absolutely, and you may have to buy it from a different party because they say there's no honor among thieves. This group clearly proves that because often you have one group of coyotes moving in on another and simply taking over the people that they have brought across the border and then demanding additional payment from whoever it was that is paying the bills, usually in Mexico. So kidnapping is another word for what they're doing. Basically if you look at the litany of crimes, just about every one is involved here but we feel by getting them at their financial heart we may take a lot of the attractiveness out of this kind of smuggling.

Michael Grant:
And what is also increasing is the realization by some of the rival groups that, hold it, the risky part of the operation is bringing them across the border. Once they're here in house, I'll move in on the other gang and take the commodity.

Terry Goddard:
Exactly. Much of the tactics that we see are characteristic of the drug trade and many of the players are drug traders that have found another lucrative way to ply their organization, and so there are connections. There certainly are common violence themes, and people are treated as chattel, literally as a commodity, and incredibly poorly. In other words, the folks that are brought across are sort of the ultimate pawn in this game.

Michael Grant:
Well, the gun battle on interstate 10, ironically, the day that Vicente Fox was here, was illustrative of that.

Terry Goddard:
In case we needed any reminding that was an incredibly bloody violent business, that gun battle and five deaths on the highway. The highway had to be closed because of a running gun battle in Pinal County. That's pretty close to home.

Michael Grant:
Now, why couldn't the old statutes, I want to lay the platform for what we've got new, why couldn't old statutes be used?

Terry Goddard:
Well, the old statutes, if you're referring to federal law, they can be and they are. The U.S. Attorney exercising federal powers does, in fact, use RICO powers to go after assets, but their resources are stretched extremely thin. They're focused on some other aspects of the border traffic. And so we felt that we could be helpful, we could help to take down a big piece of this trade using state resources, and although we can't take it all on, what we're doing essentially is using federal law violations, we have to allege a violation of federal law, there is no state law against trafficking in human beings but there are very effective federal laws, we allege those, have to prove them to a court and if we do that we're able to seize assets which we believe will be in the millions of dollars.

Michael Grant:
Classic case being if a van used in the transportation and you follow that procedure, you can now seize that van?

Terry Goddard:
We get the van, but probably more attractive is that these are wire transfers, and, in fact, if we target a particular coyote organization, we can then apply a warrant to the money transmitter, to western union and the other transmitters of cash, and we can basically seize all the money coming into this country for that destination, and that could be hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars.

Michael Grant:
How do you find out it's coming in, though, before you can seize it --

Terry Goddard:
Once we know who the organization is, we know it's coming.

Michael Grant:
You were making the comment that there's some cash disclosure laws that apply but people keep changing eye identities to stay away --

Terry Goddard:
Arizona passed and there's also a federal counterpart. If you receive over a certain amount per day or are on a particular track to receive over a certain amount in a one-month period, you have to disclose, and so the way the coyotes were working around that is they had multiple identities and they would walk into a money transmitter and for the first 9,000 dollars they would be one personality and then they would come one a new piece of identification and be somebody else. So fraud was being perpetrated right there. And we were moving, we were seizing the assets of the -- the -- involved in that fraud and we were arresting people that were committing it, but those aren't the big players, and those are very small aspects of the total amount of money that's being transmitted.

Michael Grant:
Where does the $300 million-plus number come from?

Terry Goddard:
That's money transmissions into Maricopa County. We can't say all $320 million are coyote representative but considering money transmitting through western union or any of the other sort of storefront transmitters is the most expensive way you can move money, the chances that are there are view small legitimate and then a huge amount of illegitimate operations using that mechanism. It's an estimate. We think over $300 million is right. We think the total for Arizona is around $500 million.

Michael Grant:
How much in resources being devoted to this particular effort, investigators, attorneys, those kinds of things?

Terry Goddard:
Well, I wish it was more. Right now we're putting as much as we can. We have a RICO unit in the Attorney General's office. They are focused on this particular activity. They are the most productive in the country in terms of focusing on coyotes and bringing them down but we're not talking about more than a dozen investigators, in fact, significantly less than that, and three or four full-time attorneys.

Michael Grant:
Attorney General Terry Goddard thank you very much for joining us. Best of luck in the endeavor.

Terry Goddard:
Thank you.

Michael Grant:
Many candidates running in today's primary election are counting on independent voters to help get them elected. Once small in number, independents are gaining in numbers, possibly power. In a moment I'll talk to a couple of political consultants about the role independents will play but first Paul Atkinson looks at the increase in the number of independents in our state.

Reporter Paul Atkinson:
Flagstaff is a City of 52,000 people nestled among Ponderosa pines at the base of the San Francisco peaks. It's known for its cool weather, college students and environmentally conscious sandal-wearing citizens. But did you know it also has the highest percentage of registered independent voters in the state at 31%? It's even higher on the campus of Northern Arizona University, where independents top 50%.

Dan Williams:
I think people here are independent thinkers. It's a college town. And I think people are intelligent up here, they're very well educated, not willing to let somebody else think for themselves. They want to think their own thoughts.

Reporter Paul Atkinson:
Perhaps it comes from living so high up at an altitude of nearly 7,000 feet.

Chris Thompson:
I think it has to do mostly with the nature of Flagstaff, the people here are kind of more laid back. I think the people here are less easily fooled because they have kind of an outside view of the world in many ways.

Sandy Pierson:
I think just people are just getting tired of the two-party system and want more choices and being independent you have more choices when it comes election time.

Donna MacFarland:
We are becoming aware whether you're a Republican, Democrat or under a political party with a name, as I was saying, you're a human being that does opposing things that those parties claim to uphold.

Kathleen Toenjes:
I'm actually independent because I have a Democrat father and a Republican mother and there's things I agree on both sides.

Reporter Paul Atkinson:
The percentage of registered independents has more than ducked in the last two decades while percentages for Democrats and Republicans have dropped. In 1984 Democrat made up 46% of registered voters. Republicans 44%. And independent or other 10%. In 1994, Republicans increased to 45%, Democrats slipped to 42%, and independents increased 3 percentage points to 13%. This year Republicans make up more than 40% of registered voters, Democrats 35%, and independents 23%. A 10-point gain.

Dan Brunell:
The trend towards people registering as independents has been happening neighborhood wide for quite a few years now. There's quite a few states where the number of independents actually outnumbers both Democrats and Republicans. So this has been sort of a long-term trend for quite a while now.

Reporter Paul Atkinson:
Tom Brunell teaches political science at Northern Arizona University.

Tom Brunell:
One distinction that political scientists make about independents is we talk about pure independents who clearly don't feel a sway toward one party or the other and then there's independents we call leaners and these people lean towards one party or the other. If you asked them, so somebody claims to be an independent and you ask them do you feel closer to one party or the other f they say yes to that question and you look at the way they behave, they behave almost exactly like people who say they're that from party.

Reporter Paul Atkinson:
There wasn't much advantage to being an independent in the old days because you couldn't vote in the primary election. In 1998 voters approved open primaries. Now independents can request a Republican primary ballot or a Democrat primary ballot, and their votes count.

Tom Brunell:
In some states it doesn't matter what party you're registered in, you can vote in the democratic primary, the Republican primary, the Libertarian primary. Here in Arizona if you're an independent you get a choice but if you're registered for a party you don't have a choice. So there is definitely an advantage to registering as an independent because you get your choice on primary election day.

Reporter Paul Atkinson:
This year the impact of independents may be felt more in the general election. Political analysts expect a small percentage of undecided independents to sway the presidential election.

Kathleen Teonjes:
I feel like it's important to get out there and vote being -- being one of those persons who is going to swing it, it's important to be out there. Even one vote can change the entire nation. So --

Michael Grant:
Here now to talk about independent voters is political consultant Bob Grossfeld. Also here is political strategist is Wes Gullett. Gullett worked on John McCain's 2000 campaign that attracted many independent voters. Gentlemen, good to see both of you. Bob, what do we know about the independent voter? Do we have a profile on a typical independent vote center.

Bob Grossfeld:
As a whole they tend to be younger instead of older. They tend to be more newly registered than people who have been registered for a very long, long time. They tend to be more populist in their overall viewpoint. But other than that their demographics are pretty much the same as anybody else's as a registered voter.

Michael Grant:
Wes, why the marked increase in independent voters?

Wes Gullett:
Well, the parties don't offer you as much anymore and so you can vote as an independent in either party primary election. So if you can vote in either party, you have the best of both worlds and the parties don't have the same kind of benefit or paw Nash they used to have, and the younger people are saying, look, I'm independent, I'm not one or the other, and they're choosing to be independents, and in Arizona it benefits them. They can vote where there's an election and that's a nice choice to have.

Michael Grant:
By the mere act of saying "I am independent," are they, however, kind of inferentially saying that I'm really not very politically interested? Or not?

Wes Gullett:
Well, I think that they see a deluge of comments that the Republican party is extreme to the right, the Democrat party is extreme to the left and they're neither. So they choose to be an independent for that reason. Their voting patterns would suggest that they are less inclined to participate in the political process. But that may be a factor of age as well as anything else, because younger people have -- aren't set in their ways. They haven't got the experience of voting as much, and frankly they vote a lot less than older people.

Michael Grant:
Bob, what are your -- what's your take on that?

Bob Grossfeld:
Why they're independent?

Michael Grant:
Yeah, right.

Bob Grossfeld:
To some extent I think it has become a self-fulfilling prophecy on the part of both major parties. The mechanics of campaigns have gotten so good that we can truly target voters, get a message to them and frankly it is easier to go -- if you're a Democrat, to go after Democrats or swing Republicans, or vice versa if you're on the other side, than needing to go after independent voters. So we haven't been having much of a conversation with them over the last five to ten years. And the conversations that have been brewing, I think, as Wes alluded to, are not very pleasant. They sit back and don't buy into, I think, the clear differences that, for instance, both Wes and I might see between Democrats and Republicans. They don't see the differences, I think, nearly as intensively as we do.

Michael Grant:
And they don't want to join the party, so to speak?

Bob Grossfeld:
Not their club. So they jump into the process, not at the beginning, primaries, but at the end, when there's a general election to vote on.

Michael Grant:
Is it a little bit like -- was it W.C. fields' old line that says anybody that would have me as a member of their club I don't want to join?

Bob Grossfeld:
Groucho, wasn't it?

Wes Gullett:
I don't know how many Republican party events you have been to lately, and, you know, I go to more Democrat ones anymore, but -- they're not that much fun, either one of them, so I think that's an important thing. But, you know, the fact -- the mere fact that our population is growing from in-migration show there's an independent flavor to people. It's hard to leave your home, your family, all your roots and come to a place that maybe you've never been to before, and so you're an independent sole to come here in the first place, and so many people in Arizona, I think, are independent souls and are also drilled by everybody that you vote for the person, not the party, and that's an intellectual thing. If you're smart enough, you're going to vote for the person, not the party. We don't just follow along like lemmings. So I think you add that into being able to vote in every election and you have a phenomenon about more independents.

Michael Grant:
Despite their declaration I'm independent, or maybe they're default independent, remind me to get to that issue, is it if there are consistent leaners, and Professor Brunell was hinting at that, are they really independent or not?

Wes Gullett:
Well, they don't choose -- like you said -- to join the party. And we as a Republican party, I can speak to our party. We're chasing people away. If you have different views, if you're pro-choice in our party, now you're considered a virus. That kind of behavior, that kind of discussion doesn't build a big tent. It chases people away. So the independents, they're like "I don't want to belong to a place that you have to be lock step on all these litmus test issues. I have my own mind. I might be -- I don't care about gay marriage but the Republicans seem to care -- that's all they talk about." And so when you're in that situation, I think we as a party, as the Republican party, help the independents groves because we're chasing them away with sticks.

Michael Grant:
Let's assume the Democrats are not chasing them away with sticks, Bob, but --

Bob Grossfeld:
No, Birkenstocks. I have an extra pair for you, by the way.

Michael Grant:
Are a lot of independent kidding themselves if they're consistently, not withstanding their independent status, voting a straight "D" ticket or a straight "R" ticket?

Bob Grossfeld:
I don't think it would be appropriate to say they're kidding themselves. In their mind they're just not associating themselves with either party. And if you look at how people are registered as an independent, it's rarely a situation of they go to register to vote and they go, I'm going to be an independent. It's more of a -- an opt out process.

Michael Grant:
They don't declare D, don't declare R --

Bob Grossfeld:
They leave it blank or stare at it a minute and, I'm not really sure or check other. Or the person registering says just check other. As long as you're registered, then it doesn't matter. So I don't think it's a delusion on their part. I think it's more they can't bring themselves to say I'm this or the other and don't want to be categorize and feel just fine with that.

Michael Grant:
Okay. That brings us back to that issue, though, of how efficacious are they? Are they really engaged in the process? Do they show up a lot or not?

Wes Gullett:
In a primary election for the state legislature, for example, you will have maybe 10% of independents vote in either party's election because that gets down to the nitty-gritty of partisanship. We talked about, you mentioned John McCain on the way in. Everybody likes to vote for president. Presidential primaries have a high voter turnout. It's exciting. It's the big show in American politics. Independent voters like something new and different. That's why they flocked to John McCain. It wasn't politics as usual. It was unique politics. It was personality driven. But it was also John McCain's willingness to say things that other politicians and not tow the party line but just say what he thought and that attracted Independents because that's sort of an Independent way. If Barry Goldwater were alive today he would be attracting enormous numbers of independent voters. Even if he was in his most extreme conservative state, because he was going right at them and saying, look, I'll tell you what the

Michael Grant:
Let me shift to a general election, though. I'm just going to go way out on a limb here, particularly given the fact that independents tend to be younger, and speculate they are less efficacious than either Ds or Rs. Is that a correct assumption on my part?

Wes Gullett:
Yes. Yes, absolutely. They vote about 55 -- well, in this district where we're at right now today, they vote 55%, Republicans vote 73%. So, you know, a 20-point difference in voter turnout. In a presidential election.

Michael Grant:
So are candidates wasting money on independent -- I mean, we keep hearing things about this is the year of the independent. I think I've heard this about three times. Is it really the year of the independent if they don't show up at the polls?

Bob Grossfeld:
Yeah, and for this reason, that when you have exhausted all of the Democrats that you can find, all of the Republicans you can find and you're still basically at 50-50, you've got to go find somebody else, and in this case it's the roughly 2 million independents across the country who are likely going to vote, who are going to make that decision in battleground states. I mean, the presidential race, understand this, has come down to we have gone six months, seven months, basically at 50-50. I mean, set aside the bounces this way and bounce that way, it's about 50-50. Both parties are going to be able to get their base out to 110%, as much as they possibly can. It comes down to just a handful of independents, and these people --

Michael Grant:
And a handful of states?

Bob Grossfeld:
And a handful of states. And those people are getting more phone calls, mail, everything you can imagine.

Michael Grant:
I am going to move to campaign tactics. Do you target an independent voter any differently than you do a D or R?

Wes Gullett:
If you have the resources to do it, you go after independent voters and you try and win them over because they are going to be the swing vote. And if you look at all the polling, 44% are for bush and 44% are for Kerry of independents. And then there's a big undecided, and they're the last people to decide. So you've got the longest time to work on them. So if you've got that kind of an opportunity, you have to spend your resources on that. But for every dollar that you spend, you're wasting 50 cents because only half of them are going to turn out to vote and it's really hard -- if people don't want to vote in a presidential election, they don't want to vote, because pretty much everybody votes in a presidential election.

Michael Grant:
Almost out of time but would there be key message for Kerry-bush that would be particularly effective with an independent voter?

Bob Grossfeld:
Actually, the best campaign to do that probably the last dozen years was Senator McCain's presidential, just talking straight, just no B.S., and --

Michael Grant:
That's a lot to ask, Bob.

Bob Grossfeld:
It's a big game, big stakes.

Wes Gullett:
And the political smart guys are always nervous to do it because they're going to alienate their base.

Michael Grant:
Wes Gullett, thank you very much for joining us, Bob Grossfeld, good to see you again.

Bob Grossfeld:
Pleasure.

Michael Grant:
If you would like to take a look at a transcript of tonight's show or check our schedule of election cover this fall, please visit the Channel 8 website at www.azpbs.org. Once you go to the www.azpbs.org, just click on "Horizon".

Reporter Merry Lucero:
Wednesday we take a look at the outcome of the Arizona statewide legislative and Maricopa County primary election as candidates emerge from this race to face off in November, join us for discussion and analysis on the primary election and a look ahead to the November general. Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. on "Horizon."

Michael Grant:
Thursday Governor Napolitano will join me for her monthly interview on "first Thursday," which actually turns out to be second Thursday this month. We will talk about the primary election results, the presidential race, other issues of interest in our state. If you would like to put a question to the governor, you can e-mail those questions to horizon@asu.edu. Please include your name and city and, of course, please include your question. Thank you very much for joining us on this Tuesday edition of "Horizon." And don't forget the Friday edition of "Horizon" where we will recap the week's news events and election results. I'm Michael Grant. Take care. Good night.

 

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