Strike Everything

Agree with her on the issues or not, you have to admit that Janet Napolitano possesses an unmatched perspective on some of Arizona’s most urgent challenges. And whether on the subject of immigration enforcement or balancing security with liberty, Napolitano offered her solutions in a confident, almost matter-of-fact manner Thursday night at ASU. In return, the crowd — seemingly all supporters — gave her repeated rounds of standing applause.

This wasn’t Napolitano’s first trip back to Arizona, and it’s clear that she enjoys the homecomings. Her speech and a Q&A session moderated by ASU President Michael Crow mixed serious issues with humor. Crow introduced her the way any proud family member introduces the prodigal son — or in this case daughter — deeming her a gifted leader, courageous intellect and a national asset. Napolitano didn’t spare any compliments for her hosts either.

The Homeland Security secretary and former governor’s speech didn’t contain anything surprising. She outlined the five central missions that DHS is currently pursuing under her guidance, fully parsing each in such a way that she could give an example of why it’s a problem, how they intend to pursue it and what milestones have recently been achieved or will be achieved in that pursuit.

The elephant in the room, though, was immigration. And while the Department of Homeland Security is not even ten years old, Arizonans know it coincides with immigration enforcement. It makes sense that she returned to the topic and that a large portion of the audience responded to any word on the issue.

Napolitano gave unambiguous assurances that immigration reform remains a priority for the current administration.

Her broad descriptions outlined a plan that will include a path to citizenship for many of those already in the U.S. and an overhaul of the immigration system, so legal status can be an attainable goal.

Napolitano pointed out that with the current makeup of Congress, bi-partisanship will simply have to be part of the process. She appeared wholly optimistic, though, because of the serious impact immigration policy has on the country, and because it is so clearly broken.

ASU President Michael Crow moderated the Q&A session after the speech, reading audience submitted questions. Most of them related to immigration, but Crow also snuck in a few questions just to get laughs.

With his signature coy smile, Crow asked whether Napolitano would have a better chance running for the state Senate seat against Hayworth or McCain. After the audience stopped laughing, Napolitano answered only, “next.”

- By Evan Wyloge

Another week, another press release touting poll results that can’t be truly judged by the Fourth Estate because a campaign won’t release any of the data that goes along with the poll other than what they want reported.

The irony of the latest poll is that it was conducted by Moore Information, whose owner, Bob Moore, was one of my sources in an item last week about the information reporters need to be more vigilant in gathering before writing about polls.

Today’s poll was released by Yes on 100, the campaign committee that is stumping for the temporary one-cent sales tax increase lawmakers referred to the ballot for a May 18 special election. The press release said the poll, which was conducted in late February – though the release didn’t note the days, Moore told me it was done Feb. 24 and 25 – shows 59 percent of likely voters support the tax increase.

To its credit, the campaign released the poll question asked of the 506 voters who self-identified as certain or likely to vote in the May election. That poll question is the exact ballot language that voters will see in a couple of months:

A ‘yes’ vote shall have the effect of temporarily increasing the state transaction privilege sales and use tax by one cent per dollar for three years to fund primary and secondary education, health and human services and public safety.

A ‘no’ vote shall have the effect of keeping the state transaction privilege sales and use taxes at their current levels.”

But, as with the polls I examined in last week’s blog post, the campaign refused to provide a copy of the script of the entire survey or cross-tabs. Moore gave me some of the demographic information, including a breakdown of respondents by age and party affiliation, but the data can still be summed up with one word: incomplete.

There were other questions asked to voters, but Yes on 100 spokesman David Leibowitz wouldn’t release them to one of my colleagues who spoke with him today. We don’t know how many questions they asked, what they asked or even why. It’s likely the questions were done to help shape the campaign’s strategy in the coming weeks by testing possible messages, but we don’t know if it was limited to that. We have to take Moore and the campaign at their words when they say none of the other questions asked would have an impact on how the respondents view the ballot measure.

Frankly, that’s not out of the ordinary. Campaigns often do polling to gather data that will be used to guide strategy decisions in the run up to the election. But the information gleaned from those polls, and the results themselves, are used internally and not made public. And that’s well and good.

But by offering a portion of the survey for public consumption, they want the best of both worlds. The campaign expects reporters to take that bit of the poll it wants to tout publicly and cover it, but they refuse to release the complete poll. They can’t have it both ways.

Or maybe they can, if the media is willing to be complicit. Polls are like candy to political junkies, and it’s tough not to report on them. It’s no secret why reporters and those who follow politics gravitate to them.

Already, my Capitol press corps colleague Dennis Welch, of The Arizona Guardian, has written about the poll without questioning the lack of supporting information that should come with a poll. Others haven’t yet written about the poll results, but they may. And it will be a journalistic sin to not call attention to two things in the stories: The campaign paid for the poll, and they refuse to release the data needed to fairly judge the validity of the results.

It’s possible the poll is entirely accurate. Moore has a sterling reputation nationally as a pollster and a poll he did on the sales tax increase last summer showed what I believe were the most unbiased results of any of the polls conducted last year. That poll, which was done in June 2009, showed 64 percent of likely voters supported the sales tax increase for education and public safety.

Why was it the best poll on the subject last year? Because it was an independent poll. There were also polls done by backers and opponents of the tax increase, but both were suspect because of who paid for them. When I asked Moore about the poll last year, he said he did it to try to drum up business in Arizona, a state where he hadn’t worked before. At that time, he readily produced full cross-tabs and information on the poll.

But this is a different situation. This poll is paid for by the campaign and, as such, is their property. Whether Moore wanted to or not, he couldn’t release the data to me or any other reporter, as long as the campaign doesn’t twist the data or publicly mischaracterize what it said.

The campaigns, though, need to be confronted with a skeptical Arizona media that refuses to lap up whatever numbers they put out as poll results if they aren’t willing to give us the information we need to properly evaluate the results. If that happens, Arizona will be all the better for it.

- By Jim Small

Regardless of what you may have read elsewhere, no one has a decisive lead in the GOP primary race to replace Congressman John Shadegg, who is retiring at the end of the year. There have been three “polls” released by candidates in the race so far, and none of them are worth a lick.

Nor are they worth reporting on as news – much less fact – yet there has been a disturbing trend in the Arizona political media to parrot the results of these “polls,” even though nothing about them should pass the smell test.

Take the “poll” results released by Jim Waring Feb. 11 that showed that 50 percent of CD3 voters would choose him, dwarfing his nearest competitor, Pamela Gorman, who pulled in about 27 percent. Local media foolishly pounced on the story and reported the numbers that were in the press release. The Arizona Guardian’s Dennis Welch wrote Waring had “a commanding lead,” James King at the Phoenix New Times unquestioningly wrote he “holds a double-digit lead” over his competition, and Arizona Republic national political reporter Dan Nowicki regurgitated the results that showed Waring has “a big early lead” in the race. Even nationally respected political news outlets like Real Clear Politics helped push the Waring camp’s fairy tale that he was the early favorite.

Only my colleague Luige del Puerto pointed out the truth behind the poll: Its numbers were fantastically incomplete, as nearly three-quarters of the 300 people polled were undecided.

The political media here has continued to irresponsibly report other bogus poll numbers in the race. A Feb. 25 “poll” of 1,000 voters released by Vernon Parker’s campaign showed he trailed Waring by one point, 16 percent to 17 percent, with Ben Quayle close behind at 15 percent. Unlike Waring’s poll, this one noted 41 percent of those surveyed were undecided, though that number is still alarmingly small for a poll conducted six months before a primary election in which none of the candidates are household names.

Once again, local media dutifully helped a candidate by reporting phony numbers. Welch at the Guardian and King at New Times even noted how different the results of the Parker and Waring polls were, yet they didn’t even attempt to explain why. King went so far as to attribute the drop to Quayle entering the race.

Yesterday, Waring’s campaign released another “poll” that should have been ignored. It wasn’t, as Welch once again wrote a dispatch that gave the survey – like the first, conducted by GOP campaign firm Summit Consulting Group – credibility it doesn’t deserve. He noted that the report’s authors acknowledged there were “a high number of undecided” voters, but didn’t seek out those numbers.

I left a message for Summit’s owner, Chad Willems, March 11 to find out those answers, but he didn’t return my call.

Arizona Capitol Times chose to cover none of those “polls,” outside of del Puerto writing about the flaws in the first one. Why? For starters, they wouldn’t release additional information about the polling, like the questions that were asked, demographic breakdowns of those surveyed and cross-tabs. Any valid poll will readily release that information, and an unwillingness to do so should set off warning sirens for journalists.

Those are important things for reporters to look for when evaluating polls, said Tom Jensen, the director of Public Policy Polling. His firm works across the country and considered one of the more reputable pollsters.

“The No. 1 thing reporters should look for is transparency,” Jensen said.

More than anything else, the wording of the questions – all of them asked of respondents, not just the one or two cited in a press release – determines the validity of the polls. Did the poll include pass-throughs, where voters are told bits of information about each candidate to see how those surveyed react? Those are commonplace for internal campaign polls, as they can help shape strategy, but they don’t make for reliable results and should serve as a red flag for reporters.

The questions can also reveal if the poll is, in fact, a push-poll, which isn’t designed to produce valid numbers as much as it is aimed at poisoning the respondents’ views of a candidate by asking leading and unflattering questions about him or her.

Finding out who paid for the poll also is critical, said pollster Bob Moore of Oregon-based Moore Information. If a candidate has paid for it, then the numbers can’t be taken at face value, he said, and reporters should do everything they can to speak to the pollster about the results, not someone working with the campaign.

“The pollster may get some numbers that the campaign doesn’t like, and won’t release,” Moore said.

Unfortunately, it’s likely we will continue to see spurious poll results be reported as the campaign season drags on. Jensen said it is “very frustrating” for reputable pollsters to see obviously disingenuous – if not fraudulent – polls being swallowed hook, line and sinker by reporters who accept the results at face value.

“As long as that happens, people will continue to do it,” he said.

-By Jim Small

Owen ‘Buz’ Mills put his sizeable war chest to work on Monday (March 8), airing the first television ads of the 2010 governor’s race.

Mills, a Paulden business owner and National Rifle Association board member, began airing his 60- and 30-second ads on network and cable television, according to campaign manager Camilla Strongin.

Mills, who is challenging incumbent Gov. Jan Brewer in the Republican primary, touts both conservative credentials and his outsider status, both of which appear to figure heavily into his campaign. The commercial describes Mills as a Marine who wants to protect the border, a businessman who knows how to bring jobs to Arizona and a “true conservative” who will make tough but necessary decisions about the budget.

“The truth – you’re not going to hear much of it from the politicians, but you’re sure going to hear it from me,” Mills said in the ad.

Strongin wouldn’t say how long the ads will air, but indicated that Mills will be a regular fixture on Arizonans’ televisions for a while.

“They’re going to run for a while,” Strongin said. “Our intention is to stay on the air throughout the primary and have a dialogue with the voters on some pretty important issues, and this is the beginning of that dialogue.”

Mills’ initial campaign finance report from early January showed that he put $2 million of his own money into his campaign, a number that impressed many but led some to wonder if was actually willing to spend it all. Republican political consultant Constantin Querard said the ads put those questions to rest.

“It’s kind of nice to see because he dropped a big check and then he left the state for a month to do business stuff and you didn’t see him,” Querard said. “I guess it’s clear now that he does intend on spending it. Now we’ll see how well he does. They were good ads though. I like them.”

Democrat consultant Barry Dill, of the firm FirstStrategic, estimated that Mills is spending as much as a quarter million dollars per week on the TV spots.

“It ought to make everyone believe that the guy’s serious about running for office,” Dill said. “If it’s a serious buy he’s probably spending between two and two hundred fifty thousand dollars a week.”

Being the first gubernatorial candidate to hit the airwaves may be a necessity for Mills, who was almost completely unknown, even within Arizona’s political establishment, when he filed to run for governor in December. Querard said Mills’ name identification among voters is virtually zero, making this a good time for Mills to start airing ads, especially since Brewer, state Treasurer Dean Martin and former Arizona GOP Chairman John Munger can’t afford to do the same.

- By Jeremy Duda

State Treasurer Dean Martin’s two most prominent attributes are coming under fire from Gov. Jan Brewer’s campaign, which mocked his persona as Janet Napolitano’s nemesis while poking fun at the slogan that touts him as a “familiar name.”

The Brewer campaign on March 1 unveiled an online video attacking Martin for his votes on Napolitano’s budgets. The video criticized Martin for voting for three of four Napolitano budgets as a state senator, and even sponsoring 15 budget bills for the departed governor in one year. Those votes helped Napolitano increase state spending by $3.7 billion.

The original Dean Martin (the one who sings) provided the soundtrack to the video, which featured the crooner’s classic song, “That’s Amore.”

Martin has long boasted of his battles with Napolitano, which culminated with a televised spat during her last week as governor in January 2009. The treasurer is fond of pointing out that he was among the first state officers to predict the looming fiscal crisis Arizona faced, a dire warning that led Napolitano to dub him “Chicken Little.”

The online video mocks Martin’s oft-spoken line that Arizona would have been much better off if Napolitano and others had listened to his warnings.

“Dean Martin claims that he saw this financial trouble coming,” the video says. “He should have. His big spending created the problem.”

But Brewer campaign aide Doug Cole said Martin’s portrayal of himself is misleading. Martin may have had a couple of showdowns with Napolitano as treasurer, but his days in the Senate are where his record made a difference, Cole said.

“Treasurer is basically an administrative job,” Cole said. “You don’t set policy, and you don’t make laws. But when was head of the Finance Committee for years in the Senate, three out of four budgets he voted for. So that’s his record.”

Martin’s campaign and Treasurer’s Office staff said he was out sick on March 1, and he did not return messages left with his campaign.

- By Jeremy Duda

Sure, Congress historically swings away from a first-term president’s party during the off-year election. But former U.S. House Member J.D. Hayworth is betting on such a dramatic swing of the pendulum that he will be able to topple fellow Republican Sen. John McCain.

Though McCain’s campaign funds dwarf any Republican rival, Hayworth thinks his conservative message will deliver.

The Arizona Capitol Times will sit down with Hayworth later this week to get his perspective on running against one of the most well-known Republicans in the U.S. But we’re also going to have him answer your questions.

Send an e-mail to evan.wyloge@azcapitoltimes.com, comment below or tweet us with your questions for J.D. Haworth. We’ll select some of them for our interview.

Keep an ear perked. We’ll have more information later this week.

-By Evan Wyloge