Not surprisingly, the House race for the state’s most competitive legislative district is coming down to the wire and the campaigns have focused their energies on pointing out the differences between the Republican and Democrat candidates.
Voters in District 17, which includes south Scottsdale and the bulk of Tempe, will choose two of the four candidates — Democrats Ed Ableser and David Schapira, and Republicans Dale Despain and Laura Knaperek — to represent them at the Capitol for the next two years.
While the primary elections saw the candidates scrambling for votes within their parties, the tenor of the general election has shifted decidedly partisan, with the Democrats teaming up to tell voters their opponents are ineffectual and in the pockets of lobbyists, while the Republicans charge their opponents with being too inexperienced and having a lack of ties to the community.
Ms. Knaperek, the only incumbent in the race, says her Democrat opponents are also much too partisan for a district she terms “moderate.”
“We’ve got some, in my opinion, political hacks running in this district…against two normal, grassroots people,” she said. “They don’t know the details — they only know the rhetoric of the Democratic Party and they use it on every issue.”
But Mr. Ableser, who was appointed to the Senate in March to replace Harry Mitchell, who resigned to run for Congress, says the Republicans are the ones that are all sizzle, but no steak.
“On the surface, there’s a lot of talk,” he said. “When you scratch the surface and look for depth, they have no depth.
“It’s a lot of show and really no payoff.”
Coattails
Though most legislative races aren’t subject to trickle-down voting from the races at the top of the ballot, District 17 is in a unique position to feel the effects of the other campaigns.
One of only a few truly competitive districts, its voter registration numbers are evidence of how tight the race is expected to be: not only do Republicans only outnumber Democrats by less that two percentage points — 36.3 percent to 34.4 percent, or about a 1,300 voter difference — but registered independents make up more than 29 percent of the voters. The result is that voters in the district have tended to cross party lines regularly, voting for the candidate, not the political party.
“We’re not a polarized district that votes based on a ‘D’ or an ‘R’ after a name,” Mr. Schapira said.
Mr. Despain says that means the candidates have to campaign to all of the voters, not just the Republicans or Democrats, like their peers in other districts do.
“We campaign to Republicans, of course, and we campaign to independents and to Democrats, particularly those who care about education,” he said.
With Mr. Mitchell, who represented the district at the Legislature since 1999 and was Tempe’s mayor from 1978 to 1994, running for Congress against Republican incumbent J.D. Hayworth, Ms. Knaperek said there is some concern that voters who support him may then vote for the Democrat House candidates.
“Sometimes it just depends on who’s on the ticket,” she said of the possibility of her opponents riding the coattails of federal candidates.
Throw in a growing unhappiness among some Republicans at the leadership of the party, as evidenced by the reaction among many party faithful at the scandal surrounding former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, and the Democrats are hoping they can ride a wave of anti-Republican sentiment to victory.
“I don’t see too many Democrats this year walking into a polling place and wanting to vote Republican,” Mr. Schapira said. “On the other side, some Republicans are ready to vote Democrat because they’re not happy with Laura Knaperek.”
Knaperek vs. Schapira
Some observers see the race as a one-on-one contest between Ms. Knaperek and Mr. Schapira, with Mr. Ableser’s victory secure. Though just a prediction, Mr. Schapira says he is running his campaign on the assumption it is true.
“This race is between me and Laura Knaperek,” he said.
He is critical of his primary target for what he says is big talk while campaigning, but little in the way of results at the Capitol.
“There is a different Laura Knaperek on the campaign trail than there is in the Legislature,” he said. “What she says on the campaign trail she fails to do at the Legislature.”
But Ms. Knaperek says she’s being unfairly maligned because she has been working for solutions to problems that face the state. The thing her opponents don’t seem to care about, she says, is that doing so takes time.
“I have a record,” she said, playing on the relative inexperience of her opponents. “I have to constantly be correcting the deceit and the misleading statements.
“I am getting blamed on everything.”
She is critical of Mr. Schapira, especially, for having no ties to the district. While Ms. Knaperek has lived in the district for more than two decades and Mr. Despain has lived there for 35 years, she says Mr. Schapira owns property in Phoenix and lives in a long-term executive suite.
“That ought to tell people that he’s in this for the short term and, if he loses, he’ll be out of here,” she said.
Mr. Schapira denies the allegation that his residence is anything but a garden-variety apartment. He says he signed a year-long lease and it’s merely a coincidence that some units in the complex are leased out to clients of Oakwood Worldwide Corporate Apartments.
He also said the property he owns in Phoenix is an investment property he purchased with a friend and it has been for sale since before he decided to run for the House. In actuality, Mr. Schapira says, he has lived in Tempe since 1984.
“If she really thinks she can call me a carpetbagger, I think she is fooling herself if she thinks it will distract voters from the issues,” he said.