For nearly three decades, Doug Cole has been a lobbyist with HighGround Public Affairs Consultants, having influenced major policy initiatives since the lobbying firm’s inception. These initiatives include the legislative creation of Valleywise Health, a public health care system that evolved from medical practices during Arizona’s territorial days. Having worked for the Arizona House of Representatives, Gov. Fife Symington, Arizona Congressman John Rhodes III and Congressman John McCain, Cole spoke about his career and the impact politicians from the state have had in a recent Q&A interview with the Arizona Capitol Times.

The questions and answers have been edited lightly for style and clarity.

How long have you been with HighGround, and could you tell me how you ended up there?

Since 1998. When I was in my last year at American University, I had the honor of working for Congressman John McCain. When I graduated from American University in 1985, I came back to Arizona and worked briefly for a couple of years for the Central Arizona Project as a legislative public information liaison. Around that time, McCain had announced he was going to run for the Senate in 1986, so I spent a total of eight years working at Capitol Hill. I came back in 1991 to work for Governor Fife Symington. I was the only one in that administration from lights on to lights off. 

What was your favorite role throughout working for all these various government offices?

I always was oriented toward the communication side of the operations, both when I was working for McCain and also for Governor Symington. I continued in that role as an external consultant to Gov. Jan Brewer during her secretary of state runs and also her gubernatorial runs. It was different back in those days. We didn’t have social media. Everything moved a little bit slower and the capital press corps was quite robust. We had a newspaper room down in the state Senate, and we also had a radio and TV room. Email was just coming into wide use in the mid-90s. Everything literally was done by phone and by fax machine.

What do you think a younger version of yourself would have been like had technology been what it’s like today?

When you are working for high-level folks in a political office, I have always learned that it’s all about access. You need to have unfettered access to the person. That usually means spending a lot of time with them. I spent a lot of time with Symington, McCain, Brewer, getting to know how they think, how they feel and being well-versed on a lot of issues. And the principal needs to be comfortable with the person that’s speaking for them. Where communications folks get in trouble is when they answer questions that they don’t really know the answer to. That time in Arizona’s history, which was kind of how the state was founded, we were a smaller state and we always punched way above our weight class in Arizona.

What do you mean by punching above our weight class?

Arizona is such a new state. We’re the last state in the lower 48. For instance, Carl Hayden, the longtime senator, was the longest serving member of the United States Senate until Strom Thurmond. He was the appropriations chair and the Senate president pro tempore. And then we had people like Ernest McFarland, who was the Senate majority leader in the ‘50s. Of course, Barry Goldwater, who many credit as the leader of the conservative movement. That all goes without saying, John McCain. So, in a state the size of Arizona historically, we have punched way above our weight class and that’s how we got things done. That’s why we have all these military bases in Arizona. That’s why we have the Central Arizona Project. Our national parks and national monuments exist because of folks who have taken leadership positions for the state of Arizona. When I was with Governor Symington, we started the charter school movement in the country in the early ‘90s. Arizona was the first state to really do it in a big way. 

Why do you think Arizona has punched above its weight?

We were the last of the lower 48. We came in during a very populist era. We were a mining and agricultural state. Phoenix took off because a bunch of farmers knew they needed a more reliable source of water, and they promised their property to the federal government if they built a dam. That was the Roosevelt Dam that started the Salt River Project. The reason we were one of the last states is because we refused not to have impeachment of the judiciary and Congress kept rejecting our Constitution and our naming act because we wanted to be able to have our citizens impeach our judiciary. Washington didn’t like that. Until the Constitutional Convention changed that and got rid of impeachment, it was only then that President William Howard Taft let us become a state. But then we immediately turned around and amended the Constitution and added it back in. People were moving here and people really wanted to put their imprint on Arizona, so that really built a pipeline and bench of leaders through our state history. 

With the Legislature gearing up for the state budget right now, I want to hear from you about what that process was like for you when you were in the Governor’s Office.

Every administration’s different and so much of the legislative process is based on personalities. Governor Symington ran on right-sizing government and on cutting taxes. Symington came in and said we’re going to engage with the Legislature and we’re going to look at every line item and we’re also going to have a tax cut. He accomplished that. That was done in the 1991 session with a Democratic Senate and a Republican House and we got done on June 22. It was one of the longer sessions, but it was a divided government, just like we’re seeing now. From 1993 through 1996, with a Republican-controlled Legislature, we would get together with the Office of Strategic Planning and Budgeting and the Joint Legislative Budget Committee before the session would start, and we would try to agree to a revenue number. That’s always one of the most difficult things in the budget process, but we would do all this in December and early January. Then, we would agree on the big ongoing expenditures and finally, we’d have to agree on what excess revenues we had, if any. We call that “the box.” We’d also do special sessions for the budget. It’s just easier because it kept it clean and it was fast, and I think that’s how we kept all of those sessions under 100 days.

What advice would you give lawmakers as they consider their budget votes?

As a long, lifetime Republican myself, who worked for only Republican members of Congress and state offices, I understand our party’s traditional philosophies. Do more with less. Tax less. Less regulatory schemes on businesses and folks’ lives, etcetera. Those are important to get through, but I always come back to this. Elections have consequences. Governor Hobbs won the 2022 election. She is the governor, and people voted for her to become the chief executive. She has a huge say in how things go and has a seat at the table and everyone needs to listen to each other and understand that.

She needs to understand that the people of Arizona continue to elect Republicans as the majority party of the Legislature, even when she won. So, all sides need to understand that elections have consequences. They aren’t the first ones to deal with a Republican Legislature and a Democrat governor. The secret sauce is a different recipe for every administration and every makeup of the Legislature. On the July 1st deadline, I’m very confident the July 1st deadline will be met and the majority of the folks involved in the process will be unhappy. But that’s how our system is set up.