Arizona Capitol Reports Staff//September 1, 2006//[read_meter]
Arizona Capitol Reports Staff//September 1, 2006//[read_meter]
Chris DeRose
There is immense frustration among voters, and Chris DeRose says it’s because the career politicians running things at the Legislature aren’t meeting the needs of Arizonans.
“I’m a business professional, not a professional politician,” he said. “I think it’s time for new leadership in Arizona.”
Boasting that he is the hardest working candidate in the Republican primary, Mr. DeRose says he has visited more than 13,000 homes in the district. Although he was initially apprehensive at how voters would receive him — at 26 years old, he is the youngest in the race — but he hasn’t received the skepticism he expected, especially among senior citizens, who have turned out to be the most receptive.
“They are the happiest people to see that this generation is willing to get involved,” he said.
Mr. DeRose, a Realtor and small business owner, says he is running because he has the same frustration as voters: things are happening, but the government is failing to respond. At the top of the list is illegal immigration, something he says crosses demographic lines and is an issue for all voters.
“It’s a frustration, because what [voters] perceive is finger-pointing [at the Legislature],” he said. “People are tired of it and want results.”
The first step is securing the border by using radar systems, then increasing the manpower of patrols and building fencing where needed. After that, he says the state needs to concentrate on prosecuting the human smugglers who still make it across the border.
The immigration problem is the lynchpin in solving other problems in the state — especially crime.
“Immigration is like a new gateway issue — it’s the issue that affects all the others,” he said. “If you live in Arizona, you have a better chance of being a victim of violent crime or property crime…than anywhere else in the United States.”
Voters, Mr. DeRose says, are also concerned about the state of public education. He says the best ways to make schools better are to increase teacher salaries and make sure the funding provided to schools gets to the classroom, where it belongs.
Mr. DeRose has received endorsements from several organizations, but he doesn’t put much stock in them and says he didn’t go out of his way to get them. He says the public sees endorsements as business-as-usual.
“I didn’t want to play the endorsement game,” he said. “I think people are sick of getting the same old mailers with the same old professional politicians endorsing the same old professional politicians.”
He is endorsed by Arizona Right to Life, the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Arizona Correctional Peace Officers Association.
Dale Despain
Of the four candidates vying for the two nominations in the Republican primary, Dale Despain is easily the most moderate, a political outlook he thinks will help him at the polls.
“You have to look at all sides, you have to talk to people,” he said. “That’s the way you get things done.”
He’s also teaming up with incumbent Rep. Laura Knaperek, a veteran lawmaker who encouraged him to run for the House.
A now-retired educator in the Tempe Elementary School District, Mr. Despain began his 35-year career as a teacher and ended it as a district administrator, spending the bulk of his professional life as a principal. During that time, he also served on various commissions and did community work for both the local chamber of commerce and his church. That history of service, he says, is what’s drawing him to run for the Legislature.
“I’m just idealistic enough to think that we need people down there to make sure our community runs well,” he said.
His main goal will be to represent public education in the House.
“I think the body doesn’t fully understand education,” he says. “For some reason, it’s just been slighted.”
If he does nothing else, Mr. Despain says he wants other lawmakers “to recognize that education is a complex issue — there are no simple answers.” Among his suggestions to improve education are increasing teacher pay, setting clear goals for teachers and students alike and decreasing class sizes.
Though he has a long background in public education, Mr. Despain says he is supportive of school choice legislation — though he admits he didn’t always feel that way.
“Having been [in education] before there was school choice, when it first came out, I said, ‘That’s not going to work.’ I have changed my mind,” he said. “Public schools have gotten better. I’m now an advocate for school choice.”
Mr. Despain says voters are very frustrated about illegal immigration and he believes the state needs to take the lead on securing the border since the federal government has not. He does not support a border-long fence, but says barriers are effective in high-traffic areas, especially when combined with electronic monitoring.
However, when it comes to illegal immigrants already in Arizona, Mr. Despain diverges from many of his Republican peers.
“I think the people that are here are being mistreated,” he says. “The economy needs them, so we need to figure out a way to get them to be guest workers.”
Though he spent his time on the job in the K-12 education arena, Mr. Despain says ASU needs more attention from the Legislature.
“We need to recognize that money spent on that is an investment, not an expense,” he said.
Mr. Despain has been endorsed by the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Central Arizona Homebuilders Association.
Dan Gransinger
The most important issue to voters is the reason Dan Gransinger, a pharmacist, is running for the House of Representatives. It’s also the reason he thinks he will win, as he considers himself the strongest candidate in the field when it comes to illegal immigration.
“I’m just tired of the out-of-control, open southern border we have…and I don’t feel a lot of our state representatives are doing anything about it,” he says.
The key to putting the brakes on illegal immigration, he says, is increasing the number of people patrolling the border, sanctioning businesses that hire illegal immigrants and building a fence along the border. Those things will “help get rid of that magnet that draws them here.”
The public, Mr. Gransinger says, is frustrated with inaction at the state and federal government levels — and especially with Governor Napolitno, who he says has vetoed a number of “good bills.”
Voters are also frustrated with rising property tax payments, he says, which stem from recent rapid increases in the value of real estate in Arizona. Homeowners should be held relatively harmless if the value of their property rapidly increases, he says.
“I would like to see caps put in there — say at around 4 percent — so you won’t have the rate go up dramatically,” he said.
The state also needs to do something to curb one of the nation’s worst high school dropout rates, Mr. Gransinger said. Increasing the number of students who have access to private school vouchers is the best way to combat that, he says, because such programs are “proved to decrease dropout rates and increase test scores.” He would like to begin with low-income students or those in failing schools and, if all goes well, expand the program to include all Arizona students.
“Those are the students that are most affected by [vouchers],” he said.
Recent large tuition hikes at ASU, the nation’s largest university, are not acceptable, Mr. Gransinger says, because the state is constitutionally required to keep the cost of higher education “as close to free as possible.” The problem, as he sees it, is that the Legislature keeps reducing the amount of funding for the state universities.
“I really would like to see that stop,” he said. “If anything, we should increase [appropriation] rates.”
Mr. Gransinger said he did not actively seek many endorsements so he could remain more independent than his opponents.
“To me, you can’t really represent the people if you’ve been bought and sold before the elections,” he said. “Candidates who have fewer endorsements from special interest groups will do a better job representing the district.”
He is endorsed by Arizona Right to Life and received an A rating from the National Rifle Association.
Laura Knaperek
She’s spent 10 of the last dozen years in the House of Representatives and has seen the state through hard times — like the budget crunch in 2001 and 2002 — but Rep. Knaperek says the stakes have never been higher for Arizona.
“The state of Arizona has more issues on its plate than ever before,” she says, pointing out that transportation, environmental concerns and economic development are major concerns for the future of the state.
But none are more important — to the state or to voters — than illegal immigration, Ms. Knaperek says.
“It’s a non-partisan issue. It goes well beyond the rules of political correctness and it goes beyond political rhetoric,” she said. “Anybody who’s gone into an emergency room in the last two years knows we have a border problem.
“We should all be concerned about it.”
She says immigration is almost always the first thing voters ask her about.
“It’s not about whether they should they be citizens or not,” she says voters tell her, “it’s, how do we protect the border?”
Just as immigration is the clear-cut top issue, Ms. Knaperek says education is easily the second most important issue among voters, who are concerned both with the quality of teachers and the education students receive.
Of special import to District 17 residents, she says, is higher education. Though she is proud of the additional money included for all three state universities in the current budget, Ms. Knaperek says ASU has been left behind in per-pupil funding.
“We’re growing so rapidly that we’re not able to see the per-student funding the other two universities are,” she said.
As the chair of the House Universities, Community Colleges and Technology Committee, one solution that she has been working on is redesigning the funding formula to give the schools a base funding level for all of the enrolled students and tweaking how much money is received per student. The idea, though, still needs to be worked through at the legislative level, Ms. Knaperek said.
“You can’t just do something that’s good for one university and leave the other two behind,” she said.
Because of the split registration in the district, Ms. Knaperek says voters tend to gravitate to the middle for legislative elections, eschewing rhetoric in favor of hard work.
“My district is not liberal, it’s not hard-line conservative — they talk and deal with things [with] a moderate tone,” she says. “They’re looking more at the person than the party, at least at the legislative level.
“If they see you care…I think that’s what makes the difference for people.”
And with a history of service in the Legislature and on the Kyrene Elementary School Board, Ms. Knaperek says voters are aware of her dedication to public service.
Among others, Ms. Knaperek is endorsed by the National Federation for Independent Business, the Professional Fire Fighters of Arizona and Arizona Right to Life.
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