Strike Everything

With nearly half the state’s precincts reporting vote totals, Republicans looked poised to sweep Arizona’s statewide offices for the first time since 1994.

By 9:15 p.m., the Republicans’ statewide slate took the stage at the Arizona GOP’s election night party at the downtown Hyatt to rousing cheers. Meanwhile, attorney general hopeful Felecia Rotellini was the only statewide Democratic candidate still walking around at the Democrats’ party at the Wyndham.

The attorney general’s race was the most competitive of the bunch in the early totals, with Republican Tom Horne holding a 5-point lead over Rotellini. Rotellini remained hopeful and said trends were moving in her favor. Horne’s lead, however, hadn’t diminished much since the first results came in from Maricopa County.

A Horne win would dash many Democrats’ best hope for winning statewide office and would give Republicans control of the only statewide office currently held by a Democrat.

That Democrat, Attorney General Terry Goddard was aiming for a promotion to the governor’s office, but trailed 150,000 votes behind incumbent Gov. Jan Brewer.

Shortly before 9 p.m., 12 News called the race for Brewer. Not long after, the Republican Governor’s Association sent out a press release congratulating Brewer on her victory.

“Governor Brewer’s victory sends two important messages,” RGA chairman Haley Barbour said in the press release. “First, it shows that she has done great work focusing on issues important to Arizona like jobs and the economy.  Second, it sends a resounding message to Washington that America wants secure borders and we want them now.”

Further down the ballot, Republican Doug Ducey led Democrat Andrei Cherny by about 130,000 votes in the state treasurer’s race, while Republican John Huppenthal held a similar lead over Democrat Penny Kotterman in the race for superintendent of public instruction.

In the secretary of state’s race, incumbent Ken Bennett appeared to be running away with the race early. The Republican led Democrat Chris Deschene, a first-term legislator, by about 190,000 votes.

–Jeremy Duda

Tonight’s debate between Gov. Jan Brewer and Attorney General Terry Goddard is probably the last time you will see the pair in the same room, much less on the same stage, between now and Election Day. And this one is only happening because both candidates are legally bound to appear because they took public campaign money.

The focus for Goddard will be economic: Arizona’s unemployment sits at 9.6 percent, where it’s been since May, and there are no clear signs of recoveries in either the state’s job market or economy.

Brewer, meanwhile, will do her best to keep voters’ attention on immigration issues. Until she signed SB1070 in April, Brewer was seen by some as an underdog within her own party’s primary, much less against Goddard. But with her popularity still riding high from the public’s approval of the controversial immigration measure, the governor will go back to that well over and over.

There was no clearer example of her campaign’s desire to keep people talking about immigration than yesterday’s PR blitz attack from Brewer and other GOP statewide and Congressional candidates.

In a coordinated move, nearly all of the campaigns issued press releases blasting their Democratic opponents for accepting money and support from the “boycott cartel,” the term they coined for the Service Employees International Union and United Food and Commercial Workers union.

The timing of the attack was carefully chose as well: By raising the issue yesterday, Brewer’s campaign guaranteed coverage in today’s daily papers and made it a near certainty that debate moderator and “Horizon” host Ted Simons asks about it tonight.

At the end of the day, though, the debate may not have much impact on the outcome of the election. As I told Kirk Yuhnke on ABC 15 Daybreak this morning, Brewer has such a substantial lead over Goddard that how either perform may not really matter.

A poll from Rasmussen Reports released on Monday showed Brewer with a commanding 57-38 lead over her challenger, with barely two months before the Nov. 2 election and scarcely a month before early ballots go out.

Goddard has a Herculean task ahead of him if he is to both win the undecided voters and persuade a sizable portion of those supporting Brewer to instead choose him.

- Jim Small

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

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.

Attorney General Terry Goddard said one Clean Elections debate isn’t enough, and challenged Gov. Jan Brewer to meet him face to face six more times during the campaign.

In a letter to Brewer, Goddard, the Democratic nominee for governor, urged the governor to meet him for a series of six debates that would begin immediately after the Aug. 24 primary.

The topics would be balancing Arizona’s budget; public safety; immigration and border security; jobs; education; and tourism, energy, the environment and reviving rural Arizona.

“We are both Clean Elections candidates and are required to participate in at least one debate. In these critical times, we owe the people of Arizona far more than the bare minimum. We have the obligation to let Arizonans hear from us side by side, debating the issues that matter most to our state’s future,” Goddard wrote in his Aug. 17 letter to Brewer.

Goddard asked Brewer to respond by Aug. 27. But he didn’t have to wait that long.

Brewer issued a statement the same day, saying she would consider future debates after the Sept. 1 Clean Elections debate, but did not agree to anything. Instead, Brewer criticized Goddard for what she said was a lack of ideas or plans.

“The voters of Arizona know who Terry Goddard is and his 30-year record of failures: Wrong on Prop. 200, wrong on SB1070, wrong on Obamacare, wrong on English Language Learners, just to name a few,” Brewer said in a press statement. “Now Mr. Goddard wants to weigh in on the issues. Where has he been? For over a year, the governor has challenged Goddard to provide a definitive plan to help resolve Arizona’s fiscal crisis. She challenged him to join her in supporting Prop 100. His response? ‘It’s not my job.’”

Goddard isn’t the first Arizona candidate to throw down such a gauntlett this year. J.D. Hayworth challenged U.S. Sen. John McCain to a whopping 15 debates, though he only got two.

Janey Pearl, a spokeswoman for Goddard’s campaign, acknowledged that six debates is a lot, but with less than three months to go before the general election, she said it’s important to give voters as much information as possible about where the candidates stand on the issues.

“It’s easy to get on TV when you’re the only one talking,” Pearl said of Brewer, who has been a frequent guest on FOX News. “It would be one debate every 11 days. I think that’s reasonable.”

Goddard is unopposed in the Aug. 24 primary election, while Brewer faces Matthew Jette, an Apache Junction resident for the Republican nomination. Her toughest challengers, State Treasurer Dean Martin and northern Arizona businessman Buz Mills, recently dropped out of the gubernatorial race after Brewer’s poll numbers placed her well ahead of any challengers.

-Jeremy Duda

Terry Goddard’s gubernatorial campaign brought on a second high-profile member of the Napolitano administration with the addition of Jeanine L’Ecuyer as deputy campaign manager.

L’Ecuyer served as former Gov. Janet Napolitano’s deputy chief of staff for communications. Prior to joining the Goddard campaign, L’Ecuyer served as vice president of communications for ECOtality, a clean energy technology company.

L’Ecuyer’s addition to the campaign comes as Goddard strives to overcome dramatic increases in incumbent Gov. Jan Brewer’s popularity and approval ratings. Brewer, whose ability to win the GOP primary was in serious doubt six months ago, got a major political boost by signing S1070, the state’s landmark illegal immigration bill.

That boost pushed Brewer’s Republican primary challengers out of the race, and recent polls give her a sizeable lead over Goddard, who is running unopposed for the Democratic nomination. A July 16 Rocky Mountain Poll showed Brewer with a 20-point lead over Goddard.

L’Ecuyer said it’s too early to put much stock into such polls. She said she believes voters will be impressed by Goddard’s resume as attorney general, and said there is plenty of time left in the campaign season to get his message out.

“He’s the one who’s really done a lot of the heavy lifting on a lot of issues here in Arizona,” L’Ecuyer said.

One of those issues, L’Ecuyer said, is immigration. She cited Goddard’s record of cracking down on money laundering and wire transfers by Mexican drug cartels as a top accomplishment of his eight years as Arizona’s top prosecutor.

“He’s the guy who figured out how to cut the cash to cartels, and the system that he’s put in place has been tremendously effective. As a matter of fact, it has been cited as a model for other states to use,” she said.

L’Ecuyer served as director of communications for Napolitano’s 2006 reelection. The only other campaign job she’s ever had, she said, was stuffing envelopes for former Gov. Sam Goddard, Terry Goddard’s father.

In June, Goddard brought on former Napolitano chief of staff Jan Lesher as campaign manager. Lesher replaced Rodd McLeod, who subsequently joined U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ reelection campaign.

-Jeremy Duda

Attorney General Terry Goddard has had quite the roller coaster ride while staking out his positions on S1070. He opposed the law and wishes Gov. Jan Brewer had vetoed it, but also opposed the lawsuit against it. He vowed to defend the state in court, but blasted Brewer for her failure to do so.

Along with accusations that Brewer is playing politics with illegal immigration and failed to do anything about border security, Goddard slammed his campaign rival for signing “a bill she could not defend in court.” The statement came shortly after U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton blocked key provisions of the law from going into effect on July 28.

It was a curious comment from an attorney general who denounced the U.S. Department of Justice’s lawsuit over S1070, vowed to vigorously defend the state in court, and said a strong argument could be made that the landmark illegal immigration law is perfectly constitutional.

Goddard, however, said there was nothing inconsistent about the slap at Brewer.

“I said she couldn’t defend it in court. I didn’t say it couldn’t be defended in court,” Goddard told the Arizona Capitol Times shortly after the injunction was handed down.

Goddard said things might have gone differently if Brewer hadn’t exiled him from the state’s S1070 defense team, which he acknowledged is still a “sore point” for him. Brewer not only refused his offer to defend the state in the federal government’s lawsuit, but pledged legal action to remove him from the case if he fought her on the issue, saying his opposition to the law made him an unreliable defense attorney in the suit.

He noted that on his watch, the Attorney General’s Office successfully defended the state in illegal immigration-related lawsuits, such as the suit against the Legal Arizona Workers Act, which his office will defend before the U.S. Supreme Court later this year. Bolton’s injunction may have come with or without Goddard’s help, he said, but the state could have benefitted from his office’s expertise.

“She wanted to shoot all the baskets and grab all the glory and basically refused to have a joint defense,” he said. “Our lawyers are, I believe, the best in the country in issues like this. We’ve successfully defended two Arizona immigration statutes. I’ve never lost a motion. That’s a pretty good record.”

Brewer’s campaign said Goddard was flip-flopping on the issue and made fun of his recent comment in the New York Times that, “I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t” when it comes to S1070.

“Attorney General Terry Goddard hailed the judge’s ruling today a little over a month after fighting to defend the law and lamenting his position to the East Coast elite at New York City’s Harvard Club. That was, of course, following the first time he changed his mind after initially speaking out against it. It’s enough to make your head spin,” Brewer said in a statement released by her campaign.

Goddard said Brewer is the one who’s being disingenuous – she rails against the feds for not securing the border, but hasn’t done anything to improve border security herself, he said. Brewer has said numerous times that S1070 doesn’t do anything about border security, and Goddard said Bolton’s injunction gives the state an opportunity to move past the political rhetoric about S1070 and focus on the more important issue of fighting violent drug cartels and human smugglers – as he has done.

“Perhaps now we in Arizona can focus on effective steps to fight border crime and keep our families safe. Now we can focus on steps, such as the ones I have been taking, to go after border crime and cut off the cash that flows to organized criminal cartels that smuggle thousands into the U.S.,” Goddard said.

As to the constitutionality of S1070, which the Justice Department said usurps federal authority over immigration, Goddard said arguments could be made that it isn’t preempted by federal law and could be implemented in a constitutional way. But Bolton made some pretty persuasive arguments to the contrary, he said.

“I think she made a strong and defensible argument. I don’t think it’s a matter of agreeing or disagreeing. That’s the law,” Goddard said.

-Jeremy Duda

It seemed like a sign of the times that Attorney General Terry Goddard was in Congress to talk about Arizona’s efforts to crack down on money laundering by drug cartels, but the only thing the congressmen wanted to talk about was S1070.

Goddard on July 22 testified at a U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security hearing on how to stop illegal immigration, and Goddard said he was there to discuss the steps the Arizona Attorney General’s Office has taken to stop the flow of money of Mexican cartels and human-smuggling groups. But members of the committee were far more interested in discussing Arizona’s strict new illegal immigration law and sanctuary city policies, and denouncing the U.S. Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Arizona over S1070.

Goddard said he outlined Arizona’s six year-old program, but was surprised that committee members kept straying from the topic. He urged the committee to approve $50 million for anti-money laundering programs to Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas.

“It just went into … sort of unconnected statements about immigration. And the congressmen would come in, get in their seat, make their statement, ask a question and then leave,” Goddard said. “It was fascinating, but I’m not sure how productive.”

One committee member thought every city in Arizona was a so-called sanctuary city, Goddard said, and pondered whether the federal government should prosecute them. Another wondered aloud whether cartel leaders should be deemed enemy combatants, the same status given to many international terrorist leaders. Others simply wanted to make general denunciations of the federal government’s lawsuit against Arizona.

“I would say on both sides that was a bipartisan affliction,” he said.

Goddard said he was more interested in discussing Arizona’s anti-money laundering program and other efforts against drug cartels, and the ways those programs could be applied on a nationwide level. He suggested that greater cooperation on such issues between the four border states and the federal government could be a boon to the fight against violent drug cartels.

If Goddard had trouble diverting people’s attention away from S1070 in Washington, D.C., things don’t look like they’ll get any better once he’s back in Arizona. Goddard, the Democrats’ candidate for governor, has been taking a pounding in the polls since Gov. Jan Brewer signed the popular law.

S1070 has put Goddard in a tough spot. He opposed the law, but said he believes it is constitutional. He also tried to defend Arizona in the Justice Department lawsuit, but was removed from the case by Brewer, whom he will face in the November election.

Goddard’s campaign has focused largely on the economy and jobs, but the furor over S1070 has kept the attention of the public on illegal immigration. As Brewer’s erstwhile challengers for the Republican nomination learned – before they dropped out of the race – illegal immigration is a winner for Brewer, and anyone hoping to hit her on other issues may have a tough road ahead.

-Jeremy Duda

Rasmussen Reports isn’t regarded by most political insiders as the most accurate of firms, but no margin of error is likely to ease the blow its most recent poll delivered to Dean Martin and Buz Mills.

A Rasmussen poll released June 21 shows Gov. Jan Brewer with a whopping 61 percent of the Republican primary vote. Mills, who has spent more than $2.3 million in his pursuit of the Governor’s Office, pulled 16 percent, while Martin trailed at 12 percent. The automated telephone poll surveyed 707 likely primary voters on June 16.

Brewer’s numbers eclipsed the substantial lead she had in Rasmussen’s last poll in May, which showed her with 45 percent compared to Martin and Mills’ 18.

The three candidates were in a dead heat in March, when Rasmussen showed Mills with 21 percent, Brewer with 20 and Martin with 19. But the governor’s fortunes turned that month when the Legislature passed her budget plan and referred Proposition 100 to the ballot, and her approval numbers shot up after signing the strict illegal immigration law S1070.

Two percent of respondents said they would vote for another candidate – the fourth candidate in the race, Matthew Jette, was not included in the poll – and 9 percent said they weren’t sure who they would vote for.

Brewer had the highest favorability ratings of the three candidates, with 86 percent saying they had a very or somewhat favorable opinion of her, compared to 48 for Mills and 43 for Martin. Mills had the highest unfavorable rating at 30 percent, though Martin was close behind with 28 percent, while Brewer had 13 percent.

Much of the poll focused on voter attitudes toward illegal immigration, an issue that has put Brewer at the top of most polls conducted since she signed S1070 on April 23. In the poll, 89 percent of respondents said they supported S1070, with only 8 percent opposing it, and 77 percent said S1070 would be “very important” in determining who they voted for.

-Jeremy Duda

Attorney General Terry Goddard said he will support Proposition 100, ending months of fence-sitting on the temporary sales tax increase.

Goddard, the presumptive Democratic nominee for governor, announced his support in a Mother’s Day email blast to his supporters.

“It’s a day for making sure that kids, all kids, are treated right. In our household, Monica makes it clear that means pushing to pass Prop 100 on May 18,” Goddard wrote in the email, referring to his wife.

In February, Goddard told the ~Arizona Capitol Times~ that he did not know how he would vote on the issue, and the following month he said he could not support Prop 100 without an assurance from Gov. Jan Brewer that she would veto H2250, which included a host of corporate tax cuts that would have started phasing in while the three-year sales tax hike was still on the books.

H2250, referred to by supporters as the “jobs bill,” passed in the House but died in the Senate, where President Bob Burns expressed concerns about passing tax cuts while the state was still experience massive revenue shortfalls. Brewer had also said she did not want the tax cuts to go into effect until the sales tax hike expired, and she released a separate “jobs package” that did not included any tax cuts.

“Since the governor has capitulated to the attorney general’s call that we not tax working families and then shovel that money to corporations, he’s decided to support Prop 100,” said Goddard campaign manager Rodd McLeod. “It’s not the best choice for dealing with Arizona’s deficit, but it’s the only choice we’ve got in the short term.”

Voters will decide on Prop 100 in a May 18 special election. The temporary sales tax increase is expected to raise about $900 million per year, nearly half of which will go to K-12 education.

-Jeremy Duda