Archive for the 'The donkeys' Category
Monday, December 17th, 2007 by Paul Giblin
A ballot box
Arizona’s presidential preference election on Feb. 5 will feature at least 37 candidates, more than half of whom are political jokers intent on juking state regulations simply to get their names on the official ballot.
Consider the list of candidates who filed the necessary paperwork by Friday afternoon.
On the Democratic side, ballots will feature a “Who’s Who” selection of national candidates that includes Hillary Clinton, Christopher Dodd, John Edwards, Mike Gravel, Barack Obama and Bill Richardson.
Yet, Democratic ballots also will feature a “Who’s That?” slate of candidates that includes people named Peter “Simon” Bollander, William Campbell, Edward Dobson, Tish Haymer, Rich Lee, Frank Lynch, Leland Montell, Michael Oatman, Chuck See, Philip Tanner, Evelyn Vitullo and Sandy Whitehouse.
On the Republican side, the “Who’s Who” side of the ledger features national candidates Rudy Giuliani, Duncan Hunter, Alan Keyes, John McCain, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson.
The GOP “Who’s That?” selection includes people named Hugh Cort, Jerry Curry, John Michael Fitzpatrick, Bob Forthan, Daniel Gilbert, Frank McEnulty, John R. McGrath, James Creighton Mitchell Jr., David Ruben, Michael P. Shaw, Jack Shepard and Charles Skelley.
At least 13 of the presidential candidates live in Tucson and appear to have exactly zero political experience and zero hope of being elected.
“You know, I cannot comment officially on any of that other than to tell you that the process for appearing on the presidential preference ballot is different than it is to appear in the primary election,” said state election director Joe Kanefield told me.
The process to appear on the presidential primary ballots requires little more than completing a notarized two-page form affirming that the candidate is a natural born U.S. citizen, at least 35 years old, and has been a U.S. resident for at least 14 years.
State law for primary elections, such as those for the U.S. Senate and governor’s office, are different. Primary elections require candidates to gather petitions from other registered voters.
Kanefield said he was a loss to explain the surge of presidential aspirants from Tucson, though the surge of would-be candidates certainly could have something to do with Project White House, an effort by the Tucson Weekly, an alternative newspaper based in the Old Pueblo. Yeah, just maybe.
According to its Web site, Tucson Weekly is encouraging its readers to run for office with the promise of giving ink to those candidates its editors deem newsworthy. Kanefield said elections officials will continue to accept applications until 5 p.m. today, Monday, Dec. 17. “We just receive these things and ensure that they’re in proper order. If so, then they will be certified for the ballot of Feb. 5,” he said.
Arizona has a reputation for attracting a broad field for its presidential preference elections. In 2004, 18 candidates appeared on the Democratic ballot. The Republicans didn’t conduct a similar election that year because President Bush was running for a second term.
Arizona Secretary of State Jan Brewer will oversee a drawing in her Phoenix office Tuesday to determine the order in which all the candidates’ names will appear on the 2008 Democratic and Republican ballots. The candidates themselves are invited to attend.
Posted in The donkeys, The elephants, The news biz | 2 Comments »
Thursday, December 13th, 2007 by Paul Giblin
Mike Huckabee
Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee are expected to become official candidates in
Arizona’s presidential preference elections soon.
Campaign officials for Obama were expected to file the necessary paperwork with the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office today, Thursday, Dec. 13, while campaign officials for Huckabee were expected to do likewise Friday, Dec. 14.
Obama and Huckabee certainly go on the “Who’s Who” side of the ledger, rather than the “Who’s That?” side.
To date, the “Who’s Who” candidates who will appear on ballots in Arizona on Feb. 5 are Republicans Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani, Duncan Hunter and Mitt Romney; plus Democrats Obama, Christopher Dodd, John Edwards and Mike Gravel.
The list of “Who’s That?” candidates who also will appear on ballots are Republicans named John Fitzpatrick, Daniel Gilbert, John McGratch and Jack Shepard; plus Democrats named Frank Lynch, Leland Montell, Philip Tanner and Evelyn Vitullo.
Posted in Barack Obama, Mike Huckabee, The donkeys, The elephants | Comments Off
Monday, December 10th, 2007 by Paul Giblin
Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani
Aides for presidential candidates Rudy Giuliani and Ron Paul filed the necessary paperwork at the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office on Friday to be included in
Arizona’s presidential preference election on Feb. 5.
To date, the list features eight Republicans and seven Democrats. Both sides include several mystery candidates.
The Republicans: Known candidates Giuliani, Paul, Duncan Hunter and Mitt Romney, plus people named John Fitzpatrick, Daniel Gilbert, John McGratch and Jack Shepard.
The Democrats: Known candidates Christopher Dodd, John Edwards and Mike Gravel, plus people named Frank Lynch, Leland Montell, Philip Tanner and Evelyn Vitullo.
Secretary of State’s Office spokesman Kevin Tyne noted that according to Arizona law, prospective candidates need only be U.S. citizens to appear on the ballot. “As in year’s past, we have citizens who know that and just get their names on the list,” Tyne said. “They don’t necessarily have campaign committees or are nationally involved.”
According to Shepard’s candidacy paperwork, he lives in Rome – yes,
Rome, Italy.
The Secretary of State’s Office will continue to collect paperwork from presidential candidates until 5 p.m., Dec. 17. State officials will draw lots for the order in which the names appear on the ballot at 10 a.m., Dec. 18.
Posted in Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Rudy Giulani, The donkeys, The elephants | Comments Off
Friday, November 30th, 2007 by Paul Giblin
University of Phoenix Stadium
Just pondering a quirk of schedules here…
Feb. 3 will be Super Sunday, when the Super Bowl will be played at the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale.
Feb. 5 will be Super Duper Tuesday, when Arizona will be among 23 states nationwide conducting their presidential primary elections.
I’m just going to ponder that for a while longer…
Posted in The donkeys, The elephants, The news biz | Comments Off
Monday, November 19th, 2007 by Paul Giblin
Forever a newspaper man
Last week, I interviewed a number of local political reporters who went to the Dark Side.
Specifically, they abandoned the noble, just and underpaid cause that is journalism to serve high-profile positions with office-seekers and office-holders in partisan politics. If you missed my Sunday story, it can be accessed here: Anyway, as I prepared the story, I asked the former newsmen about what biases they harbored or developed while covering politics, a topic that pops up frequently on blogs, talk radio, and in discussions I have with my sources in both the elephant and donkey sects.
Sorry to disappoint, but the truth isn’t at all the conspiratorial drama that just about everyone outside of the mainstream media assumes.
But before we go there, I want to address one other point that’s been bugging me for as long as the term “mainstream media” has been tossed about. What exactly is mainstream media? For lack of any other defining criteria, it’s fact-based media. It generally involves people who: A) Actually obtain and read reports, documents and other written material; B) Interview on-the-record sources reflecting multiple and conflicting views; and, C) Compile all that information in short order.
The non-mainstream media, which really is the opinion-based media, for the most part involves non-professionals who: A) Regurgitate selected parts of stories prepared by the mainstream media, oozed over with spurts of their own political seasoning; and, B) Carp that the original work of the mainstream media isn’t nearly bent enough toward their personal biases.
But I digress… Back to the original topic.
Here’s former East Valley Tribune andArizona Republic political reporter and current Democratic Rep. Harry Mitchell’s state director Robbie Sherwood discussing his biases as a reporter:
“Everybody’s coming from someplace. There is no such thing as an unbiased journalist. In fact, there’s not an unbiased anybody. You have your backgrounds. You have your education. You have your ethnicity, whatever it is that colors your experience as a person is going to play a role in how you see the world,” Sherwood said.
“What journalists often will get though is maybe a bias toward the underdog. You do stories about the little guy. And everybody’s guilty of that, because they’re often very compelling stories. I don’t think that those stories are colored by someone’s political ideology. I think almost has less to do with it than anything. You have a bias toward a really compelling story,” Sherwood said.
“At the Legislature, we had a bias toward stories where there was what we call a ‘real person,’ like someone who was not a political figure or a lobbyist, who was trying to get something done at the Legislature, who was impacted by a state law or wanted to impact the process. Whenever somebody like that showed up, you’d rush to interview that person, because it was so out of the ordinary,” Sherwood said.
Here’s former Tribune and Arizona Daily Star political reporter and current state House Republican spokesman Barrett Marson discussing both Sherwood’s alleged political bias and his own:
“I know that, obviously, it’s fun to say, ‘The media’s very liberal and look at Robbie who’s going to work for Congressman Harry Mitchell,’ however, for a year, he worked for Jason Rose. Jason Rose is not on Harry Mitchell’s Rolo-Dex,” Marson said.
“When I moved over from the Daily Star to the speaker’s office, it was all about Jim Weiers. I respected the man. I still respect the man. And I thought it would be an interesting challenge,” Marson said.
“When you get down to it, whatever my politics are, that doesn’t actually come into play much because I’m serving him and the other 32 members of the House Republican caucus. So my thoughts and opinions don’t really have that much of a matter; it’s whatever they want,” Marson said.
A quick aside here, Rose is a Scottsdale-based public relations agent who does work for Republicans Mitt Romney and Joe Arpaio, among others.
And here’s former Republic general assignment reporter and current Mitchell spokesman Seth Scott discussing the intersection of news and politics:
“There are Republicans and Democrats who I liked; Republicans and Democrats who I disliked. But I never experienced any sort of conflict because I never covered politics. It was pretty easy. I covered neighborhood issues. I remember one story I wrote was about the playground equipment at a particular park that was not working well,” Scott said.
“What was a good thing about working in the newsroom was the ability to be skeptical, the ability to look at things in a different sort of way and be able to get to the bottom of what’s really happening. And I think most people who come out of the newsroom and go into politics come with a more pragmatic than ideological sense. And that’s what their political views are founded in,” Scott said.
And finally, here’s former Republic political reporter, former Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano spokeswoman and current Republican Arizona Corporation Commission member Kris Mayes comparing her mainstream media job to her others:
“That’s still my most fun job. Are you kidding? What a great job,” Mayes said.
Posted in Harry Mitchell, Kris Mayes, The donkeys, The elephants, The news biz | Comments Off
Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 by Paul Giblin
Jon Kyl (second from right) at a previous press conference
Sen. Jon Kyl and other Republicans staged a press conference in Washington on Wednesday to question why a provision to provide $3 million for border enforcement was stripped from a defense spending bill.
Kyl and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina authored the provision last month as an amendment to the defense spending bill. The Senate passed it 95-1, but the amendment was removed during a conference committee to reconcile the differences between the Senate and House versions of the bill.
Kyl, Graham and the others blamed Democrats.
Speaking at the press conference, Kyl said, “There is no question about where the American people are on the issue of securing our border and ensuring that people can’t smuggle drugs into the country, that criminals can’t come in – bear in mind that between 10 and 15 percent of the people who illegally cross the border are people with criminal records, serious criminal records – and that terrorist can’t get in.”
Kyl told reporters that the border funding is matter of national security.
He said, “It’s our first obligation as a Congress. And yet you see in the DOD bill, the Democrats taking this critical funding out of the bill. Now they had their political reasons to do that. But those political reasons, I suggest to you, don’ begin to rise to the level of the anger of the American people when they realize what they have done here. Put this to a vote of the American people, and see how they vote on what this Democrat majority has done.”
The $3 billion would have gone toward:
– Enough hires to bring the total number of full-time Border Patrol agents to 23,000
– 700 miles of fencing by the end of fiscal 2009
– Completion of the fence along the California-Mexico border
– 300 miles of vehicle barriers
– 105 ground-based radar and camera towers
– Holding cells to detain 45,000 illegal immigrants daily
– Funding to reimburse states and localities for reimbursable expenses
– $60 million to states to help employers comply with employee verification requirements
Posted in Issue: immigration, Jon Kyl, The donkeys | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 by Paul Giblin
John Shadegg
This week’s example of shameless political opportunism is brought to you by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, an organization that exists solely to get Democrats elected to the U.S. House. Or at least that was its mission until Tuesday. The DCCC launched a week-long radio advertising campaign in Arizona on Tuesday targeting Republican Rep. John Shadegg for opposing SCHIP legislation.
SCHIP is the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, a national program intended to provide health insurance for families who earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to pay for private insurance.
The DCCC targeted Shadegg and seven other Republicans in the fourth round of its multi-media radio, e-mail and text-message ad campaign. The radio ads say, “Did you know Congressman Shadegg gets health care at taxpayers’ expense, but Shadegg and Bush are blocking health care for 10 million uninsured children? Tell John Shadegg to put kids first.”
DCCC spokesman Doug Thornell told me that the campaign is intended coax Shadegg into flipping his position. “He’s been one of the remaining Republicans who’s been helping Bush sustain his veto. And we’ve said for several weeks now that we plan to hold Republicans accountable who vote to support George Bush’s veto over healthcare for children. And Shadegg has been one of the president’s most consistent supporters on this,” he said. Well, so much for that idea.Six hours after the DCCC issued a press release about the ad campaign Monday, Shadegg issued his own press release defending his position and trashing the DCCC.“I am thrilled that Washington, D.C., Democrats are going to waste their money attacking me in Arizona and particularly pleased that they have chosen the SCHIP issue,” Shadegg said in the release.
“Democrats believe that because the bill’s title creates the impression that it is about providing health care to poor uninsured children that no one could dare to vote against it. Unfortunately for them, Arizona voters are smarter than that,” he said.
He went on from there, arguing that the measure has serious funding gaps.
News flash to DCCC decision makers: Shadegg’s not flipping his vote. His position on the measure is completely consistent with his conservative view of the world, which made Shadegg an extremely unlikely vote to flip in the first place. But they already knew that.
Seriously, if the DCCC suddenly had abandoned its mission of getting Democrats elected, and had reinvented itself as an insurance advocacy organization, the DCCC’s brain trust might have tried flipping Republican Rep. Trent Franks. After all, Franks’ northern Arizona district has a fair amount of similarity to Republican Rep. Rick Renzi’s northern Arizona district – and Renzi supports SCHIP legislation.
One obvious difference between Shadegg’s district and Franks’ district is that Shadegg has a well-funded Democratic challenger in Bob Lord. Franks doesn’t.
I told Thornell I doubted the DCCC’s deep thinkers truly were trying to flip Shadegg. I told him they obviously were trying to identify a wedge issue that Lord could use against Shadegg during the 2008 campaign. And, to their credit, SCHIP was a pretty good wedge issue.
Thornell espoused his deep personal pain that I would even suggest such a notion. He insisted the DCCC was running the ad in Phoenix strictly to educate Shadegg who was in Washington.
I said, “You can’t be serious. You don’t think you’re going to flip his vote. You’re targeting him because you want him out of office.”
Thornell replied, “Well, no. I mean – ”
I wasn’t buying it. I said, “Yes. Yes. Why would the DCCC try to convince Republicans to flip their vote? That doesn’t make sense. C’mon.”
Thornell replied, “Why would the DCCC try to convince? Because we believe, we actually believe in this issue.”
He never backed up. He insisted that the DCCC simply was trying to flip Shadegg, even if by doing so Shadegg became more appealing to Democratic voters, which would hurt Lord’s chances of unseating him.
Thornell said, “As far as your assertion that we’re trying to create a wedge issue, that’s not true at all. Partially what you said was right. We are trying to highlight a policy difference that Shadegg has on a priority that is a Democratic priority. And we are highlighting for voters in his district that he is currently, we believe, voting the wrong way on this. And he should be held accountable.”
The DCCC’s brain trust certainly should know about such things. For example, if they acknowledged trying to help Lord, they would be accountable for reporting the ad expenditure as an in-kind donation to Lord.
Shadegg represents Arizona’s 3rd Congressional District, which takes in most of central and northern Phoenix, plus Paradise Valley, Cave Creek and Carefree.
Posted in CD 3 race, John Shadegg, The donkeys | 4 Comments »
Monday, October 29th, 2007 by Paul Giblin
Jan Brewer
Arizona voters are turning their backs to the state’s three recognized political parties in greater numbers than ever before. New voters are registering as independents at more than twice the rate Democrats, Republicans and Libertarians combined.
Overall, nearly 35,400 new voters registered during the third quarter of the year. Here’s the Arizona Secretary of State’s breakdown of their party preferences:
Independent – 58.6 percent
Democrat – 33 percent
Republican – 8.5 percent
Libertarian – negative less than 1 percent – meaning fewer Libertarians joined the ranks of new voters than existing Libertarian voters were purged from voter rolls.
Secretary of State Jan Brewer expects the voters registering as Dems, Reps and Libs will surge shortly. “As we get closer to the presidential preference elections in 2008 where only those voters registered with a specific political party can participate, I have no doubt that we will see party registration significantly climb,” she said in a press release.
“I feel confident that the voter outreach efforts of my office, the county recorders, the political parties, and the candidates themselves will also lead to voter interest as we get closer to the 2008 election cycle,” she said.
So far though, just the opposite is happening. Nearly 39,800 new voters registered during the second quarter. Here’s the breakdown of how they registered:
Independent – 53 percent
Democrat – 36 percent
Republican – 11 percent
Libertarian – less than 1 percent
So for the third quarter, the numbers showed a decrease of about 3 percentage points for Democrats, a drop of 2½ percent for Republicans and decrease of 1 percentage point for Libertarians. Yet voters who registered as “none of the above” increased more than 5½ percentage points.
The trend seems to indicate that new voters are more interested in staying outside of the parties than they are in voting in the parties’ presidential preference elections. The Arizona presidential preference election is set for Feb. 5, so the fourth quarter voter registration results should tell the true story.
Posted in Surveys, polls and guesses, The donkeys, The elephants | Comments Off
Saturday, October 27th, 2007 by Paul Giblin
Harry Mitchell
We already knew Rep. Harry Mitchell hired former newsman Robbie Sherwood to become his state director starting next month. Here’s the skinny on the rest of the staff moves on Mitchell’s staff.
When Mitchell, a freshman Democrat, arrived in Washington, he hired Capitol Hill veteran Gene Fisher as his chief of staff. Fisher had the resume. He previously had served as chief of staff for Rep. Ed Pastor, D-Ariz., and as legislative director for Rep. Carolyn Kilpatrick, D-Mich.
After helping Mitchell build an office staff and helping the former Mayor of Tempe become familiar with Washington protocol during his first year, Fisher announced that he planned to join his wife in retirement.
Sounds simple enough. But here are some other considerations Fisher may have pondered…
Pastor’s and Kilpatrick’s districts are Democratic strongholds. In contrast, Mitchell’s district is a Republican-leaning district with a Democratic representative. The 5th District takes in Scottsdale, Tempe, Fountain Hills, Ahwatukee Foothills and west Mesa, which together offer more Republican voters than Democratic voters. To keep their jobs, Mitchell and his staff will have to re-earn them every two years. Mitchell may never have an easy re-election.
A chief of staff in such a district naturally would find himself far more involved in one-on-one constituent work than a chief of staff in no-contest district. So if a Capitol Hill veteran like Fisher is thinking about retiring anyway, why stick around for a long election year? Eat the cake, accept everyone’s thanks and warm wishes, and get the hell out while the work days still end before the late news programs begin.
Of course, I could be wrong about all of that.
But I don’t think so.
Meanwhile, Mitchell filled Fisher’s post by promoting his state director Alexis Tameron to chief of staff. Tameron previously served as political director for the Arizona Democratic Party, so she has the political background. And now she’ll be able to transition into the top Washington position of a staff that is already up and running.
Mitchell tapped Sherwood, who already is a known commodity in the district because of his years with the East Valley Tribune, The Arizona Republic and KAET-TV’s Horizon program, to serve in Tameron’s former position in the Scottsdale office.
Posted in CD 5 race, Harry Mitchell, The donkeys, The news biz | Comments Off
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