The first-page photo, the biggest one, of Steve Pierce’s campaign mailer during the primary showed him standing beside a horse. He appeared to be patting the horse as his right hand disappeared behind the animal’s head. Behind him was a white fence. Pierce was smiling broadly and confidently. The mailer had a total of 10 pictures, and three of them showed Pierce either on a horse or beside a horse, and he wore a cowboy hat in almost all of them.
The mailer stated, “Send our rural, conservative values to the Arizona Senate.” The words could have been absent and the campaign material would have reinforced the same message: District 1 is rural Arizona. It’s conservative. It’s cowboy country. And Pierce is all that.
The mailer must have done its part. Pierce, a rancher from Prescott, defeated incumbent Sen. Tom O’Halleran in the Republican primary, and cruised to victory in the general election. Like the late Jake Flake, Pierce will bring a rancher’s eye to the Capitol. He also will be joining a more conservative Senate.
In this interview in Phoenix, conducted in a few weeks after his victory in the primary, Pierce talked about water issues, the challenges of ranching, and dealing with a Democrat governor in times of a budget deficit.
Can you describe the political leanings of District 1?
Conservative Republican. It’s the Republican stronghold in the state in my opinion.
The dynamics of the whole state are changing with people moving in, but it’s still very conservative up there. And one of the main reasons I ran is we were not being represented as the conservatives that we are and how we believe up there.
What do you think ultimately undid Sen. Tom O’Halleran? He has represented the district for so long.
Like I said, it is a conservative district. He voted for the governor’s budget and supported raising taxes, and he did that just once too often. People were tired of him coming down here and voting the way the governor wanted the vote. He supported her budget the last time, and that was the last straw, I think, for a lot of people.
I was at that debate that you had in Las Fuentes. You went hard after O’Halleran on the budget in that debate.
I thought it was nice. (Laughs).
It was on the issue, but you did go after him. There is a recurrent theme: Al Melvin went after Hershberger on the budget.
Same thing.
Both incumbents went down to defeat in the primary. What wiggle room does that give you once a budget is presented to you next year?
I think there is a lot of wiggle room. I don’t know the numbers. But I know where to go find the numbers and the people to ask the questions to.
The wiggle room is probably that we have cut taxes a number of times, but guess what, we never cut spending.
What would you cut? Who knows what should be cut? But there is a way to go back three or four years to the budgets that we’ve had and just use a budget like that. You know, it’s the same income. You could do something like that.
I don’t know what the answers are. But people who have been down there (at the Capitol) are the people who I would have to go talk to and visit with. But I think there is wiggle room. The governor has increased the budget 12 percent a year in the six years she has been here. Revenues were going up 7 percent. So, you knew there was a train wreck out there and now we are in that train wreck. Well, somebody sometimes has got to go back and say, same as my business or your business or Capitol Times business, if you don’t have money to pay the bills, you cut back.
I raised the question because I’m looking at the people who would be joining the Senate next year. We have Russell Pearce, Sylvia Allen, Al Melvin, yourself. You would be joining a caucus that is already leaning conservative. You have Ron Gould, Pamela Gorman, Linda Gray, Chuck Gray — people who are very conservative. I’m looking at a very conservative Senate next year. Other people are saying it as well. Pearce and Allen have already voted against the budget. I presume you wouldn’t have voted for that budget.
The current budget? No, I wouldn’t have voted for it.
But you do have to negotiate with a governor. You do have to produce a budget.
Or she will have to negotiate with me. (Smiles).
That’s one way of putting it. How do you intend to go about finding a compromise or (coming to) an agreement of some sort?
You know, if the complexion of the Senate changes and becomes more conservative. I’d say the voters have spoken. I wouldn’t say it’s a mandate. But the voters have spoken.
They didn’t like the way things were going and they want change and you’d have to point that out to the governor that, you know, she is going to be a lame-duck governor and she can be obnoxious, probably, but I think there is negotiating there. We can all be civil.
You know, it’s pretty simple that if there is no money to spend, you don’t spend it.
Beside the budget, what do you think are the other big issues facing the state?
They are all growth issues. In my district, it’s water and it’s growth issues. One point earlier in the year, it was illegal immigration. But I think the economy right now and the budget have everybody sitting on their hands wondering what to do next. They are scared to death.
Sen. Tom O’Halleran is known as someone who has worked on water for a long time. One of the ideas that he had this year but didn’t pass was to have some sort of a regional cooperation, regional plan for water. Where do you stand on that?S
We need to solve the problems at home. We don’t need the governor or the state coming in with another level of bureaucracy.
There are problems up there that we need to deal with. And water is critical for the state and we all need to be agreeable to work on it, but I don’t think we need a layer of government on there to say here’s what you are going to do.
Our drainage in the Prescott area is different than Pinal County and different than Phoenix. So, Prescott, in that area, our water consumption is about 160 gallons per day per capita. You come down here (Phoenix) and it’s 250 gallons a day. And you get out to Paradise Valley and where there is a lot of golf courses, pools, it goes up to over 700 gallons.
So why would we have to be held to the same rigid regulations up there as they aren’t applying them down here?
I think it was last year that the Legislature passed the 100-year water adequacy bill. In order to build a subdivision, you have to have an assured water supply for 100 years (if approved on a county level). I’m not sure if that’s already in place in your district.
No. It was passed and then the board of supervisors has to agree to it unanimously. We only have three, and they couldn’t do that.
So we don’t have it up there, and I don’t think we ever will. We won’t, at least with the current board of supervisors.
Would you like to see that rule cover the entire Yavapai County?
No. You’re messing with people’s private-property rights by saying your land, without water, is not worth what it is with water.
We’ve got some water issues. We’ve got these wells that are domestic wells. But there has got to be a resolution that is easy and simple that everybody can agree
to.
But we don’t need one part of our society driving the whole thing that we are running out of water and the sky is falling and we’ve got to do this now. You’re only getting one side of the story when that happens.
At this point, is there particular legislation you already have in mind that you plan to introduce next year?
No. My goal is to cut the legislation, cut the time that they’re down there.
You would have a kindred spirit in Ron Gould. He says if we could cut the number of bills by half, that’d be good for the state.
Or cut the years that the Legislature meets.
Cut the years? What do you mean by that?
Oh, you don’t want to go there.
Come on.
Texas only meets every other year. They get by fine.
They say Arizona is a growing state. The problems that it’s facing are changing…
So is Texas. You know if there is a problem, you go in and meet. But you don’t need to have everybody hanging around. Just think of the money you could save doing that.
But you only meet six months of the year, or supposedly six months of the year.
Then cut that. Maybe they ought to meet 90 days, period, and get it done.
That’s interesting.
That’d hurt you, though, wouldn’t it? Then you’d have to drive out and go to Prescott more often. (Laughs).
Ultimately, what you have in mind is a smaller government.
That’s right. I think we can do better with smaller.
I believe liberals believe that if you spend more money and make the government grow, it is going to ultimately make the economy better, and it has never worked.
Here’s the problem though. The governor is there all year round. When she is there, she doing her executive orders, but you will only be meeting 90 days a year so you couldn’t react as much.
But what’s the total state budget?
$9.9 billion.
No — that’s what the Legislature does. It’s $27 or $29 billion, and guess who does most of it? It’s all up to the governor. And she won’t let anybody else to look at that, and it’s the same with every governor that comes (along), Republican or Democrat. So, the Legislature only deals with a small part of it.
Let us take Ken Bennett’s example. What did he use? Tissue boxes and he had these piles. And here’s education. I can’t remember all the different categories he had. But he says, now, this is what the Legislature has control over, and there is this huge area. And this is what the governor has control over.
His (Bennett’s) suggestion is well, you know, if you had that big budget, all that money, and you were a billion dollars short, it’d be simple to spread it out and say, you know, we can get through this. We can do this, and this and this. The way it is, that part that she spends is gone and all the shortfall has to be put on ($9.9) billion, and it’s hard to do that without really cutting back and scrambling and making everybody work.
Let’s talk about the ranching industry. Can you tell me the troubles facing the industry in the state?
The cattle industry? Growth, private property rights. Well, you know, 13 percent of Arizona is deeded land. And the rest is federal, Indian reservation, national parks, military preserve, etc.
The deeded land, there are so many people moving here it is putting the value of the land up so high that it doesn’t make sense to raise cattle on it.
(Then there’s) lots of environmental issues. Environmentalists don’t like ranchers out on public lands. They say they don’t like the cow manure out there. There is an endangered species. The cows are hurting the habitat and all of that. They proved none of that is true.
Cattle are not worth very much right now. They are as high as they have ever been, but you still can’t pay the bills… Everything is just more expensive. Irrigation is more expensive. Electricity is more expensive. But the cattle there, they are relatively about where they have been for the last eight years.
The late Sen. Jake Flake was known for bringing a ranching perspective into the Legislature. What does a rancher bring to the Legislature?
Probably some common sense, because they have to do a lot of things out in the land. They know what the land is.
You know, a big thing that Jake brought… Years ago there was a flavor in Arizona. If you go to Texas, you know you are in Texas because there is an attitude of all the Texans. Arizona used to be… The few that people lived here, there was an attitude that this is Arizona and this is how we do it.
You know, there’s cows up there and there’s horses and oranges and copper. Today, there have been so many people that moved in here that that flavor of Arizona has been diluted. And it is not that it’s bad, but it’s everybody has a different idea of what they think needs to be done. I think it used to be that the state would work toward goals.
For example, they wanted the Central Arizona Project. They worked on that for 15 years before they got it and everybody worked on it, and you just don’t see that anymore… I think that’s what Jake brought down here and hopefully I can.
I am native. I was born and raised here. I think the natives who are around Arizona — I’m not saying (a bad thing) about people that have come in. It’s not derogatory. But I think the natives have a different view of what Arizona is and should be and where we have been.