Politicker.com is an up-and-coming political news Web site based in New Jersey that has a goal of establishing a local presence in all 50 states. It has been running an Arizona-oriented site for a few months. Now, it has posted a list of top 50 “insider” power players. The list is clearly designed to boost Web traffic (Yep, they suckered me in) rather give a clear picture of who can out-muscle whom, since Politicker intentionally excluded all elected officials and former governors from consideration.
   A couple of quick thoughts about the list:
* Lobbyist Kevin DeMenna landing at No. 3 probably is over-inflation because he had a shockingly successful legislative session this year, including passage of the Decades Theme Park near Eloy.
* The brief and uninformative descriptions for a number of insiders on the list imply that the people behind Politicker don’t really know them, but someone Politicker trusts said these people belong on a top 50 list. (Full disclosure: I had not heard of about a dozen of the 50 people on the list, so I couldn’t evaluate whether they are a good fit.)
* Congratulations to Howard Fischer at Capitol Media Services as the only working journalist to make the list at No. 24. But Politicker couldn’t find a photo of him? Fischer works in the media. He owns his own camera and sells pictures to newspapers every day. Just ask him for one, for goodness sake!
* How does Jordan Rose come in at No. 32, but husband Jason Rose doesn’t make the list at all? Does that imply that Jason is all flash and no substance? Couldn’t be.
* Only one Democratic blogger on the list (Michael Bryan from Blog for Arizona at No. 45) seems odd since Arizona Democrats have been more active on the Internet, from what I’ve seen. Two Republican-oriented sites, Espressopundit and Sonoran Alliance, are on the list. My personal choice for another Democrat blogger would have been Ted Prezelski at Rum, Romanism and Rebellion.
* Who else is missing? There’s no one from the Phoenix firefighters union, which in fact is the most influential union in the state. Past union president Billy Shields would have been an obvious choice. And Cathi Herrod from the Center for Arizona Policy certainly belongs on the list, if only because the proposed state amendment to ban gay marriage is the single legislative referendum to be approved by lawmakers and go to voters this year.
   Who would be in your list of Arizona’s most powerful political insiders?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 2:34 pm and is filed under Arizona government, Phoenix. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.