Strike Everything

For every Tom Horne, Felecia Rotellini and Jesse Kelly of the election cycle, there’s an Andrew Thomas, David Lujan and Jonathan Paton.

Although the primary winners (Horne, Rotellini and Kelly) move on to face another foe, the losers (Thomas, Lujan and Paton) still have the ability to affect the general election race, depending on how – or even if – they concede.

And there’s definitely a right way and a wrong way to do it.

“If you look at Jonathan Paton, and the way that he behaved when he conceded, it was brilliant,” said Kyler Moyer, a GOP political consultant and owner of Kyle Moyer & Company. “He did it with heartfelt thanks to his supporters, and encouraged all of them to get behind Jesse Kelly.”

Moyer, whose candidates went two-for-two this primary season, said concession speeches need to be sincere to bring the party back together. “We call it ‘coming home,’” he said. “After the primary, Republicans need to come home and support the nominee, whether they like the guy or not.”

This ‘coming home’ has definitely not happened in the primary for Arizona’s 3rd Congressional District, which Moyer said will be a problem for GOP primary winner Ben Quayle.

“Look at the CD3 race. That has not happened and that is going to hurt Quayle considerably. You don’t have Vernon (Parker) saying ‘Hey I’m out, everybody be excited about Ben.’ Same thing with (Jim) Waring and with Paulina Morris,” Moyer said. “It’s just the nature of campaigns. There’s a right way and a wrong way to concede.”

Moyer said he advises any candidates whose campaigns he runs to “concede with honor and integrity and when the time is right.”

Sometimes candidates aren’t sure what constitutes the right time to concede, or they will concede and then un-concede. Ultimately, whether a candidate concedes has no bearing on the actual results.

“It has no practical legal effect from our perspective. If a candidate like David Lujan concedes the race for attorney general, and then we complete the vote count and find that in fact, he had more votes than Felecia Rotellini, guess what, he wins the race, his concession notwithstanding,” said Matt Benson, director of communications for the Secretary of State’s Office.

Concession speeches may hold even more weight in primary elections because the speech tells a candidate’s supporters what to do next.

“When a candidate concedes, although not a legal concession, it is a personal concession,” Moyer said. “They’ve given up the fight. It clears a path for their supporters, who may be hanging on to hope, to move on.”

This year’s primary concession speeches featured a bit of everything.

J.D. Hayworth conceded his race, which was a blowout, to John McCain around 9:30 p.m. on primary night with a speech urging his supporters to “continue the fight for conservative principles,” but he stopped far short of throwing his support behind Arizona’s senior senator.

David Lujan conceded the Democratic primary for attorney general to Felecia Rotellini with a phone call and a pledge of support, as did Jim Ward to David Schweikert in the Republican primary for Arizona’s 5th Congressional District.

In Arizona’s most heated and closely contested primary – the Republican nomination for attorney general – concessions are like an Arizona monsoon. It could look like one is coming all day, but then when the time comes, nothing.

However, it seems Tom Horne and Andrew Thomas, the two seasoned politicians who spent a large part of their campaigns attacking each other in “he’s-worse-than-I-am-mode,” still observe the golden rule of primaries.

Early in the primary evening, Horne was down and said he’d support Thomas. Later in the evening, Thomas was trailing and said he’d support Horne. Thomas’ chief campaign adviser Jason Rose even tweeted that the race was over. But it wasn’t – at least not to Thomas.

As the night wore on and the race stayed close, neither conceded. Then as Wednesday and Thursday and most of Friday passed with Horne holding steady margins of 400 to 1,000 votes, a concession was expected Friday evening, but it never came. Then Monday rolls around, and Horne was told to expect a concession call from Thomas.

It would take another day for Thomas to realize the race was over. His concession today (Aug. 31) and an accompanying endorsement of Horne was clearly an attempt at gracefulness by a politician who exemplifies anything but that.

The tardiness reveals Thomas’ stubbornness, and the endorsement is likely to ring hollow in the ears of anyone who heard Thomas trash-talk Horne on the campaign trail.

But the whole situation is probably most awkward for Thomas, who is now supposedly supporting a candidate whom he had accused of being a con artist and a fraud.

-Josh Coddington

Gov. Jan Brewer, now the GOP’s official nominee for governor, held her double-digit lead over Democrat Terry Goddard in Rasmussen Reports’ first post-primary poll.

Brewer led the Democratic attorney general 57 to 28 in the automated, push-button poll of 500 likely voters, which was conducted on Aug. 25, the day after both candidates won their parties’ nominations. Rasmussen’s polling, which has a 4.5 percent margin of error, has shown Brewer leading by double digits since May. Three percent of respondents said they would vote for a different candidate, and another 3 percent said they were undecided.

Polling from Rasmussen and other groups shows Goddard with a tough road ahead, but spokeswoman Janey Pearl said the numbers haven’t been intimidating or demoralizing to the Democratic candidate. She said she believe the trends will shift back toward Goddard after the Sept. 1 Clean Elections debate between Brewer and Goddard. Goddard is also still urging Brewer to agree to six more proposed debates before the Nov. 2 general election, she said.

“We saw the poll. We know what they say. But we’re confident that once voters see the two candidates side by side, that will change,” Pearl said. “The reality is she’s been in hiding. And it’s been almost two weeks and she hasn’t agreed to the series of debates that Goddard proposed and which Arizonans deserve.”

-Jeremy Duda

If any theme emerged from the Aug. 24 primary, it’s that there wasn’t a single overarching theme.

Instead, there was a little bit of everything.

Some tea party candidates and “outsiders” won, which confirms that the anti-establishment sentiment directed at Washington, D.C. extends to Arizona.

But the sentiment’s reach wasn’t very deep – or it didn’t go deep enough.

Indeed, big names and well-oiled political machineries delivered in several races.

John McCain, the clear establishment candidate, trounced J.D. Hayworth in the Republican primary for the US Senate.

But it was also one of the most expensive U.S. Senate races in the country; McCain spent almost $25 million, according to OpenSecrets.org, which tracks campaign spending.

Ben Quayle’s familiar name and flush war chest proved unbeatable in the 10-way Republican primary in Arizona’s 3rd Congressional District.

Rep. Adam Driggs, aided by about $57,000 in independent spending, defeated Rich Davis as the two vied for their party’s Senate nomination in Legislative District 11.

“All in all, it was a low turn out and I think voters went with who they know,” said political consultant Chad Willems.

But Willems said if you looked closely at the flavor of each race, it appears that the more conservative candidates won, with some exemptions.

Constantin Querard, the conservative Republican consultant, came to a similar conclusion.

“The tea party values had a great night. Candidates who espoused tea party values had a great night,” Querard said.

Outsider Jesse Kelly defeated the better- known Jonathan Paton, a former legislator, in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District.

Republican Congressional primaries other than in CD3 were won by the “most tea party candidate,” Querard said, referring to Kelly in CD8, Paul Gosar in CD1 and David Schweikert in CD5.

At the legislative level, Michelle Ugenti, who ran on a tea party platform, won in Legislative District 8′s House primary.

Sen. Frank Antenori, a very conservative lawmaker from Tucson, also easily trounced former lawmaker Marian McClure. The gap was significant between Sen. Sylvia Allen, who won the primary in Legislative District 5, and Rep. Bill Konopnicki, who is considered the more mainstream of the two.

True, Gov. Jan Brewer is the incumbent and a long-time policymaker, and while tea party folks might not like her sales-tax increase, she made many other decisions that appealed to them, such as standing for state rights and signing SB1070, according to Querard.

The business community, which supported pro-business, more mainstream Republicans, had a “very good” night, too, according to the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

The chamber said initial results showed that about 80 percent of the candidates it backed won, including Corporation Commission candidates Gary Pierce and Brenda Burns.

For the chamber, that race’s results also indicated that the public has drawn a line on the issue of immigration, rejecting wilder ideas.

“You’ll recall that (Barry) Wong floated a proposal in his campaign that utility providers should deny service to illegal immigrants,” said the chamber’s Allison Bell. “Voters clearly want improved border security, but Wong’s defeat hopefully shows that there is a threshold for what’s considered a serious policy idea and what is simply beyond the pale.”

So what can be drawn from these primary results?

Well, you can’t really paint them with a broad brush.

But that’s Arizona. This is, after all, the state that elected a Democrat for governor and a Republican Legislature a few years back. It’s also the red state that initially rejected a more encompassing ban on same-sex marriage before approving a narrower version two years ago.

It looks like you can still draw a better picture by looking at each race, rather than find a common theme to explain the primary results.

Mark your calendar. The fourth annual Leaders of the Year of award ceremony is just around the corner and we hope you’ll join the Arizona Capitol Times to celebrate 17 individuals and organizations for their professional and civic involvement. Aaron Brown, the celebrated news anchor and Walter Cronkite Professor of Journalism at Arizona State University, will be the keynote speaker at this year’s awards ceremony, which will be held at the Wyndham Hotel in Downtown Phoenix on September 28.

See all of the 2010 honorees below.

2010 Honorees

Arts & Humanities
David Ira Goldstein
Arizona Theatre Company

Business
Todd Sanders
Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce

Economic Development
Christine Mackay
City of Chandler

Education
Tim Carter
Yavapai County Education Service Agency

Environment
Cheryl Lombard
The Nature Conservancy

Government
Central Arizona Water Conservation Project Board of Directors

Health Care
Ronald S. Weinstein, M.D.
Arizona Telemedicine Program, University of Arizona

Legislative
Rep. Chad Campbell
House of Representatives

Rep. Russ Jones
House of Representatives

Sen. Frank Antenori
State Senate

Sen. Rebecca Rios
State Senate

Social Services
TERROS Families First Program

Technology
Service Arizona/ServiceArizona.com

Transportation
John S. Halikowski
Arizona Department of Transportation

Unsung Hero (Posthumous)
Dale Shewalter

Volunteerism
Russell Smolden

Lifetime Achievement
Rep. Jack Brown
House of Representatives

For more information click here or call 602-889-7137 or email veronica.mier@azcapitoltimes.com or visit

The state’s 27-member commission that grades judges gave unanimous thumbs up for nearly all 64 of the judges up for retention this year except a few.

The commission split 15-12 on whether Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Bethany Hicks is fit to serve. She hears civil cases.

Five commissioners didn’t think Judge Raymond Lee had the necessary judicial chops and three commissioners didn’t think Judge Benjamin Norris has what it takes. Both work in Maricopa County Superior Court’s Juvenile division.

A smattering of the judges from Maricopa and Pima Counties, the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals got single votes of no confidence.

Judge Gary Donahoe, who was targeted for criminal charges by former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, got a unanimous endorsement from the Commission on Judicial Performance Review.

Thomas filed bribery charges against Donahoe, who had disqualified the County Attorney’s Office from conducting an investigation on a criminal court tower underway in downtown Phoenix.

Donahoe, who oversaw Maricopa County’s criminal courts, was also named in a federal racketeering case.

Both cases were dropped, and recently released grand jury transcripts show the grand jury ended a corruption probe into Donahoe and county leaders.

Arizona has two systems for selecting judges: merit selection for counties with populations greater than 250,000, and popular election for all other counties.

Under merit selection, a selection panel recommends judicial prospects to the governor, who then chooses. The judges then have to go through a retention election every four years.

The Commission on Judicial Performance Review evaluates the judges through surveys of lawyers and litigants and decides whether a judge meets or does not meet judicial standards. The commission’s determination is then published in the Secretary of State’s publicity pamphlet along with the survey findings.

According to the surveys, attorneys didn’t show much regard for Hicks’ legal abilities, integrity or judicial temperament, while her colleagues on the civil bench barely registered dissatisfaction in those categories.

When it came to basic fairness and impartiality, 14 respondents, or 12 percent, said Hicks rated poor or unsatisfactory. Twenty-eight respondents said her legal reasoning ability was either poor or unsatisfactory.

- Gary Grado

If you thought the cantankerousness (yep, that’s really a word) of Arizona’s 3rd Congressional District would end after the 10-way GOP primary race, Jon Hulburd has some news for you.

Hulburd’s campaign blasted a statement into Arizona’s e-mail netherworld that just ripped Quayle to pieces, even referring to Quayle as “Brock Landers.”

“This election is now between Jon Hulburd and Brock Landers. It’s between a young man who fabricated a family, degraded women, and then tried to lie about it, and a small businessman and father of five who has been dedicated to his community. These concerns were raised by Republicans during the primary and at least 77 percent of Republican voters were unhappy with Ben Quayle’s response.”

It appears as though Hulburd isn’t going to play nice. And it almost sounds like his campaign is happy to be facing Quayle in the November general election.

Now we’ll have to see if he can hang, considering he’s facing a significant voter registration advantage and has yet to run the gauntlet of public scrutiny that bruised just about every other candidate in that district.

Hulburd, who gained the Democratic nomination without a primary battle, may be good at offense. But certainly there will come a time when the media and his opponent will test his defensive abilities.

That test might come sooner rather than later, judging the response from Quayle’s campaign a few hours after Hulburd’s blast.

“It’s always great to see desperation set in around your opponent on the first day of the campaign,” said Jay Heiler, Quayle’s new communications director. “Hulburd apparently thinks there’s a crying demand in Washington for another liberal blowhard who talks out of both sides of his mouth and sells out the taxpayers to the special interest tax cartel. But from here in Arizona, it looks like all those positions are taken.”

-Matt Bunk

There were some big surprises last night: Chris Deschene toppled Sam Wercinski on the Democratic side of the secretary of state race; Cloves Campbell Jr. lost his House seat; and David Braswell got whomped by Lori Klein in the Legislative District 6 Senate race.

We all watched in amazement as Jesse Kelly beat Jonathan Paton in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District.

But nothing sent bigger shockwaves across the Valley than Ben Quayle’s win in Arizona’s 3rd Congressional District. It’s impossible to say definitively whether he came from behind in the final week leading up to the primary election or if he was leading all along.

In the weeks leading up to the primary election, the mud started flying amongst the front-running CD3 candidates. Whether that had an effect on the outcome of this race is still a matter of debate.

“I think some of the negative campaigning worked,” Waring said. “Ben (Quayle) took some shots at us – if that made a difference, I’m not sure.”

Waring, who mostly stayed away from attack ads, said he ran a “crisp, positive” campaign. “I had no desire to attack my opponents,” he said.

Many of the campaigns in CD3 had written off Quayle as a third- or fourth-place finisher after Quayle’s campaign sent out a mailer that may have went too far in depicting him as a family man and his highly publicized debacle with the racy website dirtyscottsdale.com (now called thedirty.com).

Vernon Parker was considered viable in the final days leading up to the election – at least according to many political insiders. The Parker campaign did call attention to the disputed mailer, although Parker draws a distinction between mud-slinging and calling attention to facts.

“I really believe voters needed to know what their congressperson would do for them,” Parker said on primary night. “I believe in truthful comparisons. When a campaign puts out something they know is untrue, that’s despicable.”

Waring was considered by many to be a favorite in the race after news outlets reported that rival candidate Steve Moak had used his charity organization to promote products sold by a for-profit company he once owned.

As Moak trailed both Waring and Quayle early on primary night, he said he was happy with how his campaign was conducted. “I think we ran a good campaign. Looking back, I wouldn’t have done anything different,” he said.

None of that matters now though, as Quayle has wrapped up the Republican nomination to take on Democrat Jon Hulburd in the November general election.

It’s a scenario that Democrats were hoping for – figuring, perhaps, that Quayle would be more vulnerable to attacks than many of the other GOP candidates in the district.

But it’s still going to take a lot to drag down Quayle to within striking distance in the Republican-leaning district. And it’s still not clear whether Hulburd has the juice to make it a competitive race.

We’ll soon see if national Democrats think it’s a race worth throwing money at – the word is that they’ve rejected Hulburd’s requests for cash so far. If you see Hulburd’s campaign coffers grow significantly, you can bet that the party thinks Quayle is vulnerable. If not, another Quayle is almost certainly going to wind up in federal office.

-Matt Bunk and Josh Coddington

Blogs are great. Free of traditional journalism neutrality, or at least attempts for neutrality. More room for humor, gripes, knee-jerk reactions, and all the other ingredients that make writing more compelling to read than run-of-the-mill reporting.

A common, and entertaining thread, is the almost-daily discovery of ghosts that stand as proof of reporters’ complete inability to shed their biases – their liberal bias.

Exhibit A is a post this week on Greg Patterson’s Espresso Pundit, which, in all honesty, is king of conservative Capitol blogs.

Patterson grabbed recent voter registration figures that showed a dip in Democrat numbers to rip an Arizona Republic report from two months ago that he claimed stood as proof that the press corps has been begging God to make Republicans pay dearly for passing SB1070.

The article covered Democrats’ claims that SB1070 was driving, and would continue to drive, Latino voters to the Blue camp forever.

The article also included counter-claims by multiple sources, who said this was either premature or it was downright wishful thinking. Somehow, Patterson missed this. And so did the Arizona Republican Party, which issued a press release criticizing the article.

The comparative case study offered in the article was what happened in California after the passing of a sweeping anti-illegal immigration ballot proposition in the 90s. The proposition, as the Republic pointed out, has been credited (yes, this is true) for “solidifying California’s growing Latino population as Democratic and tipping the then-Republican state to a solidly Democratic one.” What shameful bias!

But wait, despite all the marching, candle-lighting, getting fired from Pei Wei, and photos of Adolf Hitler we saw in Arizona, “(SB1070 is) not going to have the same partisan effect,” said University of California-Irvine professor Louis DeSipio, the “expert on Latino politics and voting” quoted by the paper.

And it quoted ASU poly-sci professor, Rodolfo Espino. Judging by his name, he couldn’t possibly predict anything but a Latino mass exodus from the GOP, right? Wrong. Espino cautioned with the obvious: Arizona isn’t California. And we don’t have as many liberals, or labor-union troops corralling Latinos into the Democratic Party. The most definitive prediction Espino could come up with was “it could take years” to see if SB1070 will benefit Democrats.

This is a far cry from the quote overnight-sensation state Democratic Executive Director Luis Heredia gave the Republic. And if that wasn’t enough to impart readers with the feeling that the Democrat claims were questionable, the article also pointed out that ASU polling revealed that many Latinos weren’t exactly enamored with Democrats’ fight against SB1070.

The article even included a Latino Republican who said GOP pro-family, strong national defense and easing-up-on-the-public spending platforms meshed just fine with Latino values. “What doesn’t fit,” he said, “is this right-wing approach to immigration.”

That’s the heaviest statement in the article that could come anywhere close to promoting the notion that SB1070 has caused a permanent Latino-GOP divorce. How this can be construed as blatant media bias, I have no idea.

But, I’ll agree with Patterson on one issue: The article’s headline, “SB 1070 backlash spurs Hispanics to join Democrats,” is atrocious.

And I’ll say I’d like to see an article pursuing the possibility that SB1070 caused the spike in independent voters, or helped the Republicans gain 10,000 while the Democrats dropped by 500.

Still, I wonder if we read the same article.

- Christian Palmer

It turns out the primary is still on Aug. 24 after all.

Just days after declaring that he was cutting his television ad spending in half because he had such an insurmountable lead in the Republican primary for Arizona’s 5th Congressional District, David Schweikert ramped up his advertising with a $14,000 cable television buy for the last week before the primary. The spending boost comes after Schweikert had halved his $12,000-a-week television advertising budget.

Campaign spokesman Oliver Schwab said he stands by his Aug. 13 statement that the former Maricopa County treasurer is so far ahead of rivals Chris Salvino, Susan Bitter Smith and Jim Ward that the primary is essentially over based on internal polling and early ballot returns. But he said the campaign wants to reach out to primary voters who will vote in person on Election Day.

“We made the decision to make sure that we finish strong. There’s every reason in the world to fight until the last moment,” said Schwab, who told the Arizona Capitol Times on Aug. 13 that Schweikert was “so far ahead” that he’d cut his ad buys in half.

But Ward said Schweikert’s about-face was a sign that his position is weaker than he’d let on.

“If he’s so confident, then why is he at the last minute here scrambling and making a TV investment if he wanted to save his money for the general? It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me,” Ward said. “He must be reading the same numbers now that we’re reading, which show him losing all sorts of momentum.”

Ward accused Schweikert of ignoring the majority of primary voters who hadn’t yet cast their ballots and taking their votes for granted when he essentially declared the race over. Ward said his polling has picked up over the past couple weeks, though he wouldn’t say where he stood in his campaign’s internal polls.

“I just think it’s folly and the height of arrogance to declare victory and basically tell people who haven’t voted that you don’t care about their votes. And that’s what David Schweikert did,” Ward said. “As a result he’s going to lose a lot of those votes. And they’re coming our way.”

The new ad buy began on Aug. 16 and is scheduled to run through the 29th. Schwab said Schweikert also increased his radio advertising on KFYI.

According to records from Cox Cable, Schweikert spent an average of $10,000 a week on cable television ads through June and July. Schwab said the campaign cut back on its ad buys in August so it could preserve money for a general election matchup against incumbent Democratic Rep. Harry Mitchell. But the campaign decided to use the money it saved to make a final advertising push to reach out to Electin Day voters.

Schwab said Schweikert isn’t taking anyone’s vote for granted, but still believes Bitter Smith, Salvino and Ward can’t catch up with him.

“Looking at the grassroots momentum behind our campaign, I think the voters are showing in their support for David that they want a true conservative,” he said. “The polls do show that.”

-Jeremy Duda

Terry Goddard has a new campaign headquarters, in a building that has some sentimental connection to the presumptive Democratic nominee for governor. It was the backdrop for his press conference this afternoon, at which he released his plan to turn around the state’s economy and create jobs.

The historic Gold Spot Market building at 3rd Avenue and Roosevelt Street was built in 1925 and was one of the city’s first shopping centers. It took its name, Goddard told reporters today, from Phoenix’s nickname as “The Gold Spot,” which was derived from the region’s sunny weather. Not only was the building one of the Valley’s original shopping centers, but it represented the growth taking place in the city: It was north of Roosevelt, which was on the outskirts of town.

Goddard said he chose the location for his campaign HQ for a couple of reasons. First, it was a building he fought to save from destruction during his tenure as Phoenix mayor. But perhaps more importantly, he said, it was chosen because of what it represents. The former tenants of the suite his campaign now occupies was the architecture firm that led the renovation of the Gold Spot building earlier this decade. Feeling the pains of that recession, Goddard said the firm’s owner laid off all of its employees and now runs the company from her home.

Many businesses in the state have faced similar situations, he said, and the top job of the next governor needs to be reviving the economy and putting those businesses back to work. To do so, he proposed an 11-point plan that he said will revive the economy through incentives to businesses and investments in renewable energy and infrastructure.