Archive for the 'Presidential campaign' Category
July 2nd, 2009, 10:21 am by Le Templar
 U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano (far left) was part of a White House meeting in February with President Barack Obama in this photo posted at whitehouse.gov by the Obama administration. With the state budget crisis on hold until Monday, I can take a moment to mention other tidbits that have happened in the past week or so. Here’s a few items that caught my eye:
- Janet Napolitano, one-time governor and now U.S. Homeland Security secretary, was named by President Barack Obama to be his lead negotiator with Congress on immigration reform policies. Obama revealed this after a high-level June 25 meeting at the White House intended to jump-start an effort to finally resolve the nation’s broken immigration system. Napolitano received a huge amount of media attention when the swine flu pandemic was first identified. She seemed to be on my television news every day for weeks. Now, she it’s likely she’ll be back in the spotlight this fall on an issue that, until the economy collapsed, had been one of hottest domestic topics especially among talk radio and television and certainly here in Arizona.
- Have you taken the Tribune’s Fourth of July quiz yet? And you passed, right? Of course you did, that’s why you read this blog! But if you are, say, under 30, you are likely to be in a shrinking minority who actually understand basic American civics. Tribune writer Mandy Zajac used questions from the official test given to all immigrants seeking to become U.S. citizens. The Goldwater Institute used the same test when it recently surveyed 1,350 Arizona public high school students and found nearly 97 percent couldn’t pass the exam! The institute’s Matthew Ladner suggests high schools should require the citizenship test for graduation, or colleges should require it for admission. I’ve got to say, if we expect foreigners in this country to have this knowledge, how we can fail to demand it from everyone else?
- The Associated Press reported on a Republican candidate for Maine’s governor who appears to have “borrowed” the Obama campaign logo from last year. I’m detecting a pattern here, as we noticed a similar concern in April with John Paul Mitchell, a Republican candidate for Arizona governor.
Posted in: Election issues • Immigration • Journalism • Presidential campaign • Barack Obama • Goldwater Institute • Independence Day • Janet Napolitano • John Paul Mitchell | Post a Comment »
July 1st, 2009, 9:18 am by Le Templar
The Legislature has ended the regular session, adopting a final version of the new state budget in the middle of the night and then passing a final bushel of bills in the wee hours before voting to adjourn sine die.
But many lawmakers predicted Gov. Jan Brewer would veto most, if not all, of the budget package and call lawmakers back in a special session as soon as Monday. KJZZ radio reported this morning that the doors to the Senate building where briefly locked while lawmakers were still debating bills, apparently in an attempt to prevent Brewer from sending back a vetoed budget before the Legislature could adjourn at about 7:30 a.m.
Now, the Arizona Guardian speculates that Brewer could sign portions of the spending bills to keep “essential” government services operating while using her line-item veto powers to reject the rest.
A note placed at the top of the Arizona Department of Administration’s home page at 5:30 a.m. urged all state employees to report to work today. The Arizona State Parks agency had claimed it was closing all but two of its parks at midnight, but its Web site this morning implies the agency has reversed that decision.
Meanwhile, we await word from the governor’s office on what happens next…
UPDATE: Arizona State Parks has announced the agency is reopening all state parks this morning.
Posted in: Arizona Legislature • Arizona government • Congress • Election issues • Governor • Presidential campaign • Jan Brewer • State budget countdown | 2 Comments »
June 18th, 2009, 5:21 pm by Le Templar
 Current Gov. Jan Brewer and predecessor Janet Napolitano As the June 30 deadline approached for adopting a state budget in 2008, there was plenty of discussion around the state Capitol about the possibility of a government shutdown once spending authority had expired. Then-Gov. Janet Napolitano claimed to have a plan to keep most agencies functioning, but never publicly disclosed it. Sen. Bob Burns, R-Peoria, then-chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he said a draft bill that would offer “bare-bones” funding for one month only for the most critical areas. But the public never saw that plan either. In the end, it didn’t matter, as the Legislature and Napolitano finally agreed to a $11 billion budget three days before the fiscal year ran out.
Now in 2009, with the same deadline just 12 days away, our state leaders have picked up where they left off a year ago. This time, Burns as Senate president is looking at a temporary proposal to fund all of state government at current levels, similar to the continuing spending resolutions adopted every year by Congress because it never adopts a complete budget before a new fiscal year starts. In his role as Senate Appropriations chairman, Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, still wants to go with the “bare bones” approach with funding only for public safety and education.
And current Gov. Jan Brewer is rapidly putting together her own plans, in case the Legislature fails to send her any acceptable spending proposal by July 1. Unlike Napolitano, Brewer’s administration is releasing at least a few details about what would happen with a government shutdown.
But it appears Republican leaders in the Legislature might be serious this year about avoiding the worst-case scenarios if July 1 arrives without an adopted budget.
Posted in: Arizona Legislature • Arizona government • Congress • Election issues • Governor • Presidential campaign • Bob Burns • Jan Brewer • Janet Napolitano • Russell Pearce • State budget countdown | 1 Comment »
May 4th, 2009, 4:30 pm by Le Templar
So, are you expecting more from your Arizona schools?
You might have seen a recent television ad, or heard one on the radio, asking you to “join the movement to strengthen education in Arizona.” These ads are part of the first wave of what’s to be an extensive campaign from a new advocacy coalition that wants to put all children into formal classrooms from the age of toddlers well into young adulthood. That group, called Expect More Arizona, says it has commitments from nine sponsors of $100,000 each (that’s nearly $1 million!) to wage a public relations blitz with the goal of a better education system becoming the state’s top policy priority.
Several leaders of Expect More Arizona said squeezing more money out of taxpayers isn’t the coalition’s underlying mission when they met last week with Tribune writer Michelle Reese and me. At least initially, the coalition wants to convince the public that Arizona must lower high drop-out rates and everyone into the workforce with more education in their background.
“This is about raising the bar, about raising expectations for what our children should be learning and doing,” said Thomas Franz, president and CEO of Greater Phoenix Leadership.
Others at the meeting keep repeating this theme, including Paul Luna of the Helios Foundation and Sally Downey, superintendent of the East Valley Institute of Technology. They all said once Arizonans agree on the compelling needs to improve education, then various public bodies can launch into more concrete debates on how that should happen.
There’s one problem with this explanation — Arizonans already place a high value on education. As just one example of this, the latest Cronkite-Eight political poll indicates the only thing that Arizona residents seem to agree on when it comes to solving the state’s budget problems is don’t cut education funding anymore. Some 69 percent of those polled said this, while the next closest area was public safety spending, which only 10 percent wanted to protect at any cost.
What Arizonans don’t agree on is the best way to spend education funds to get the maximum results. A recent movement generally called school choice emphasizes giving parents and families the greatest possible flexibility in selecting a school for their children, with the idea that the best schools will attract students (and their funding sources such as state tax dollars) and schools of poorer quality will have to improve or go out of business. Most school choice advocates believe such strategies would lead to better allocation of education dollars and would ease the pressure for every-increasing budgets to try and spend our way to smarter students.
There are a number of groups who oppose this approach, in part because public schools aren’t shielded from private competition. And guess what? Several of those groups are leading sponsors of Expect More Arizona.
I don’t doubt the group’s motivations. The people involved sincerely believe they are working to improve education and make life better for all of us. But I’m going to be skeptical of their campaign until I hear some specific ideas about what they believe the state should be doing.
Here’s one of the TV ads that Expect More Arizona has created:
Posted in: Arizona government • Presidential campaign • School choice • Schools • Expect More Arizona | Post a Comment »
April 30th, 2009, 1:14 pm by Le Templar
 Gov. Janet Brewer Gov. Jan Brewer has fired a shot across the bow of Arizona State University and its president, Michael Crow, by suggesting the state can’t afford two top-tier research universities.
Arizona’s governor is a nonvoting member of the Arizona Board of Regents, and Brewer attended her first regents’ meeting today in Tucson. She clearly isn’t happy about the three public universities again adopting huge hikes in student tuitions, this time in response to recent cuts in state funding. At ASU, tuition for the typical in-state student has risen by nearly 63 percent since 2002, and will be at $6,700 for the fall semester (including a “temporary” recession surcharge).
In her prepared remarks, Brewer said she will use federal stimulus money to back fill some of the cash that universities have lost, with the intent of limiting the cost increases for students. But the governor warned that the federal money runs out in two years, and she challenged the regents to come up with better business model that will keep university costs as affordable as possible. This sentence was particularly intriguing:
“Having almost all of our undergraduates in research level universities is too expensive.”
While not mentioning Crow or ASU by name, she clearly had both in mind. Elevating ASU’s research status to among the best in the country has been Crow’s driving priority for the past six years, although it still lags behind the University of Arizona. ASU also has the state’s largest student enrollment (and one of the largest in the country).
I expect lots of political clashes between Crow’s ASU and the Brewer administration over the next year.
Posted in: Arizona State University • Arizona government • Congress • Governor • Presidential campaign • Schools • Uncategorized • Arizona Board of Regents • Jan Brewer • Michael Crow | 2 Comments »
April 15th, 2009, 11:12 am by Le Templar
A collection of wild-eyed dreamers already have emerged with the hope of challenging Gov. Jan Brewer in the 2010 elections. No, I’m not talking about Terry Goddard or Jim Pederson or Andrew Thomas or J.D. Hayworth. The first official candidates are real longshots, the kind that media pundits have traditionally called political gadflies.
The best known of this group would be Roy Miller, a political blogger who helped to found the Goldwater Institute and is a frequent Tribune letter writer. Others who have filed with the secretary of state include church pastor Tim Willis, insurance agent Janelle Wood and business accountant Hugh Kealer.
But the candidate with the catchiest name and best campaign Web site to date has to be John Paul Mitchell, who is just 30 and a manager at a Phoenix credit card call center. He also has self-published a book which lays some groundwork to explain how we can run modern government in America without collecting any taxes (the ultimate libertarian dream!).
I am most intrigued by Mitchell’s “self-designed” campaign logo. Take a look.
It is pretty good. But Mitchell claims he came up with the logo “from scratch” after teaching himself how to use Adobe Illustrator. Really? There isn’t anything out there that might have inspired this design? Nothing that looks remarkably similar and has been seen around the world for the past year?
Mitchell told me others have noted the same similarity since he unveiled his logo earlier this month. While “partially inspired” by the Obama campaign logo, Mitchell gives more credit to the Arizona state flag and its sunrise colors.
“I wanted to choose a circular logo because anything with a circle represents wholeness,” Mitchell said.
So, do you think Mitchell’s logo is a flattering imitation or is he simply a copycat? You decide.
Posted in: Arizona government • Governor • Presidential campaign • Barack Obama • Campaign logos • John Paul Mitchell | 6 Comments »
November 20th, 2008, 12:06 pm by Le Templar
ARIZONA GOV. JANET NAPOLITANO (left) AND JAN BREWER, THE NEXT CHIEF OF STATE? (Capitol Media Services file photo)
The national media are acting like they are engaged in a massive competition to get the first news scoop on specific, top-level appointments to the incoming Barack Obama administration. But have you noticed the remarkable regularity in which these stories are coming to light? One person or office each day, with one media outlet posting the news first and then most of the other print and broadcasters quickly confirming the rumor with two or more anonymous sources.
My guess is the Obama team is deliberating leaking names and positions on a set schedule. Each potential appointment gets around 24 hours of focused news attention, providing an opportunity for key lawmakers, Washington insiders and the public at large to react to the choice without Obama publicly putting his credibility on the line. If some problem with the potential nominee’s background emerges that the transition team didn’t uncover, another person’s name will suddenly pop up and the previous candidate will be dismissed as unfounded speculation by the media.
Pretty clever, actually, if you think about it.
Granted, Wednesday night’s news that Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano is the leading contender to be secretary of Homeland Security came out only several hours after former Sen. Tom Daschle was “rumored” to be the choice for Health and Human Services. But that could be easily explained as a slip up in timing, with the Obama transition team intending for the public to learn about Napolitano this morning.
Let’s see if this pattern continues for the next few days, shall we?
Posted in: Governor • Presidential campaign • Barack Obama • Homeland Security • Janet Napolitano • Tom Daschle | Post a Comment »
November 4th, 2008, 10:24 pm by Le Templar
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN AND CINDY MCCAIN BRING ELECTION DAY 2008 TO A CLOSE BEFORE SUPPORTERS TUESDAY NIGHT AT THE ARIZONA BILTMORE RESORT AND SPA. (AP Photo)
Arizona Sen. John McCain took the stage far too early Tuesday night for his Republican stalwarts, because it meant he was conceding defeat, and the presidency, to Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.
I hadn’t understood why the McCain campaign decided several weeks ago to build a special stage on an outside lawn at the Arizona Biltmore Resort and Spa. The resort has several large ballrooms that typically are used for such gatherings, and one such room indeed served as the election party headquarters for the evening.
But tonight, I realized that McCain was trying to keep pace with what the Obama campaign had planned for Chicago’s Grant Park. A unexpected victory for McCain would have meant quite a show under a pair of towering banners and two rows of sky-high spotlights in the colors of blue and yellow.
However, with the bad news flowing in all night, the McCain crowd was pretty deflated and didn’t fill the area that had been set aside to hear the senator in person.
McCain didn’t delay the pain when he came out with vice presidential running mate Sarah Palin and their respective spouses. The senator immediately told the crowd that “American people have spoken, and they have spoken clearly,” and that he had called Obama to congratulate the president-elect.
Later in the 10-minute concession address, McCain took on his supporters’ pain as his own, saying about the 2008 loss “the failure is mine, not yours,” and “I don’t know what else I could have done to win this election.”
The cheers from crowd (and occasional boo when McCain spoke graciously about Obama) turned into anger for some when McCain was finished, and several people at the back turned around to vent at the various TV reporters standing on risers behind them.
“You slimy bastards!” shouted one man who stood out among the mostly well-dressed audience in his blue-jean jacket and blue-jean pants. “You got what you wanted, Barack Obama!”
The same man immediately turned to his neighbor and pointed to a election button with Palin’s face on his chest, “2012, I promise you. 2012.”
Posted in: Presidential campaign • Uncategorized • Barack Obama • concession • election night • John McCain | Post a Comment »
November 4th, 2008, 5:48 pm by Le Templar
REPUBLICANS AND OTHER SUPPORTERS OF JOHN MCCAIN WATCH THE FIRST ELECTION-NIGHT RETURNS IN A BALLROOM TUESDAY AT THE ARIZONA BILTMORE RESORT AND SPA. (Photo by Le Templar/Tribune)
A strong crowd already has turned out at the Arizona Biltmore resort to support John McCain in his bid for president. The Frank Lloyd Wright Ballroom has been transformed into election party central with giant television screens, a live band and four banks of television cameras and lights around the back of the room. Early cheers went up as CNN immediately called Kentucky for McCain and showed voting returns in other southern states with the Republican ahead. But only a trickle of actual votes have been counted, and everyone seems to be ready for a long night of waiting.
Posted in: Presidential campaign • Uncategorized • Arizona Biltmore • election victory party • John McCain | Post a Comment »
November 4th, 2008, 5:17 pm by Le Templar
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN AND CINDY MCCAIN STEP OFF OF HIS PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN’S “STRAIGHT TALK AIR” TUESDAY AFTERNOON AT PHOENIX SKY HARBOR INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT. (Photo by Le Templar/Tribune)
John McCain ended his whirlwind visits to Colorado and New Mexico and landed back in Phoenix about 4:18 p.m. this afternoon. After the couple jumped into an SUV, another long caravan made its way to the Biltmore area. The McCains decided to spend a couple of hours at their condo before heading over to the Arizona Biltmore resort.
During the ride from the airport, Scott Horsley from National Public Radio told the media in my van that McCain’s plane (”Straight Talk Air”) had to abort its first attempted landing in Albuquerque, before going in safely so McCain could speak to some volunteers at the New Mexico campaign headquarters. Horsley, who has been covering the McCain campaign for weeks, said aborted landing isn’t that unusual even for a presidential candidate on Election Day. He guessed there was unexpected traffic on the airport tarmack, and McCain’s plane circled one while officials cleared the area.
Posted in: Presidential campaign • Albuquerque • John McCain • Straight Talk Air | Post a Comment »
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