A Case Study in the Polarized Mid-term Politics of Recession

Moderator Len Downie, formerly the Pulitzer Prize winning editor of the Washington Post and current professor at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, and Lattie Coor, former president of ASU and current CEO of The Center for the Future of Arizona, laid the foundation for the day’s discussion, and provided ample context for the teleconference portion of the event with Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Pima County Supervisor Ramòn Valadez, a Democrat.  Dr. Coor used poll results generated by his organization, in partnership with Gallup, to establish a baseline for Arizona citizens.  The data indicates that they have a high level of attachment to their state, a paradoxically low level of engagement with the political process, are poorly informed about current events, highly diverse, low levels of ethnic conflict, high degree of convergence of opinion across issues despite its diversity, a very large number of Latino’s, and very low regard for elected officials.   A number of conflicting positions are presented in the poll results, and Dr. Coor pointed to five characteristics of the state to explain them.  First, it is still a highly transient society, with mostly new residents at any given time.  Second, it has never really had to work for its prosperity because of high levels of in migration.  Fourth, the factors above, some of the other poll characteristics, and the existence of a public initiative process, explain why Arizona citizens are fairly easy prey for outside political influences (a situation not unlike California several decades ago).  Third, there is no dominant political culture in Arizona to unify the populace.  It is a moderate, center-right, and occasionally libertarian state, but not solidified under a coherent political message.  Finally, he reiterated the earlier point that is citizens are oddly detached from the political process, given their high levels of emotional attachment to the state.

In the second segment of the program, Downie interviewed Jeff Flake and Ramòn Valadez by phone.  The conversation was, in many ways, an attempt to see if two political operators, on the ground in Arizona, could validate the poll results laid out by Dr. Coor.  In large part, they did so.  Rep. Flake differed modestly on some points, he comes from a highly engaged district, but he did not disagree with the characterization of Supervisor Valadez that the existence of highly “safe” voting districts meant that most elections were decided in the primary, by an extraordinarily small percentage of the population.  Both Flake and Valadez acknowledged that Arizona’s recent, controversial immigration law, SB 1070, had sucked much of the oxygen out of the local races in the primary, particularly the gubernatorial race, but that the national races were less affected by it.  Rep. Flake wishes comprehensive reform was likely in the next congress, but doubts it, because of how politically complicated the issue is.  Supervisor Valadez concurred, and added that, as in most things, much of the financial burden of laws like SB 1070 would fall on the counties, as unfunded mandates to enforce the law.  Both participants agreed on several things, that lower taxes were good for the overall health of the state and county governments, citizens need to be convinced to lower their expectations of what services government can and will provide, and that there has been some increase in political engagement as a result of economic anxiety, but mostly among republicans.

The first panel of the event was composed of Gregory Rodriguez of the LA Times, Rudolfo Espino of Arizona State University, and Dr. Coor, Len Downie continued as moderator.  The second panel included Dr. Dennis Hoffman of ASU, Peter Beinart of NAF, and Mary Jo Pitzl of the Arizona Republic, and was moderated by Matt Bai of the New York Times.  Panel one delved deeper into the controversy around SB 1070, which required local law enforcement agencies to take up Federal immigration duties, and made ethnicity a reasonable probable cause for an immigration stop.  The panel agreed that there was considerable concern in Arizona about its image being tarnished, which had hurt the state repeatedly in the eighties and nineties.  Further, the panel agreed that SB 1070 was likely to further mobilize Latino voters, and drive them away from the Republican Party.  However, they also agreed that this effect would take some time to manifest, just as it did in California with Prop. 187.  It was also generally agreed that none of the problems related to SB 1070 or Arizona’s economic woes could be solved without solving the problem of gerrymandering in the state.  The second panel focused on the economic crisis in Arizona, which, as Dr. Hoffman demonstrated, was the most severe the state had ever experience, and the only one that was matching the national rate in terms of regaining jobs.  Further, Mrs. Pitzl pointed out that many of the problems with political extremism in the state had actually been created as an unintended consequence of the Clean Elections Law, which provides public funding to candidates.  The law allowed immoderate candidates to ignore the demands of the middle, and of the business elite, which is not pleased with laws like SB 1070.  The panel agreed that there was some hope to be found in the fact that, when faced with the choice of losing vital services or voting to tax themselves, Arizonans became the first state polity to vote to tax itself in the US.  Generally, both panels agreed that these are extremely difficult political, social, and economic times for Arizona, but that they are neither unusual for the country, nor insoluble.

Participants