JEFF FLAKE

Back before the Sept 2 primaries, I wrote a blog post about why it didn’t really matter which of two Democrats emerged to challenge Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., as neither one had raised any money for their campaigns while Flake was sitting on pile of cash. If you read the comments under that post, you’ll note I took quite bit of criticism for suggesting that advertising funds and name recognition have far more influence over election campaigns than ideas, character, values or any of the other issues that voters are supposed to weigh.

Well, with the vote counting nearly over, Democrat Rebecca Schneider stuck to her principles in the 6th Congressional District, but failed to make any sort of impression in the general election. Through Oct. 15, Schneider had raised only $4,900 compared to Flake’s $1.2 million. That lopsided advantage was reflected on election day as Flake had the largest margin of victory among Arizona’s Republican candidates elected to Congress. This includes not only the percentage of votes cast (62.5 percent for Flake vs. 34.5 percent for Schneider) but also the difference in voting totals (191,540 for Flake vs. 105,862 for Schneider as of today, for a gap of about 85,300 votes). Arizona’s senior congressmen, Democrat Ed Pastor of Phoenix, defeated his largely unknown Republican opponent with 72 percent of the vote in the 4th Congressional District. But his winning margin was only about 56,300 votes.

I mentioned in my original post the difficult cycle that exists between money and federal candidates. You have to raise a good sum of money to get serious attention (at least a million dollars in Arizona); but you have to be taken seriously in order to raise that kind of money. A lot of people don’t like that, which is one big reason behind the push for publicly funded campaigns. But the federal courts appeared headed to ruling such systems unconstitutional if they force, coerce or intimidate any candidate into participating instead of running with private donations.

MEMBERS OF THE DOBSON HIGH SCHOOL ROTC PROGRAM MARCHED TODAY IN MESA’S VETERANS DAY PARADE. (Photo by Tony D’Astoli/Tribune)

The organizers of Mesa’s Veterans Day Parade never have enjoyed the same level of support as their counterparts in Phoenix or Tempe — even when the city of Mesa picked up all of the costs of closing  streets, providing traffic control and cleaning up afterward. After the city cut off public funding three years ago because of budget constraints, those organizers have struggled just to keep the event alive. This year, veterans groups were worried because they had raised enough private donations to pay for the parade, but not enough for advertising to invite the public to attend.

After watching today’s parade in downtown Mesa, I’d say those worries were overblown and patriotism is alive and well here. A good crowd filled in both sides of Center Street to clap, cheer and salute as veterans, high school bands and active military rolled by. You can watch a video and a photo slideshow

    (Photo by Le Templar)

A high number of entries made for a long parade, another important sign of support. The only downside was large gaps appeared between groups several times, prompting some people to think the parade was over and wander away. Hopefully, organizers can recruit more volunteers next year to keep the parade closer together and lift up everyone’s interest in watching.

    (Photo by Le Templar)

For more scenes from the parade, you can watch a Tribune video and a photo slideshow.

    REP. DAVID LUJAN

Last summer, a small group of Valley journalists and people from other careers met at the Tempe Public Library to discuss possible ways to make government more transparent to the public, with an emphasis on freedom of information and open records law.s The meeting was organized by the 21st Century Right-to-Know Project as part of a national listening tour for the purpose of developing proposed policy changes for the incoming new president (whether it turned out to be John McCain or Barack Obama).

While most of the discussion focused on federal agencies, state Rep. David Lujan, D-Ariz., spoke to the group about how Arizona law works and where potential gaps might be. The back-and-forth led to the point that while Arizona has a robust open records’ law that most lawmakers support, the Legislature always has been exempt from obeying it. Lujan noted the irony that the Legislature expects other government agencies to follow a statute that lawmakers won’t impose on themselves.

Lujan pledged before the group to draft and introduce a bill next year that would generally include the Legislature under the open records statute. Now, I wouldn’t expect such a bill to get anywhere. Individual lawmakers and legislative agencies actually are quite good about releasing records and other data from their offices, if only to avoid the appearance of trying to hide something from the public. But a number of lawmakers I’ve talked to don’t believe the open records law should apply to the Legislature, to protect those rare instances in which they choose not to share anything. They see such a law as intruding on the constitutional authority of individual lawmakers as elected officeholders (even though the same law already applies to county board of supervisors and city councils).

What’s interesting here is House Democrats decided last week to name Lujan as their new leader, replacing Phil Lopes of Tucson. So if Lujan keeps his pledge, he could give more visibility to a bill that requires the Arizona Legislature to release its records, instead of simply trusting lawmakers to do so.

I am surprised I haven’t read more this week about how much Barack Obama owes his victory in the presidential race to Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Sure, Obama has charisma, eloquence and a message of hope on his side. But Dean had the vision of how to manage a national campaign involving thousands of ego-driven politicians and prickly volunteers that prepared much of the ground for Obama to walk.

Many Americans remember the former Vermont governor only for the “Iowa scream” that seemed to single-handedly derail his 2004 bid for president (Not true, but that’s how a lot of people recall it). But in that campaign, Dean pioneered a lot of the Internet fund-raising techniques that Obama mastered this year to break all money records for a presidential election.

After Dean took charge of DNC in February 2005, he made two promises: Democrats would take control of Congress in the 2006 elections and the White House in 2008. He said that would be possible only by challenging Republicans directly in traditionally “red” states on issues such as health care, high-paying jobs and alternative energy. He rebuilt the DNC’s spending machine to direct more resources into every state and to specifically target the “Intermountain West” (from Montana to Nevada) because changing demographics meant new voters would be more likely to support Democrats. 

In 2006, Dean guided the national party to identify six issues of concern to the entire country and did a remarkable job of convincing individual Democrat candidates to use those issues as the themes of their campaigns. Of course, this strategy was the same concept as Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Contract with America that propelled Republicans into control of Congress for 12 years. The only difference was Dean didn’t try to force every Democrat candidate in every race to commit to the national party’s position on all six issues.

And Dean’s version worked just as effectively. While Democratic gains were expected in 2006 given the unpopularity of the Iraq war, few observers took seriously Dean’s goal of regaining both houses of Congress at once.

As of today, everything has worked out pretty much as Dean said it would, much to the chagrin of Republicans. Dean’s loss to John Kerry in the 2004 primaries might have been the best thing to happen for the Democratic Party since Bill Clinton.

REP. KIRK ADAMS SPEAKS WITH STATE CAPITOL REPORTERS THURSDAY AFTER BEING SELECTED BY FELLOW REPUBLICANS TO BE THE NEW HOUSE SPEAKER (Photo by Capitol Media Services).

A fair number of people were unimpressed when I wrote a few weeks ago about Rep. Kirk Adams, R-Mesa, seeking to unseat Rep. Jim Weiers, R-Phoenix, as speaker of the state House of Representatives. Few outsiders I talked to gave Adams any realistic chance of winning the House’s top leadership post, unless Republicans suffered a bloodbath in Tuesday’s election.

Republicans actually did better than expected Tuesday, and they have expanded the number of House seats they control. But Capitol Media Services is reporting that Adams defeated Weiers anyway today in a private meeting of incoming Republican House members.

Among the people who should be thrilled by this news is Gov. Janet Napolitano. She and Weiers have developed a rather intense dislike of one another during her six years in office. Napolitano and her Democratic allies tried both in 2006 and this year to knock Weiers out of the House with candidate challenges in his home district. But they failed.

While Adams isn’t any closer to Napolitano philosophically, he’s more likely to have an on-going working relationship with her — if she doesn’t leave Arizona for Washington, D.C., for a post in Barack Obama’s presidential administration.

Here’s Capitol Media Services’ first report:

House Republicans ousted speaker Jim Weiers on Thursday, choosing a Mesa lawmaker who promised a more effective effort to enact `”good Republican policy.” And that, said Kirk Adams, means adopting Republican budgets — budgets that have less spending and are actually balanced against revenues, “not one that has a $1.2 billion hole in the moment that it’s passed.”
Adams said he believes he — and the other Republicans — have a mandate from voters to pursue those policies by virtue of the fact that it appears that the GOP picked up two seats in the 60-member chamber. That gives them a 35-25 edge over Democrats. The lifelong Arizona resident said he is not planning to exclude the minority Democrats.
“They certainly should have a voice and it should be an open and transparent process,” he said.
“It should be respectful of everybody’s opinion,” Adams continued. “But at the end of the day, when we vote on those
bills or we vote on the budget, we also need to respect the will of the voters.”
And Adams said that shift occurred “in a year, in a country, where it wasn’t a good year for Republicans anywhere else, except perhaps in the Arizona Legislature.”

GOV. JANET NAPOLITANO SPOKE IN JANUARY ON BEHALF OF FELLOW DEMOCRAT BARACK OBAMA, WHO IS NOW PRESIDENT-ELECT (Capitol Media Services file photo).

The countdown clock has begun on how long it takes President-Elect Barack Obama to name Arizona’s own Gov. Janet Napolitano to a Cabinet post. Unlike the presidential race of 2004, Napolitano backed a Democrat relatively early in this year’s primary season and her gamble has paid off. Just about everyone involved in Arizona politics expects Napolitano to be tabbed for a prominent position such as attorney general or homeland security secretary.

My only hestitation is Napolitano didn’t deliver Arizona to Obama either in the primaries or the general election. In fact, Sen. John McCain won his home state by a larger-than-expected margin. So there might be less pressure on Obama to offer Napolitano a critical position in his administration.

On the other hand, given that Arizona’s governor will face a nightmarish budget and a more conservative, Republican-controlled Legislature next year, Napolitano might be happy to accept even an obscure post in Washington, D.C.

During his concession speech tonight, John McCain hinted we might not see him any more on the campaign trail.

“Campaigns are often harder on a candidate’s family than on the candidate,” McCain said. “That has been true in this campaign. All I can offer in compensation is my love and gratitude and the promise of more peaceful years ahead.”

Is this a signal that McCain won’t seek re-election in 2010? If so, expect a wealth of politicians to line up for the rare opportunity of an open Senate seat.

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.”

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.

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.