It's easy to get cynical about all this political malarkey: The misleading campaign ads, the mudslinging mailers, the annoying robocalls. After a while, the BS becomes overwhelming and it's easy to forget just how much is at stake and conclude your vote doesn't mean anything.
But as recent campaigns have shown—Congressman Ron Barber won election two years ago by a razor-thin margin of 2,500 votes or so—your vote really can make a difference.
And we also understand how much you have to sort through to understand who all these candidates are and what they stand for. So as early ballots are hitting mailboxes, we're releasing our list of endorsements in the races that we think matter the most in Southern Arizona and across the state. There are some very real choices ahead for us: Are we going to put a governor in office who will stand up against the almost-certainly Republican legislature that will be seated in January, or will we elect a man who will enable their worst tendencies to break down everything previous generations have built in this state? Will we put someone in the Secretary of State's Office who will take on dark-money groups that want to buy our elections or someone who has pushed through legislation design to suppress the vote? Will we elect a competent leader to run the state's school system or will we install a conspiracy-minded ideologue who is afraid to show her face on the campaign trail?
These are important questions. To help you understand what's at stake, we've put together this voter guide with our advice on how to fill out your ballot. Please note this is not a comprehensive list. We've focused on competitive races that we've reviewed.
U.S. Congress, District 1
Let's look at the issues: U.S. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, who now represents the sprawling Congressional District 1, wants low-income Arizonans to have health insurance. She supports a reasonable and compassionate solution for the undocumented immigrants now in the United States. She backs abortion rights. She believes in gay equality. And she has been a fierce advocate for solutions for the problems in her district.
Then there's Arizona House Speaker Andy Tobin, the Republican who wants to unseat Kirkpatrick. In the course of his legislative career, Tobin has voted to slash education spending, taken hundreds of millions from the higher-ed budget, cut mammoth holes into the social safety net and stripped health insurance from low-income Arizonans. His corporate tax cuts have set the state up for giant budget shortfall without doing much of anything to boost the economy. He's supported several unconstitutional assaults on abortion rights and opposes gay equality.
In short, we disagree with Tobin on just about every issue and urge you to vote for Ann Kirkpatrick.
U.S. Congress, District 2
We don't agree with every vote that U.S. Rep. Ron Barber has taken since he won election to Congress more than two years ago, but at least we know where he stands most of the time—and that's a lot more than we can say about Republican Martha McSally, who is taking a third shot at winning Southern Arizona's most competitive congressional seat.
McSally has served her country admirably in the U.S. Air Force, but as a candidate for Congress, she has dodged nearly every controversial question we've thrown her way—and when she has taken a position, it's usually the opposite of something she said she stood for in 2012. As a result, we just don't know where McSally stands on far too many issues and we're afraid she just isn't interested in thinking too deeply about the big questions that face the nation—or understanding the needs of Southern Arizona.
While McSally dismisses Barber as a lifelong bureaucrat, he spent his career with the state working to help kids with developmental disabilities. As Gabby Giffords' district director, he learned the needs of Southern Arizona. As a small businessman, he and his wife Nancy worked to help families with small children. And as a congressman, Barber has been rated one of the most likely to vote against his own party. He's supported the Affordable Care Act, but wants to see changes to make the law work better. He's has worked to find solutions to the many problems along the border rather than showboating on the issue. He has tenaciously battled for the A-10, Davis-Monthan and Fort Huachuca. He has worked to help veterans through both legislation and constituent service. And he has assembled a staff that works as hard as any we've ever seen in any government office.
Ron Barber gets Southern Arizona. He deserves your vote.
governor
There are many reasons to support Fred DuVal for governor, from his deep grasp of the issues facing Arizona to his ability to work with people across the political spectrum. (There's a reason he has Republican Grant Woods, who served two terms as Arizona's attorney and co-chaired Gov. Jan Brewer's 2010 campaign, co-chairing his gubernatorial campaign. And there's a reason that so many Republicans, including former lawmakers Jennifer Burns, Carolyn Warner, Susan Gerard and Chris Herstam, are supporting DuVal.)
But the biggest reason we like the idea of Fred DuVal as governor is that in all likelihood, the Legislature will remain under Republican control—and that means DuVal would serve as a check on the terrible ideas that the Legislature has. DuVal likes to say that the "V" in DuVal stands for veto—and on a host of issues, it's time to change the direction of the state. We need to fund our public schools instead of pushing tax dollars to private institutions. We need to stop cutting taxes for the most wealthy people in the state while cutting services for those who are scraping by. We need to build our universities, rather than finding ways to undercut them. We need better relationships with Mexico, rather than wasted tax dollars on border strategies that do nothing to seriously deal with the real issue of illegal immigration. We need to stop treating DREAMers as if they are worthless youth who deserve to be behind bars. We need to stop finding ways to attack gay couples. We need to invest in our highways and state parks and so much more.
Vote for Fred DuVal.
Attorney General: Felecia Rotellini
For the last four years, Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne has played politics with the Arizona Attorney General's Office. In between scandals, Horne has cooked up schemes to disenfranchise voters, prevent the DREAM Act kids from getting an affordable education at community colleges and hand out legal pork to anti-abortion, anti-gay legal teams. And while Mark Brnovich wouldn't likely have the scandals, we're afraid he'd follow in Horne's footsteps with many of those other bad policy calls.
Felecia Rotellini has plenty of experience in the attorney general's office. She cut her teeth working for former AGs Grant Woods and Janet Napolitano, untangling complex cases such as the swindling of trusting seniors who invested in the Baptist Foundation of Arizona. She's not going to look for legal fights to deny women the right to an abortion or to block gays from receiving equal rights or to make life tougher for immigrant kids who are trying to make a better life for themselves. Vote Rotellini.
Secretary of State: Terry Goddard
Terry Goddard served the state with distinction as Arizona's attorney general. During his two terms, Goddard went after money launderers, human smugglers and swindlers who cheat seniors. We like his promise to use those skills to go after the dark-money campaigners who see our elections as up for sale.
And given the important role that the Secretary of State plays with elections, we have to say that we trust Goddard over his opponent, Michele Reagan, a state senator who last year pushed through an omnibus election-reform bill that was filled with different provisions designed to reduce voter participation. (After an angry coalition of voters collected enough signatures to force a public vote on Reagan's voter-suppression law, she joined with Republican colleagues in repealing the legislation earlier this year rather than allow voters to decide its fate next month.) Vote for Terry Goddard.
Superintendent of Public Instruction
This one isn't even a close call. David Garcia is an Army veteran with a lengthy career in education. He has worked in a high-ranking position in at the State Department of Education and now teaches at ASU's Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. We don't even have room in this space to go over his extensive résumé in the education field, but he has extensive experience in developing education policy for the state. Even though he's a Democrat, Garcia has won the endorsement of former GOP superintendents Lisa Graham Keegan and Jamie Molera, as well as the Arizona Chamber of Commerce & Industry, the Tucson Metro Chamber, the Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and many others. Why? Because not only is he experienced, but his opponent, Republican Diane Douglas, is so unqualified for the job that even Republican-leaning organizations recognize that she should not be put in charge of Arizona's schools. Douglas is a former Peoria Unified School Board member who opposed even a temporary tax increase to keep schools open and remains a political ally of former state lawmaker Russell Pearce. We wouldn't hire Diane Douglas to wash our windows. You shouldn't vote for her to run our schools. Vote David Garcia.
Arizona Corporation Commission
There is one major question in the race for Arizona Corporation Commission this year: Is the state going to continue to nurture the solar-power industry or are we going to smother it in its crib? Thanks to some smart tax credits and other subsidies, the solar industry was a $1.2 billion industry last year, employing more than 8,500 people across more than 330 businesses. On top of that, the growing use of solar energy has helped reduce the emissions that are contributing to the climate change that the vast majority of the scientific community is warning will leave the planet a much worse place for future generations. So we're urging you to vote for Democrats Sandra Kennedy and Jim Holway to send the message that you support alternative energy—and that you oppose efforts by big utilities to buy the seats for Republican candidates.
Legislative District 9
This is a tough call. Legislative District 9, which includes north-central Tucson, the Catalina Foothills and the Casas Adobes area, is now represented by Republican Ethan Orr and Democrat Victoria Steele. Democrats hope to knock out Orr with Dr. Randy Friese, a smart trauma doc who first made local headlines when he helped save many of those wounded in the mass shooting at Gabby Giffords' Congress on Your Corner on Jan. 8, 2011.
We like the job that Steele has done at the Legislature and find ourselves aligned with Friese on most issues. But we also respect Orr for crossing party lines to support Gov. Jan Brewer's Medicaid expansion, as well as his support for educational and other programs in Southern Arizona, even though we disagree with other issues, particularly when it comes to abortion and gun rights.
It comes down to this: If you want to see more Democrats in the Arizona House of Representatives, you should vote for Steele and Friese. If you want to reward a relatively sensible Republican who is willing to sometimes cross party lines, vote for Ethan Orr and one of the other Democrats.
Legislative District 10
We're happy with the work done by the Democrats who are now representing the competitive Legislative District 10. Sen. Dave Bradley and state Reps. Stefanie Mach and Bruce Wheeler have been leaders in the opposition to the many bad bits of legislation that have been passed—and in a few cases, stopped—at the Legislature over the last two years and all three deserve another term. Vote for Bradley, Mach and Wheeler.
Tucson Unified School District
These have been rocky years for the Tucson Unified School District. TUSD has seen big cuts in state funding, a rotating cast of superintendents who have come and gone, battles with the state over the Mexican-American Studies Program and a steady exodus of students to other districts and charter and private schools.
In short, the district is a mess—and once again, voters in TUSD have to sort between nine candidates for two seats on the board.
We're going to suggest that you single-shot one candidate who stands above the rest: Jen Darland, who has worked tirelessly as a volunteer on so many campaigns to try to improve the schools that we can't even count them. Darland is smart and possesses the kind of good judgment that we'd like to see applied to the TUSD board.
We also urge you to ABSOLUTELY NOT VOTE for two of the candidates in the field: Michael Hicks, who is seeing a second term, and Debe Campos Fleener. Hicks has been an embarrassment to the district—just take another look at the ludicrous things he said to a "Daily Show" correspondent about magical burritos—and Campos Fleener would ally herself with TUSD board member Mark Stegeman. And we most definitely do not need that.
Propositions
Prop 122
Proposition 122 is another effort to get the state tangled up in expensive legal fights with the federal government. It would allow state lawmakers or the public to declare a federal law to be a violation of the U.S. Constitution—a designation normally reserved for the courts—and then block the state or local governments from spending any money helping with the enforcement of that federal law. We honestly can't see anything good coming out of this, but we can see plenty of bad unintended—and in some cases, intended—consequences. We say vote no.
Prop 303
If approved by voters, Proposition 303 would allow terminally ill patients to use experimental drugs that haven't yet been approved by the FDA. We are a tiny bit skeptical of this one, but we're leaning toward a Yes vote with the hope that we're not opening the door to snake-oil salesmen who are going to give desperately sick people false hope.
Prop 304
Proposition 304 would boost the salaries of state lawmakers to from the current $24,000 to $35,000 annually. On the one hand, it does seem like the pay is pretty low considering the importance of the work; one the other hand, we're unimpressed with the quality of most of the people who are winning primaries these days. We're voting no.
Prop 415
Proposition 415 would allow Pima County to sell up to $22 million in bonds to build a new animal-care center to replace the current facility, which is nearly a half-century old. Opponents have made a big deal about the price tag, but it comes down to less than four bucks a year for the average county resident, which really isn't asking too much—and that's assuming the cost hit the maximum. The county has worked in recent years to reduce the number of dogs and cats that are euthanized and increase the number who are adopted, which is a great thing. That track record is enough for us to urge you to vote yes on Prop 415.
