District 13 Is Pima County's Only Real Legislative Race. By J.E. Relly DISTRICT 13, WHICH stretches across northeastern Tucson, is something of an anomaly in Arizona politics. While most legislative districts are gerrymandered to give an overwhelming advantage either to the Democrats or the Republicans, District 13 is nearly split down the middle, with 32,346 Republicans, 31,707 Democrats and about 11,500 swing voters not registered in either party. For the last four years, District 13 has been represented by moderate Republican Patti Noland in the Senate and Democrats George Cunningham and Andy Nichols in the House. But with Noland's retirement this year, Cunningham is giving up his House seat to run for the Senate against Republican Dave Turner. That leaves Nichols and fellow Democrat Brian Fagin facing Republicans Scott Kirtley and Shane Wikfors in the House race. Nichols, with the formidable advantage of name recognition and campaign cash that incumbency brings, is the favorite to win one of the seats. On the other end of the spectrum, the conservative pro-life Wikfors has struggled to find support--financial or otherwise--in the district. Even some Republicans privately admit that during his duty aboard a Navy nuclear sub, "Shane spent a little too much time near the reactor." Wikfors didn't return phone call from The Weekly. That leaves the real race between Democrat Fagin, a crusader for public ethics, and Kirtley, a moderate Republican who teaches Spanish at a local private school. Although both candidates are making a first run for office, neither is a stranger to politics. Kirtley is a former Army intelligence officer who has volunteered and interned for U.S. Rep. Jim Kolbe and worked on staff for Gov. J. Fife Symington III's Tucson office. The 32-year-old cites one of his greatest accomplishments as the establishment of an internship program for speeding border-crossing card processing with the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Nogales. Fagin, 43, is founder of the non-profit, non-partisan Arizona Public Interest Research Group. He helped put a term-limit proposition on the 1992 ballot and has worked with Arizona Common Cause on lobbyist gift-giving reform and on legislation for lead poisoning prevention. He also helped Nichols write legislation to force kids to wear helmets while riding bicycles--a proposal Kirtley argues should be executed on a local level. Fagin has staked his personal fortune on the outcome of the race--at the end of September the Democrat lent his campaign an additional $10,000, bringing his total personal loans to $20,500 and leading Kirtley to charge Fagin with trying to buy the election. Fagin dismisses the accusation as a phony issue. He contends, "There's nothing unethical about exercising my right to free speech or being committed to my values." In addition to the loans, Fagin had raised about $9,000 in contributions by the end of September. Fagin says he's using personal funds to finance his campaign "to avoid either the appearance or the reality of an undue reliance on big-money special interest dollars." This campaign is "clearly independent of well-heeled, big-time financial contributors," says Fagin, who favors campaign finance reform. Kirtley, who earns $1,000 a month along with housing at the private Fenster School of Southern Arizona, says it would have been ludicrous not to tap the thousands of dollars available through political action committees. "I don't have a lot of my own money to put into this," he says. His political action committee contributions came word of mouth after Republican godmother Jackie Egan and Sen. Patti Noland "hooked me up with the right people." Kirtley had raised $13,184, including $4,600 from PACs, as of September 30. During the last legislative session, the 59-year-old physician Nichols, an environmental and health champion, played a leading role in stopping the Environmental Audit Bill in its original form. The bill would have granted both civil and criminal immunity to polluters and shielded them behind a veil of secrecy. Both Fagin and Kirtley are opposed to granting civil or criminal immunity to polluters reporting their violations to the state. But Kirtley says he'd consider extending immunity to accidental violators. He recently told the Tucson Chamber of Commerce he'd support self-audit to some extent. But "there should be criminal penalties or at least the levying of fines sufficient for ensuring the clean-up," he says. "I don't know if you can talk out of both sides of your mouth and have people think that you're telling it straight," says Fagin. "Either you're for it or you're not." Fagin, who received an endorsement from the Grand Canyon Chapter of the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters, says, "I'm unalterably opposed to (the environmental audit). It's a stupid piece of public policy that to me makes a silly argument: The best way to have a clean environment is to encourage the pollution of the environment. And I just don't think on that issue you (can) have it both ways." "Those who claim environmental advocacy should be willing to make the goal the clean-up, not having a public execution," replies Kirtley, who won the Chamber's endorsement. Although equity in public school funding is a priority for both Fagin and Kirtley, they support radically different approaches. Kirtley advocates State Superintendent of Public Instruction Lisa Graham Keegan's sales tax proposal for fixing the schools' capital financing crisis. He points out that tourist dollars are a ready source of revenue. Reaction to Graham Keegan plan has been mixed. While some hailed the notion of replacing the school system's reliance on wildly varying property taxes, critics grumble the proposal is regressive and shifts the burden onto middle-class consumers. Kirtley offers his own caveat to the Graham Keegan plan, which would allow food and "necessities" to be immune to the additional tax. Kirtley, whose over-arching campaign theme is personal control, says the consumer-oriented tax plan offers more individual choice compared with property taxes. Fagin excoriates, "It's kind of interesting to me that someone carrying the banner of a political party that talks of lowering taxes is so quick to raise them to fund public education, when we've got hundreds of millions of dollars in a surplus rainy day fund. "We would have no trouble financing the school system if we stopped giving away hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks to the enormously wealthy." Kirtley criticizes the third tier of Fagin's school equity proposal as "Robin Hoodish." Fagin proposes the wealthier districts solve their own school funding needs without dipping into state dollars. He suggests bond sales be permitted beyond the current designated capacity. "I think he (Fagin) was saying keep the rich districts off the state system, yet still tax them," says Kirtley, who favors keeping caps on bonding capacity. "It seems to be a punishing-success solution. You're rich, therefore you don't count. I don't buy the soak-the-rich solution." "There's no soaking the rich here," Fagin shoots back. My proposal simply outlines some broad contours to be fleshed out in the legislative democratic process. One thing I don't want to do is leave any children behind." Both Kirtley and Fagin consider themselves pro-choice candidates. Kirtley favored the parental consent package that came before the legislature, which included prevention and education along with a judicial waiver option. Fagin opposes government-mandated parental consent. "Nobody's for abortion, but in terms of the freedom to make the choice, I don't know if you can have it both ways." The two candidates also oppose Proposition 102, Gov. J. Fife Symington III's one-size-fits-all juvenile justice initiative which would automatically transfer violent teens 15 and older to adult court. They each favor judicial discretion. Fagin advocates programs proven effective in other parts of the country: incentives for disadvantaged high-school students, life- and job-skills training, counseling for parents with violent kids and day-care help for parents of infants. Kirtley's ideas for prevention include role modeling and the Boy and Girl Scouts programs, as well as boot camps for some offenses, notched down to state-monitored wilderness programs for lesser crimes. Kirtley fashions himself a moderate Republican in a district "pretty solidly down the middle." He refers to the language in his challenger's campaign literature as "pushing himself out to the left." "Is it too far to the left to be honest?" Fagin responds. "(The) legislature assaults children, the environment, education and reproductive health and freedom rights and all the things I think people in the district care about. If that's not a legislative house of horrors, what would it be?" Kirtley argues that in the current legislative climate, a Republican could get more done. If elected, he says, he'd bolster the Republican moderate contingent in the legislature as well as cross party lines to vote on some issues. "That group of elected officials have run the legislature for many years now," Fagin argues. "And we now have the mess that we do. They've had their chance and they've left environment, education, children and ethics reform in the back. So I don't see why we should give them more of a chance. And I don't even know what a moderate is anymore. What's a moderate?" THE SENATE RACE isn't nearly as heated a contest as the House battle. Democrat George Cunningham, the House minority whip, is facing Republican Dave Turner, a political newcomer who's raised more than $27,431, including more than $8,000 he's lent the campaign. But Turner's political inexperience has left many District 13 Republicans cold; retiring Sen. Patti Noland, known for her moderate stance, has not endorsed him, and other Republicans say Turner only got in the race at the behest of Symington supporters who wanted Noland to face a primary challenge because she'd failed to go along with the the governor's agenda. As an incumbent in a moderate district, the 51-year-old Cunningham has a clear advantage after two terms in the statehouse working to change state tax formulas that, in the past, have shortchanged Pima County. Cunningham is a former University of Arizona vice president who has also served as chief of staff to Gov. Rose Mofford. He's lived in Tucson nearly four decades. The 60-year-old Turner relocated in Tucson six years ago. A UA civil engineering grad, Turner owned three companies in Southern California, which monitored soil and water contaminants for private industry. Both candidates say they're pro-choice, but Turner waffles on the issue. While Cunningham voted against last session's parental consent bill, Turner favors parental consent with judicial discretion and, in a Planned Parenthood survey, he said he was "undecided" on whether he'd vote to protect a woman's ability to choose a safe and legal abortion as outlined in the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade. Cunningham has a solid record on the tax-equity issue during his two terms in the House. He's worked with a bipartisan coalition that restructured the sales tax formula and designed a redistribution formula for the state gasoline tax, both of which had historically favored Maricopa County. In the Senate, Cunningham plans on targeting the way the state distributes sales and income taxes to cities at the expense of unincorporated areas. Although Turner says the state's economy is a prime issue for him, he offers little more than the standard campaign rhetoric about his "practical, real-world experience" from a career in private enterprise, as compared to Cunningham's history in a "quasi-government" capacity. Cunningham blunts the attack by pointing out he's owned and managed several apartment complexes around Tucson for several decades. Turner's "real-world experience" as owner of three companies that made recommendations for businesses dealing with hazardous waste translates into a major paradigm shift on revising the state's clean-up standards. "Do we need to clean up to pristine conditions?" he asks. He refers to business and engineering trade journals that discuss "overzealous clean-up" in areas that will never affect communities or water tables. Turner is in favor of environmental self-audit with civil and criminal immunity as long the company pays for clean-up. He says he doesn't understand the secrecy component. "If it's a health issue," he says the information shouldn't be withheld from the community, but he fears allowing the public to know about pollution might result in "a media circus." Of the environmental self-audit bill that ran through the legislature last session, Cunningham says, "I think it's a good idea providing some sort of incentive for companies to clean up their own (waste)." While he supports criminal immunity if a company agrees to remediate a polluted site, Cunningham finds fault with the self-audit bill. "If you keep this information secret, people may have been harmed by the contamination would never know," Cunningham says. "Keeping it secret would grant them civil immunity." Turner, a self-described conservative, favors Prop 102, Symington's juvenile crime initiative that would automatically transfer teens 15 and older to adult court. He wants to get tough on crime by building more prisons using funds yanked from rehab programs if that's what it takes to "protect the public." Cunningham, who backed legislation for a $50-million state investment toward adding cops to the streets, doesn't support Prop 102, arguing that unlike the juvenile justice system, it allows teens to get out on bail. As for using rehab funds to build more prisons, Cunningham says, "Out of a total (Department of Corrections) $400-million (annual state) budget, $6 million is spent on educating inmates. (That's) 1.5 percent. Even if the money was reallocated it wouldn't relieve the tax burdens anywhere." Besides, "most people who go to prison get out," says Cunningham, "and if we don't change their behavior, Lord help us." He says studies indicate it's more cost effective to promote public security by the use of intensified probation and diversion programs as well as early intervention and prevention. While Turner supports state schools chief Lisa Graham Keegan's proposal for solving the capital inequity problems in public schools, Cunningham says the additional sales tax downloads the burden onto the middle class, the largest consumers of goods. He also criticizes the measure for shifting property taxes to homeowners and easing it for businesses and mines. He says the Graham Keegan proposal only funds high-growth districts. "If they have stable growth, they don't get a dime."

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