Rogue Columnist

Trump and Arizona

Ah, I remember those palmy days when Hillary was going to win Arizona, when Donald Trump's vicious attacks on Mexicans would awaken the sleeping giant of the Hispanic vote. I was skeptical and shamed for that thoughtcrime on Facebook (from which I am taking a holiday).

Reality shows that Trump won 49.5 percent of the vote in Arizona vs. 45.4 percent for Clinton. She won only four counties (Apache, Coconino, Pima, and Santa Cruz). Significantly, Trump carried Maricopa County, the state's most populous and, after its fashion, urbanized. Trump won nearly 6 percent fewer votes here compared with Mitt Romney in 2012, but metro Phoenix was one of very few major metropolitan areas that went plurality red. Most went resoundingly majority blue. The New Confederacy is solidly anchored in Arizona.

Now it's time to pay the piper. Will America merely come to be more like Arizona over the next four, eight, or unlimited number of years? No the consequences will be more serious and disastrous than most can imagine, certainly not those living in Brightsideistan. So, some early looks at Arizona vulnerabilities:

• The Affordable Care Act. Trump and, especially, the Republican Congress have vowed to repeal Obamacare without an immediate replacement. Arizona was one of the few red states to take part. As a result, nearly 180,000 Arizonans were covered by the ACA in 2016. If repeal happens, they will have no health insurance.

• Universities. If Trump carries out his consistent campaign promises to severely curtail immigration and slap big tariffs on Chinese goods, the results could be catastrophic for Arizona universities. Thousands of foreign students could stop coming here, with the loss of tens of millions of dollars in tuition. In addition, austerity from the GOP Congress has been hurting research funding for universities. Only President Obama has kept university R&D money coming. With Republicans completely in control, universities — already starved of state funding — could see a huge loss of money from Washington.

A dozen historic elections

With Donald Trump, the most extreme and unqualified candidate of a major party, in striking distance of winning the presidency, we stand on the edge of the abyss. This election shouldn't be this close. You can use the comments section as an open thread as the next few days unspool. For my contribution, here are a dozen of the most consequential elections, nationally and in Arizona. At the least, they show that elections do indeed matter.

1828: John Quincy Adams vs. Andrew Jackson. Adams, the sitting Whig president, was defeated by war hero Jackson. The Whigs stood for the "American System" of internal improvements (infrastructure), a national bank and limiting the spread of slavery. Jackson was just the opposite. Jackson's victory led to the breaking of solemn treaties with the Five Civilized Tribes and their brutal relocation west (denounced by Adams) to open land for slaveholders, among many other ills.

1844: James K. Polk vs. Henry Clay. The defeat of "Harry of the West" not only doomed the American System but eliminated the last chance that the Civil War might have been postponed or avoided. One reason was the familiar partisan circular firing squad. Clay lost votes in New York and Pennsylvania to the abolitionist Liberty Party. It was the death of the Whigs.

With Polk, the nation again had a Southerner determined to extend slavery, including by prosecuting the highly unpopular Mexican War. At one point, Polk considered demanding all the territory to Tampico, but didn't want so many Mexicans brought into the union (they automatically became U.S. citizens with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the war). On the other hand, in settling the Oregon Country dispute with Great Britain, he would have settled for the Columbia River as the northern border (in other words, Seattle would be in British Columbia). With Polk, the Civil War became inevitable.

Brewer tells the truth

The national progressive echo chamber had quite a fit last week when former Gov. Jan Brewer brushed off the suggestion that Hispanics would cause Hillary Clinton to win Arizona. "Nah," she told the Boston Globe, "They don't get out and vote. They don't vote." The thought police pounced, condemnations flooded Facebook, and a Twitter lynch mob gathered at such a racist statement.

But she told the truth. Rare for her, perhaps unprecedented, but accurate for once.

Hispanics made up 30 percent of the population of Maricopa County in 2014, compared with only 16 percent in 1990. Yet in that critical election, their voter participation rate was in the single digits. And it can't be explained away by saying that low-income people vote less. The low-income Anglos vote religiously and conservatively.

Brewer, an accidental governor when St. Janet read the future and decamped for D.C. and then California, did much to help ensure this. As Secretary of State, charged with overseeing elections, she was also chair of the state Bush re-election committee in 2004. I'm sure polling locations were abundant and well handled in majority Latino precincts. Then, running on her own, she defeated the eminently better-qualified Terry Goddard on the strength of her backing the anti-immigrant SB 1070.

As I have written before, SB 1070 had little to do with illegal immigration and everything to do with ginning up the old Midwestern-immigrant Anglo GOP base and intimidating Mexican-American citizens. And one of the dirty secrets was that not a few older Mexican-Americans, who had seen their neighborhoods, schools, and culture most destabilized by the wave of illegals in the 2000s, quietly supported the bill, too.

But the problem of low Hispanic turnout predates the embarrassing, finger-in-the-face-of-the-president Jan Brewer, a woman who would drive down the class level of the trashiest trailer park.

Flipping Arizona?

The new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll has Hillary Clinton within one point of Donald Trump in Arizona. You read that right. This is in line with a polling average from Real Clear Politics, which even had Clinton slightly ahead during and after both parties' conventions. 

Is it possible that Hillary could flip Arizona to the Democrats? After all, her husband won the state in 1996. I am skeptical.

Bill Clinton won in a very different Arizona. The state was still competitive for Democrats and "experts" predicted that continued population growth would favor the party. Arizona's population expanded by 40 percent in that decade, but it was the "big sort," where people came seeking ideological co-religionists. It was almost entirely on the right. With the exception of the surprise election of St. Janet in 2002 and hopes for her "sensible center," Arizona politics trended ever more rightward. Today not a single statewide office is held by a Democrat.

From the 1980s on, Republicans patiently took control of school boards, municipal offices, tightened their control of the Legislature and Corporation Commission, built a massive infrastructure including fake "think tanks," the charter school racket, private prison racket, and the aid of the Real Estate Industrial Complex. The Democrats never knew what hit 'em. The best Napolitano could do was play defense.

In our Cold Civil War, with the nation more divided than any time since the eve of the Civil War, Arizona sits comfortably in the New Confederacy. I can still start a fight on Facebook by praising light rail (WBIYB).

Phoenix in the eighties

Wrigley Mansion looking southwest over the city in the 1980s.

On the night in 1968 after President Lyndon Johnson signed the bill authorizing construction of the Central Arizona Project., my mother took me on a long drive. We went through the citrus groves, the empty farmlands between the towns, the enchanting oasis that was Phoenix. Like many who had dedicated a good part of their lives to win the CAP, she had deep misgivings. She wanted me to see the place, burn it in my brain, and remember. "It will be gone," she said. She didn't live to see her prediction come true. But the ferocious transformation of Phoenix from my beloved old city to the nearly unrecognizable concrete desert of today largely  happened during the last two decades of the twentieth century. The big changes began in the 1980s.

In 1980, Phoenix's population was nearly 790,000, up 36 percent from 1970. The city would grow slower in the 1980s — up 25 percent. But Maricopa County grew almost 41 percent. Yesterday's small communities began to become today's mega-suburbs as sprawl took off as never before. For example, Glendale, which had grown by 168 percent in the 1970s, added another 52 percent in the eighties. It would hold nearly 148,000 people by 1990. Arrowhead Ranch, the citrus groves owned by the Goldwater and Martori families, was being developed into subdivisions, one of the largest new "master planned communities" in the state. Phoenix remained the power center of the state and county through the decade, but its hold began to slip.

In 1980, Phoenix still enjoyed a robust base of major headquarters. By most measures it was never stronger and almost all were located in the Central Corridor. Among them were the three big banks, Valley National, First National, and the Arizona Bank; Greyhound; Arizona Public Service; American Fence; Central Newspapers; Western Savings, and Del Webb Co. Karl Eller's Combined Communications had been purchased by Gannett in 1978 but Eller remained active, taking control of Circle K in 1983 and making it the nation's second-largest convenience store chain.

APS formed a holding company, Pinnacle West Capital, that was not regulated like the utility by the Corporation Commission. Among its ventures was the S&L Merabank. Taking advantage of airline deregulation, America West Airlines was formed by local investors in 1983 — it would go on to merge with USAirways and take over American Airlines. And Phelps-Dodge, which for a century controlled much of Arizona's destiny as the world's leading copper company, moved its headquarters from New York City to a new tower in Midtown Phoenix.

It can happen here

Clowns who say outrageous things, who are completely unqualified for office, are very capable of being elected in America. They are entertaining, underestimated, and disasters in office. The highest office reached so far has been governor — think Jesse Ventura in Minnesota and Lester Maddox in Georgia. Closer to home was Evan Mecham, the governor of Arizona from 1987 until he was impeached and removed from office less than 15 tumultuous months later.

Mecham was a clown, given to conspiracy theories and outrageous statements — his "pickanniny" comment and blaming working women for high divorce rates were only two. But he had support from the state's right wing, especially John Birchers and fellow Mormons. He was a populist, after his fashion. In Mecham's world, the government was the enemy and cause of all ills. He wanted to eliminate income taxes and turn over the public's lands to state interests. A theocrat, Mecham wanted to have prayer in public schools. Threats were everywhere, out to destroy real Americans and the real America.

The toupee'd Glendale car dealer and serially failed newspaper publisher gave Carl Hayden a scare in the 1962 U.S. Senate race. Among his issues was a demand that the United States withdraw from the United Nations. Hayden's longtime aide Roy Elson organized a campaign to "reintroduce" the senator to a state he had served in Washington since 1912, but had attracted large numbers of newcomers since 1956. Hayden won comfortably, but many old Arizonans were unsettled. That anyone could get 45 percent of the vote against the state's indispensable man in the fight for the Central Arizona Project was astounding and deeply disturbing.

Mecham ran outsider campaigns for governor again four times before winning. As in 1962, each election he explicitly ran an insurgent campaign against elites and "the establishment."

His election was a fluke. In the 1986 Republican primary, he faced the respected state House leader Burton Barr, who was supported by the establishment, from Barry Goldwater to the Pulliam press. But Barr, a legislative wizard, ran a sluggish campaign. Turnout was the lowest in 40 years. And Mecham cleverly exploited the grievances and paranoia of newcomer retirees, adding to his Bircher and LDS base — people who did vote. On the Democratic side, and back then Arizona was a competitive state, Carolyn Warner was sandbagged by apartment magnate Bill Schultz, who got out of the race only to reemerge as an independent.

It's a dry heat

Somebody on Facebook posted a T-shirt that said, "If you can't handle Phoenix at 122 degrees, you don't deserve Phoenix at 78 degrees." OK, then. Nothing to see here, move along.

When you're forced to rip off majestic cataclysm Detroit's mordant humor ("Detroit: Where the weak are killed and eaten"), you have issues as a city. The biggest one, climate change, is getting the least attention.

As day after day was hitting record high temperatures and at least four hikers were killed by the heat in Arizona, and untold numbers needing rescue that endangered the lives of first responders (been there, done that, and no, the view doesn't offer comfort when you're lugging some tenderfoot down a mountainside in a Stokes basket), when the heat was so severe it prompted an airliner to turn back because of fears of its tires blowing out on the broiling runway at Sky Harbor, with a possible serial killer on the loose in Maryvale... Amid all this, Phoenix received an unexpected gift.

It came in the form of a New York Times story headlined, "Phoenix focuses on rebuilding its downtown, wooing Silicon Valley."

Here was a godsend that none of the usual it's a dry heat, you don't have to shovel sunshine, I hike Camelback on the hottest days (moron), championship golf local-yokel booster Pravda propaganda could never match. The Newspaper of Record gave us a (if one didn't look too closely) glowing vote of confidence. What climate change? We're gonna be a tech hotspot!

The Kooks back down (a little)

Last week, in an unprecedented move, Republicans who control the Arizona House of Representatives banned reporters from the House floor. Then they said the press would have to undergo extensive background checks. They finally relented on Tuesday, saying the floor would be open to journalists — at least for the rest of this session.

As usual, this embarrassment has a back story. Earlier this year, Hank Stephenson of the Arizona Capitol Times, revealed that House Speaker David Gowan had used a state vehicle to travel to events for his congressional campaign. Even in compromised Arizona, this action has left Gowan in deep doo-doo.

The ban was an explicit retaliation. It included a provision that if a reporter had been convicted of even a misdemeanor, he or she could be kept off the floor for a decade. Conveniently, Stephenson had pleaded guilty to misdemeanor trespassing in 2014, apparently after a bar fight in Wickenburg (my kind of reporter).

Gowan is a typical Kook mediocrity. He's connected to the extremist "Oath Keepers." A-plus rating from the NRA. As usual, he wants to perpetuate his sucking at the gub'ment teet by moving up in gub'ment. With incumbent Ann Kirkpatrick (to my mind misguidedly) challenging wealthy Republican John Sidney McCain III for the U.S. Senate, the First Congressional District seat is open.

Voter suppression

Arizona has become a bellwether in recent years. Before the Tea Party, well funded by Republican oligarchs, surprised Democrats in the 2010 elections, Arizona had led the way with the passage of SB 1070 and crazy, racist political movements. The result was a takeover of all statewide offices by right-wing extremists.

Now we have the disaster of the primary election, where voters were forced to wait for hours in lines. The number of polling places in Maricopa County was cut from 200 in 2012 to only 60. These closures fell heaviest in poor and minority areas. Details are contained in the Arizona's Continuing Crisis news vertical on this site.

Elvia Diaz of the Arizona Republic correctly writes that this was not a bureaucratic mistake by County Recorder Helen Purcell but "a well-orchestrated plan to keep ... Latinos from voting." Purcell had a green light when Arizona was among the states exempted from long-standing federal oversight after Republicans dismantled the Voting Rights Act:

Advocates and academics have documented concrete examples of discrimination against minority voters since statehood to the March 22 Republican and Democratic presidential preference elections. Those in power have adeptly used cultural and language barriers as a weapon. For instance, in the early 1900s, Arizona enacted its first English literacy test.

“The literacy test was enacted to limit ‘the ignorant Mexican vote’ … As recently as the 1960s, registrars applied the test to reduce the ability of Blacks, Indians and Hispanics to register to vote,” according to historian David R. Berman.

If you think about it, little has changed throughout Arizona’s history. Conservatives have incessantly targeted minorities and typically intensify their efforts during economic recessions or political turmoil.

Indeed, future Chief Justice of the United States William Rehnquist participated in Operation Eagle Eye, a voter suppression tactic aimed at minorities in south Phoenix in the 1960s. Remember, Arizona was long as much a Southern as a Western state. So its inclusion in Justice Department oversight of voting was well deserved.

The war on cities

(Michael Ging photo)

"Local control" is one of the bedrock principles of the Republican Party. But as Arizona shows, this only applies when Republicans are in control locally.

Thus, the Legislature has passed laws forbidding cities from banning plastic bags, threatening to withdraw revenue sharing from those that mandate sick leave, and retroactively prohibiting Roosevelt Row from forming a business improvement district. In each case, these were pushed by suburban lawmakers.

For Arizona, this is a retrograde move from the 1960s and 1970s. Before the Supreme Court's 1964 "one man, one vote" decision, state policy was ruled by powerful rural state senators who consistently voted against education, transportation, and other infrastructure." With a Legislature that actually represented the population, Republican leader Burton Barr in the House and Democratic leader Alfredo Gutierrez in the Senate pushed through a slew of modernizing bills.

In recent decades, it's been moving in the opposite direction, from continued funding for sprawl-producing freeways to some of the worst cuts in education funding in the nation. It has fought and sabotaged light rail (WBIYB). Land-use restrictions are non-starters. Commuter rail or passenger service between Phoenix and Tucson are pipe dreams. New "takings" laws have severely limited cities' economic development and preservation efforts.

Arizona is one of the nation's most urbanized states, with 80 percent of the population living in the Phoenix and Tucson metro areas and most of the rest in smaller metros such as Flagstaff. Almost all of the intelligent responses that Arizona needs are to urban problems. Yet the Legislature is adamantly anti-city and growing more so with each session. (And, of course, it is against any mention of climate change).

Trump country

The chart above is pimped on Twitter as "Voter anger explained — in one chart."

With all due respect to my friends at Brookings, it doesn't explain the lead enjoyed in Arizona by [the real-estate developer]. The Wall Street Journal is closer to the mark in a story headlined, "Arizona Primaries to Stress Immigration."

[The real-estate developer] has made illegal immigration a centerpiece of his campaign since the day he entered the presidential race last June. He’s said many illegal immigrants from Mexico are “criminals” and “rapists.”

He’s also called for the mass deportation of all 11 million illegal immigrants currently living in the U.S. One of his top applause lines at rallies is that he will build a wall along the entire U.S.-Mexican border and force the Mexican government to pay for it. His rivals, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, have made similar comments.

“Border security is not just rhetoric here in Arizona,” said Christine Jones, a businesswoman and Republican activist who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2014. “It will always be among the top issues because it’s an issue that people live” in their day to day lives in the state, said Ms. Jones, who is currently neutral in the 2016 race.

Mr. Trump has won the endorsements of the popular former governor of the state, Jan Brewer, as well as Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who has built a national reputation for his tough stances on undocumented immigrants and his unorthodox treatment of prisoners in his custody, including housing inmates in tents and forcing them to wear pink underwear.

Unchangeable you

I've been writing about Phoenix and Arizona for 15 years now, first as a columnist for the Arizona Republic and then in this space.

We've had some victories to be sure, and I'll take a little credit for being in the fight, often against the worst kind of civic thugs and wreckers. Among them: revitalizing central Phoenix, building the new Convention Center, winning T-Gen and making a start, albeit so slow, on the Phoenix Biomedical Campus, creating the downtown ASU campus, and light rail (WBIYB). Under Michael Crow, ASU gained stature and I was writing in support all the way.

I worked hard to provide history and context to a place rich in both, but where so many people think they don't exist — indeed, that they are dangerous. Amid the rackets, my job was not to be a cheerleader for the short hustle but to call balls and strikes.

And yet, nothing much has changed in the big picture. We keep losing.

Despite a brief moment of hope when St. Janet became governor, the extreme right has become more dominant than ever. The charter school racket. Cutting public school funding while giving tax breaks to private schools and money to rich districts. The private prison racket. The refusal to consider sustainability in the face of climate change. Continuing to depend on sprawl real estate as the main engine of growth. Further profaning the deserts and forests. It's a long list. And nothing changes. Indeed, it gets worse.

The governor from Koch

No one should be surprised that Arizona’s governor, wealthy Republican Douglas A. Roscoe Jr., aka Doug Ducey, attended yet another conference sponsored by a Koch brothers front group.

As Howard Fischer reports, in the gubernatorial election the Koch organization American Encore spent more than $750,000 on attack ads against Democrat Fred DuVal. Another $650,000 was plowed into pro-Ducey efforts.

This is chump change in the multi-decade effort by right-wing reactionary billionaires to take control of American politics and game policy to their ends. Jane Mayer of the New Yorker does an excellent job of exposing its reach in the book, Dark Money.

The Democrats, much less liberals, have nothing that can compete.

When Ducey met Cali

He opened the door, so let's walk through.

He being wealthy Republican Douglas A. Roscoe Jr., aka "Doug Ducey," the governor of Arizona. In his State of the State address, he made a special point of contrasting Arizona's supposedly booming economy vs. the alleged economic disaster of the Golden State. As in, "So the goal is simple – to grow our economy, to take full advantage of our geography to better address the needs of businesses fleeing California and other states on the decline, and to ensure job creators who are already here, stay and thrive."

Let's look at the facts.

In November, the most recent month for which statistics are available, California's unemployment rate was 5.7 percent. Arizona's was 6 percent.

As of 2014, the most recent year available, Californians enjoyed a per capita personal income of $50,109; Arizonans struggled with $37,895. Median household income was $60,487 in California vs. $49,254 in Arizona. These are the "job creators," citizens with the incomes to spend and invest.

California has added 2 million new jobs over the past six years to reach a new record high. So much for companies "fleeing." Indeed, it is one of the most robust states for company formation and startups.

Arizona's gross domestic product is still below its pre-recession peak and stumbled along with 1.4 percent growth in 2014. California's GDP is at new record highs and grew more than 2.5 percent annually.

The 'gub'ment land' hustle

Even many Republicans are distancing themselves from the Y'All Queda/Vanilla ISIS theater in Oregon. And many liberals have rightly made a contrast with the authorities' likely response if a band of armed black militants would have taken over a federal building.

Beneath it, however, is a longstanding dislike of the federal government by many Western landowners and cattlemen. They wanted the perks that came from Washington: the Homestead and Desert Land acts, conquest of native tribes, land-grant railroads and reclamation.

They eagerly exploited the favorable terms of the General Mining Act of 1872, as well as price supports and other goodies for farmers and ranchers and timberlands in the 20th century. Developers wanted federal Interstates and other highways, flood control and murky, corruption-tainted land swaps of public land. And they demand taxpayer-funded firefighting to protect their "cabins" (read exurban subdivisions where they shouldn't have been built).

Ammon Bundy, son of welfare-queen rancher Cliven and "mastermind" of the Oregon takeover, is a taker himself. He received $530,000 through a tyrannical federal loan guarantee program for his truck-repair business in...wait for it...Phoenix.

Otherwise, these rugged individualists wanted the government gone. Some of Arizona's leading statesmen opposed making a National Park at Grand Canyon.

The notion of an oppressive federal government controlling the land, and hence the destiny, of the West has been political fuel for the Republican Party since the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s. One of its prominent arsonists was Nevada Sen. Paul Laxalt, a friend of Ronald Reagan. Now the issue is back.

Earlier this year, Arizona Republican Congressman Paul Gosar said, "For every acre of land declared public, there is an acre of private land lost, and in Arizona, only about 18 percent of the land remaining in the state is privately held."

He's right (it's 18.2 percent), yet very misleading.

The best of Rogue 2015

Photo by Eugene Scott

• Phoenix should leave the Greater Phoenix Economic Council: "GPEC can't serve the special needs of Phoenix and the appetite of the sprawl boyz. Maybe a few projects to far north Phoenix. But what has GPEC done for downtown, the Central Corridor or to fill abundant empty land along the light-rail line in the city? Not much if anything."

• The evolution of the press, radio, and television in Phoenix: "It is an open question of how much power "the Pulliam press" actually had in post-war Phoenix. The city was attracting large numbers of middle-class Anglos from the Midwest that already shared his larger political philosophy. Pulliam was a civic leader, but hardly the only one, and most shared a common vision of a "business friendly" low-rise city with minimal restrictions on individuals. At least on white people."

• Still got Dick Nixon to kick around: "For decades, Richard Nixon has been the devil to the left. But the left isn't politically relevant anymore (Jerry Ford Republicanism is what passes for "the left" in today's broken political spectrum). What's more consequential is that Nixon is now the devil to the right, which is more powerful than ever. So in the public square today, we are relitigating not Watergate but the domestic achievements of Tricky Dick."

Ducey and the refugees

It is low-hanging fruit to remind wealthy Republican Douglas A. Roscoe (aka "Doug Ducey"), the governor of Arizona, that one of the state's most famous families, the Bashas, came from the Levant, specifically Lebanon.

Michel Goldwasser fled the 1848 revolutions convulsing Europe, first to London and finally to Arizona Territory. "Big Mike" changed the family name to Goldwater.

None of this would keep Gov. Roscoe from joining at least 30 other governors, almost all of them Republicans, from declaring their states would not accept Syrian refugees in the aftermath of the latest terrorist attack on Paris.

Marshall Trimble didn't teach Arizona history to high school students in Ducey's native Toledo, Ohio. So a quick primer: Anglo-Americans took what is now Arizona as spoils of the Mexican War (adding to it with the Gadsden Purchase). They took it from dozens of native tribes.

Arizona's history with refugees since then has been good, bad, and ugly.

Where Arizona fits

In 1981, Joel Garreau wrote a popular book called The Nine Nations of North America. His conceit was that state lines and even national borders were meaningless in understanding the "true regionalization" of the continent.

Arizona was split between "Meximerica" and "The Empty Quarter," with Phoenix and Tucson lying in the former. Of Meximerica, he wrote, it was "a 'booming place'...characterized by a sense of no limits."

They say that the only limit to growth is the human ability to dream. By the way, does that sound familiar? Where did our President grow up? In Los Angeles and the Southwest. Reagan’s vision of the world was formed by the way this part of the world works.

As for the Empty Quarter, "It is very dry; water is a constant preoccupation; it is very fragile...Very few people live here, and as a result it is politically powerless."

This is the last "colony" of the nine nations. The idea is that we are going to chew this up and spit it out to get us into the next century. But there is one hitch. This is also the place that has the last great stretches of wilderness and quality-one air; so, if we chew this up and spit it out, we can kiss the Rockies goodbye. And of course there is a political context to that too, because there are a lot of people who don’t want to see that wilderness despoiled.

So far, so OK. Except Arizona has little in common with Texas; Phoenix little commonality with Houston or Los Angeles. And the name Meximerica wouldn't get very far with the Kookocracy.

Now a new author wants to reorder things. Colin Woodard, according to the Washington Post, "says North America can be broken neatly into 11 separate nation-states, where dominant cultures explain our voting behaviors and attitudes toward everything from social issues to the role of government."

Sinema's way

At least based on Facebook comments, U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema has finally alienated many liberals for good, based on her vote against President Obama on the Iran nuclear deal.

In a statement defending/ explaining her vote, Sinema slyly says, "I was a principled opponent of the Iraq War and spoke out early against the U.S. invasion." One must wonder if she considers some opponents unprincipled. But the more important fact was that back then she was a recent Green Party candidate for Phoenix City Council.

Since then, she climbed the ladder to the Legislature and then Congress as a Democrat. She frequently alienated the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, such as when, serving in the state Senate, she called the odious Russell Pearce, "my president." He was president of the Senate, but "my president"?

On the Iran vote, Blog for Arizona commented, "Sinema’s excuses for opposition are on matters entirely outside of the negotiated nuclear agreement, and thus not on the merits of the actual agreement itself. Like every Tea-Publican, Sinema wants total capitulation by Iran, something Iran would never agree to in a negotiation. This is a ridiculous expectation."

Rebranding Arizona

So wealthy Republican Gov. Douglas A. Roscoe Jr., aka "Doug Ducey," has ordered the state Commerce Authority to "rebrand" Arizona.

This unleashed no small amount of mirth. A few serious articles appeared, too (see here, here and here).

As Arizona Daily Star columnist Tim Steller pointed out, the state's problem isn't image but reality. If you doubt this, read through our Arizona's Continuing Crisis. Scan eight years of columns here. Correct those appalling problems identified and the Grand Canyon State will regain its luster.

But I'm not sure the in-state media are prepared, or would be allowed, to go far enough in examining the situation.

Arizona is at or near the bottom of almost every measure of economic, civic or social well-being, a national beacon of bigotry and know-nothingism, precisely because of the ideology Gov. Roscoe worships. Getting there has required an enormous amount of civic vandalism but Republicans got it done.

Specifically, this one party has controlled the Legislature, the most powerful branch of government, since the 1980s. All but two governors were Republicans. At the same time, the GOP moved from being a mass political party to one of ever more extreme "conservatism." Centrists were pushed out. Incumbents feared a challenge from their right, so became ever more ideologically enslaved. The result is what I labeled in 2001 the Kookocracy.

The transportation vote

See the comments section for an open thread on the vote.

Phoenix's Proposition 104 promises to extend light-rail and bus service, as well as make street improvements. Everyone who wishes the city well should vote for it.

Now that's out of the way, let's examine some lesser-explored aspects of the issue. I say "issue," because the debate has been won. WBIYB. Phoenix light rail is highly successful, as I predicted when advocating it — and getting death threats from the Bs in the latter B of WBIYB — as a columnist at the Arizona Republic.

A quick note on costs. With the $2 billion the state wants to flush down the toilet on the South Mountain Freeway, we could more than double the original 20 miles of light rail. That Arizona is still building freeways shows this racket for what it is: a way to keep spec construction going and enriching the Real Estate Industrial Complex.

Costs? Freeways destroy cities and farmland, spread pollution and emit enormous amounts of carbon into the global commons called the atmosphere. That these costs are hidden "externalities" does not mean they don't exist. Transit is a bargain. Enough said about the "light rail costs too much" Big Lie.

Progressive Arizona

President William Howard Taft signs the bill admitting Arizona as the 48th state in 1912.

If our advanced high-speed rail system backward dependence on overcrowded airliners works, I'll be on a panel next Friday at the national convention of Netroots Nation in Phoenix. The topic: How Progressive Arizona Became Tea Party Arizona.

Because panelists never get to say as much as they'd like, I'll set the table here.

Arizona indeed began as a capital-P Progressive state. This included a weak, almost figurehead of a governor and a strong Legislature, as well as the initiative and referendum where the people could essentially legislate on their own. Statewide officials were required to stand for re-election every two years. They could also be recalled.

Importantly for a state where mining interests and railroads exercised enormous power, the state constitution created a Corporation Commission with wide-ranging regulatory power over the capitalists.

All these were hallmarks of the Progressive Era, which developed as a response to the robber barons and inequality of the Gilded Age of the 1880s and 1890s.

Theodore Roosevelt busted the trusts and more vigorously applied tools that had been passed by Congress earlier, such as the Sherman Antitrust Act and Interstate Commerce Commission. He signed the Pure Food and Drug Act, which, like many Progressive measures, was a result of horrors exposed by muckraking journalists

Had TR won in 1912, he would have gone much further, enacting reforms that had to wait for his cousin, Franklin.

The rise of Margaret Hance

(Michael Ging photo)

When Margaret Hance was elected mayor of Phoenix in November 1975, she was not, as is often claimed, the first woman to lead a major city. That marker goes to Bertha Knight Landes, elected mayor of Seattle in 1926. Patience Latting was elected mayor or Oklahoma City in 1971. Hance was third.

Hance's tenure was far more consequential, as we shall see. Still, she and Landes are twined in dissonances.

Landes, who ran advocating "municipal housecleaning," has been "honored" by Seattle naming its misbegotten tunnel boring machine after her. Hance is memorialized by a park in the heart of the city, a place she did little to help and much to harm.

Margaret Taylor Hance was almost a native, being brought from Iowa to Mesa at age three, in 1926. Her father went to work for Valley Bank, where became an executive vice president. Despite the onset of the Depression, the family moved to what is now Willo. (I am told they lived in the same house on Cypress Street in the 1930s where I grew up in the 1960s. In the '30s, unlike the '60s, it was a high-end neighborhood on the streetcar.)

Although she attended the University of Arizona, she transferred to the elite Scripps College in Claremont, Calif., from whence she graduated. In 1945, she married Robert Hance, who had trained as an Army Air Forces pilot in the Valley during World War II. Her brother, Glen Taylor, went on to become news editor at the Phoenix Gazette, retiring as assistant managing editor in 1983.

She settled into the comfortable and predictable life of an upper-middle-class Republican Phoenix woman. Robert went to work for Valley National Insurance and rose. The couple had three children. Margaret — known as Marge or Margie — volunteered for numerous organizations and joined the Junior League.

Phoenix 101: Birth of crazy

The Phoenix Civic Center, built with the support of Councilman Barry Goldwater, was seen as an example of profligacy by hardcore right-wingers. This side of the center faces Central. Today most of the site is the Phoenix Art Museum.

It is tempting to see the likes of Diane Douglas, John Huppenthal, Tom Horne-y, "Better Call Sal" DiCiccio and the entire Kookocracy as a recent phenomenon in Arizona. It's certainly comforting to us natives.

Barry Goldwater wasn't raving mad, we will tell you (the "lobbing one into the men's room of the Kremlin" was a joke). He came to regret his early opposition to federal civil rights laws, and was instrumental in helping desegregate Phoenix's schools. He desegregated Goldwater's Department Store, as well as promoting minority managers. As a city councilman, Goldwater supported public improvements, including bonds for the 1950 Civic Center (and he backed every Phoenix bond measure thereafter). In the 1980s and 1990s, Arizona's new conservatives repudiated him.

The truth is that Arizona was always a conservative state, in a narrow definition of the term. But for decades most citizens understood it wouldn't have existed without enormous federal largesse. No wonder majorities voted for FDR all four times he stood for the presidency. Sen. Carl Hayden was a progressive and New Deal Democrat. His fellow Democratic Senator, Ernest McFarland was the father of the GI Bill.

But the Kookocracy has roots that reach back more than half a century in Phoenix, to a forgotten City Council election.

The hard way

It was only a matter of time before the national media figured out that California is not the only place at risk from historic drought and the dwindling Colorado River.

Here is Slate, wrong from the first paragraph. And the Washington Post, which doesn't seem to have a clue about the dreary reality of Arizona's economy.

As a counterweight, I promoted this 2013 column on Twitter and Facebook — and traffic on this site exploded. It is important that the media elites understand the complex water issues facing Arizona. I urge you to read or re-read it.

Can Arizona and Phoenix survive the drought caused by man-made climate change? Probably. The question is whether it will be the easy way or the hard way.

But here's an easy back-of-the-bar-napkin calculus. The population of Maricopa County, mostly metro Phoenix, was 1.5 million in 1980, before the completion of the Central Arizona Project canal and the proliferation of sprawl that preceded it and was anticipating it.

Today, the population is more than 4 million. So in the long run, metropolitan Phoenix's sustainable population — in any pleasantly liveable way — is that 1980 figure. Two-and-a-half million people need to leave, head back to the Midwest and the East.

Reform and extremism

One of the curiosities of Arizona politics is how widely supported efforts to make government cleaner — the approval of term limits in 1992 and so-called clean elections public financing of candidates in 1998 — coincided with the rise and now dominance of the extreme right.

Term limits were a fad in the early 1990s, ostensibly meant to eliminate a permanent political class. Although never implemented on a national level, they gained traction in many state and local government. "Clean elections" was intended to take big money out of politics, especially in the aftermath of the bribe-ridden AzScam scandal.

Under the new rules, a Burton Barr, who ruled the Legislature as House majority leader from 1966 to 1986 would have been impossible. Barr's time, working with such Democratic leaders as Alfredo Gutierrez and Art Hamilton, also was the high-water mark of legislative achievement for Arizona.

Had term limits been enacted nationally, we never would have had a Carl Hayden, who served in the Senate for 42 years, or a John J. Rhodes, who served in the House for 30 years. And thus, no Central Arizona Project, which demanded such longevity from lawmakers from what was then a small and politically weak state challenging mighty California.

Raul Castro, an appreciation

Raul Castro, center, along with his wife Pat and longtime law partner and friend Henry Zipf at the Castros' home in Nogales, Ariz., circa 2008.

By Jack August Jr., Guest Rogue

In 2007, then-91 year-old Raul Castro addressed a packed auditorium at the Arizona Historical Foundation’s annual Goldwater Lecture Series at Arizona State University.  At the time, I served as Executive Director of the foundation, which, among other things, maintained the personal and political papers of Sen. Barry Goldwater. 

Two hundred mostly conservative and arguably skeptical supporters of the legendary Arizona senator were curious to see what the former Democratic governor, judge, and ambassador had to say.  

After introducing him, I sat down and watched Castro stride to the podium; he had no notes. He launched into a one-hour presentation that seemed like ten minutes, telling his life story, touching upon the role that education played in his life, his years as a “hobo” riding the rails, his undefeated professional boxing career, and his countless experiences of prejudice and adversity. 

But the overarching theme in his talk was the promise that America held for all its citizens. When he finished the audience exploded in applause and stood on their feet clapping for several minutes. It was a stunning performance.

The distinguished professional career of Castro, who died last week, stood in stark contrast to the adversity inherent in his humble beginnings, which only hardened his resolve and strengthened his determination.

Foreigner

The biggest kick in the head on this trip back home came when I drove past Kenilworth School, where I went from first through eighth grade. Other alumni include Senators Barry Goldwater and Paul Fannin.

When I was there in the 1960s, the stately building was surrounded by grass and trees (watered by flood irrigation), including the mature palms that lined Third Avenue. Teachers could park on the streets, although a number of them walked because they lived nearby. The houses were all landscaped with lawns, trees, flowers, and hedges. In addition to making the neighborhood attractive and walkable, this helped cool it. We went back to school without air conditioning in September.

Kenilworth avoided aggressive attempts to demolish it when the unnecessary Papago Freeway inner loop was rammed through the neighborhood in the 1980s. It also survived the curving of Third Avenue, which destroyed the grid designed to give the neighborhood a pleasing aspect. And the mammoth widening of Seventh Avenue to feed the freeway.

Now a bunch of rocks have been thrown down in front of the school. A driveway and even larger parking lot have been added where the grassy playground once stood. Where we would lie on the cool ground, watch jet contrails, and dream the dreams of youth. The dissonance is painful. The classical revival building set amid all this ugliness is similar to a diamond lying in a pile of manure.

The trouble is that I am one of the few people who would even notice. Like Carson McCullers, "I must go home periodically to renew my sense of horror." But I am increasingly a foreigner here.

School's out completely

Whatever the final numbers, the outlook for education in Arizona is grim. Blame the Kookocracy. Blame the governor, wealthy Republican Douglas A. Roscoe Jr. aka "Doug Ducey." Or credit them. A majority of Arizonans voted them in.

Education Week's respected Quality Counts report ranks Arizona 47th overall. The state has been down in the basement with Mississippi in per-pupil funding for years. By no measure has funding kept up with student population or dealt with inequalities among districts.

Similarly, higher education has received ever-decreasing portions of the state general fund. The slash-and-burn cuts that are imposed every few years are never restored.

The new regime intends to double down: at least $104 million in cuts to universities, elimination of all state support for the largest community college districts, and, despite a claim of increasing K-12 funding, a serious reduction there because the promises aren't in real dollars. Including inflation, the actual spending on K-12 will be a 13.5 percent reduction from 2005-2006.

Now, my mother said, "If you can't say something nice about a person, become a newspaper columnist." In that spirit, I can't even credit the Kooks with originality. They are merely playing out a national strategy being enacted in every state capitol where Republicans hold sway.

Even so, Arizona has suffered so many decades of such vandalism, the consequences will be more severe. Real lives will be affected, opportunities to escape poverty and climb the ladder of opportunity smothered. The damage won't stop there.

When the Legislature worked

You know the Arizona Legislature. It's the bunch that reduces education funding for some of the worst-funded schools in the nation, savagely cuts money to universities, has its hands in the hustles of the Charter School Racket and Private Prison Racket. The worthy solons who sold off pieces of the Capitol.

It is the birthplace of SB 1070, the Jim Crow anti-immigrant (really voter suppression) law. This is only one of its creations that helped make Arizona seem one of the craziest and most bigoted states. Anything forward looking, the majority opposes. Tax cuts? You bet. It is the Kookocracy.

But there was a time when Arizona had one of the most respected legislatures in the nation. Yes.

In fact, there were at least two sustained periods in the state's history when the Legislature worked.

This is no small thing because the Legislature is by far the most powerful branch of government in the state. Constitutionally, the governor was barely more than a figurehead — a status that has improved in recent years, but not by much. In other words, Arizona moves ahead, or backwards, depending on the Legislature.

Who is Diane Douglas?

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. — Karl Marx

Nobody seems to be admitting to voting for Diane Douglas as Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction. But of the 36.42 percent of registered voters who cast a ballot, a majority backed Douglas over her opponent, David Garcia. Douglas had no experience beyond a controversial stint on the Peoria school board. Garcia is a professor of education, former teacher and Army veteran.

But there you have it.

Garcia, nationally respected, ran on a solid platform of improving Arizona schools, which consistently rank at or near the bottom nationally. Douglas, rhetorically challenged, ran against what she saw as the evils of Common Core, which particularly resonates with white suburbia.

It surely helped Douglas that Garcia had a Hispanic surname. It helped her most of all that she had an R attached to her name. For the majority of state voters, no matter the self-identified "independents," are Yellow Dog Republicans. In other words, you could run a yellow dog as a Republican and they would vote for it over the most qualified Democrat.

I write all this as prologue for the latest, but far from last, Douglas stepping-in-it event. She fired two state Board of Education staff members for the Thought Crime of being allegedly "liberal." My doubt about that was confirmed when the governor, wealthy Republican Douglas A. Roscoe Jr. aka "Doug Ducey," reinstated the pair.

You can read the hilarity here, as well as her clumsy climb-down. But what did voters expect?

Sue Clark-Johnson, an appreciation

As a young paramedic, I learned early on that we all hang by the slenderest thread. That thread snapped suddenly Wednesday for Sue Clark-Johnson, publisher of the Arizona Republic from 2000 through 2005.

She was 67, and although I had heard she had been hospitalized, the news came as a shock. The fifties and sixties are not the new thirties.

As a business editor and columnist, I have always had close relationships with publishers. Unlike other people in the newsroom, a business editor supervises the coverage of the publisher's peers and sometimes friends.

I have been blessed with good publishers such as Tom Missett at the Blade-Tribune, Brad Tillson at the Dayton Daily News, Larry Strutton at the Rocky Mountain News, Harry Whipple at the Cincinnati Enquirer and the legendary Rolfe Neill at the Charlotte Observer. They supported the tough, high-impact, sophisticated journalism that we practiced. Frank Blethen has been a consistent supporter of my columns at the Seattle Times.

Sue was my friend and protector during my years as a columnist in Phoenix. Some of the most powerful people in Arizona came to her demanding that I be fired or silenced. She turned them away. Not only that, she provided me with a larger platform as an op-ed columnist on Sunday.

Eight years of Rogue

This month marks the eighth anniversary of Rogue Columnist. That's a long time in the blog world and I couldn't do it without you — the smartest commenters (19,945 comments) on the Web and the thousands who come to read. The number of posts is 907 (!).

I tell more about why I write Rogue on top of my day job and novel-writing here. Today I want to list some of my favorite columns. The nature of column-writing is ephimeral. These stand out even after all these years. Maybe you have some you want to list in the comments field. I've opened all posts, not just the most recent, to comments.

1. Early on, I laid out some of the topics I didn't write about when I was a columnist at the Arizona Republic.

2. Speaking of newspapers, this column laid out the many less-discussed reasons for their death spiral. It holds up pretty well today.

3. Another one, close to my heart, is "Rocky Mountain Requiem," about the heartbreaking loss of the Rocky Mountain News, one of the oldest newspapers in the West and where I was fortunate to work in the great newspaper war with the Denver Post.

4. I haven't written much personal history here. One exception, and among the most popular, is "Ambulance Days," my reminiscences of my days as an EMT/paramedic in the Phoenix of the 1970s.

5. I was also blessed by the amazing fine arts program at Coronado High School, which I write about in "Friday Night Lights." And by attending Kenilworth Elementary School near downtown, which I celebrate in this column.

6. A few of the columns on national social and cultural issues have stood the test of time (cliche alert). Among them: "Rules of Engagement," "Men Don't Read," "R U Raising Stupid Children," and "A Giant Leap and Then A Long Fall."

Whose civics?

At first glance, one can only admire the Arizona Legislature passing, and new Gov. Doug Ducey (my first level Linked In buddy) signing into law a measure mandating that all high-school seniors take a civics class and pass a civics test.

If I remember correctly, everyone at my high school was required to take a semester of civics and another of economics. I took the new test and aced it.

Too much of our education system today is geared to producing workers, cubicle proles in the New Gilded Age, and "consumers." Anything that educates citizens about their rights and responsibilities — and capabilities — is healthy. That Arizona is said to be the first state in the union to take this step is astounding.

So perhaps I should leave it there and let the brightsiders say, "He didn't hate Arizona, for a brief shining moment! Everything's fine, with championship golf!"

Governor Ducey

Doug Ducey was elected governor of Arizona with a 36.24 percent voter turnout, the lowest in recent history. It may seem unfair to judge him so soon. But, no. The days when a GOP office holder was independent-minded are gone, replaced by a party ruled by a nihilist ideology.

As Jonathan Rauch wrote in the New York Times, "America does not have a broken political system. It has a broken political party: the Republicans." This is what those Arizonans who vote continue to double-down on.

In his inauguration address, Ducey's explicit or implied comments were in the ALEC-Koch brothers "mainstream" of the party. Taxes must always be low or cut further. Government spending must be cut further. Get government "out of the lives of the people" (except, presumably, for the Social Security recipients and defense spending that prop up the state economy). Change regulation to support certain favored businesses ("deregulation"). And the all-important "economic freedom."

Ducey reprised the old Newt Gingrich meme of "opportunity," after their fashion:

Opportunity is not a government program planned and distributed by some expert class any more than personal freedom is a favor granted by those in public office. Opportunity is a new job or training for a better job. It’s the kind of school where every child can grow in knowledge and in character, the kind of neighborhoods where families feel protected, a state where enterprise is welcome and hard work is rewarded.

In other words, Arizona can expect more of the same, only perhaps even worse.

'Is Arizona hopeless?'

This was the most frequently asked question I encountered in Phoenix recently. Admittedly, the Resistance was demoralized by the results of the election. But the query-cum-statement came from more than activists — indeed, they are more likely to be too invested in the fight to allow a crack of doubt to enter.

Those asking are natives or have lived in the state for many years or decades. They are not nostalgiacs. They are intelligent and pragmatic. Some are considering leaving, adding to the brain drain of urbanites who come to Phoenix starry eyed at a "blank slate" only to discover the many barriers to progress and depart for Portland, Denver and Vancouver, B.C.

In raising this issue, I don't want to provoke the usual denial, sunny codependency or angry defensiveness. I was surprised that so many people, unprompted, asked the question.

Is Arizona hopeless?

It certainly doesn't seem that way to the Republicans and "conservative"-leaning independents who vote. They continue to get the place they want, with the exception of such socialist outbreaks as light rail (WBIYB). Some are people with whom I went to school but remained there. They are decent, smart individuals and, against all odds of the Cold Civil War, we remain friends. Anyway, the cons have no reason to complain — but that won't stop it from manufacturing its lifeline of perpetual grievance and victimhood. They tend to be sore winners.

So the question applies to others. How many are there? It's difficult to say with precision. People keep moving to Arizona, albeit at a slower pace. A Morrison Institute poll of more than a decade ago found that a strong plurality of residents would leave the state if they could.

Who would ask such a question? Anyone to the left of today's "conservative" dogma (which would include Barry Goldwater, were he alive); liberals and progressives; people with urban values; those concerned about the destruction of the environment; those disheartened by the struggle to build and maintain civic, economic and cultural assets as befits a big city, and the ones beaten down by the struggle as Arizona has become a one-party, one-ideology state.

Is Arizona hopeless?

You know this is the wrong place to look for booster lies ("Talton hates Arizona"). And as much as I would love to write a stirring column channelling Henry V or Churchill, it is a little late for in the game for that.

So the answer partly depends partly on how one defines Arizona and how one defines hopeless.

Phoenix's income crisis

Last week, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics released per-capita personal income (PCPI) for metropolitan areas in 2013. For Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, income grew 0.7 percent to $38.745.

This placed the sixth-most-populous city and 12th largest metro area at 285th in growth against other American metropolitan areas. It was not a good year for growth. The metro average was 2 percent. Booming Seattle ranked 223rd.

The truly troubling number is the actual income. The national average was $44,765.

Compare it to other similarly large metropolitan statistical areas: Boston (10th largest), $61,754; San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward (11),  $69,127; Detroit-Warren-Dearborn (14), $42,887; Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue (15), $55,190; Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington (16), $51,183.

Or compare metro Phoenix with smaller metros against which it competes for talent and capital: Austin, $44,760; Charlotte, $41,645; Denver, $51,946 and Portland, $46,461.

Metro Phoenix comes in lower than any other large metro with a big city in it. What's going on?

Obama and immigration

Some initial impressions on President Obama's immigration plan:

1. We have become so cynical that the talking heads, especially, can't imagine a leader doing something mostly for the decency of it. Yet this is likely Mr. Obama's prime motivation. Whites make up 75 percent of the electorate and anti-"amnesty" Anglos vote while too many potentially Democratic Hispanics don't. So it's a political loser.

2. Despite similar precedents set by Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the Republicans will try to impeach Obama or otherwise act out. They can't stop themselves.

I moderated a panel of eminent China experts last night. One of the consistent themes is how our dysfunctional government sends the message to Beijing to not take us seriously, or to make a dangerous miscalculation.

3. Mr. Obama's limited overhaul doesn't address the core problems: Our appetite for cheap labor; the way trade agreements disrupted traditional economies and drew workers el norte; bad governance in Mexico and much of central America, and the fact that too many American employers and even average Americans are satisfied with the status quo.

Novel open thread

As I wrap up the next David Mapstone Mystery, I am going to have to take a week or two away from Rogue. I'll keep the Front Page and the special report pages (including Arizona's Continuing Crisis) updated. So you should have plenty to discuss. Thanks for your support.

 

Six takes on Arizona's election

Initial impressions on the Tuesday disaster:

1. Arizona is redder than ever. For decades seers have been predicting that newcomers would make politics here less conservative. Instead, the opposite has happened. Arizona has grown less competitive and more reactionary. Every major statewide office has been captured by Republicans for the second straight time (see official results here).

2. Ideology trumps logic. How does a nullity like Doug Ducey not only beat his Democratic challenger, a man with deep policy experience and good ideas, but do so by a commanding margin (nearly 54 percent to 43 percent)? The only answer I can come up with is that Ducey did the Aflac duck conservative quack and that was enough. It's not that voters are happy with conditions in Arizona. And the problems have been caused by decades of right-wing political and policy dominance. Ergo, vote for more of the same!

3. The great independent factor wasn't. Remember when the media were trumpeting the tidbit that independent voters outnumbered those of either party? But as polling research at Pew and elsewhere has shown, "independents" usually lean one direction or the other, whatever their twee affectation to independence of thought and judgment. In Arizona, most lean to the right.

4. The Hispanic wave (still) hasn't arrived. "Mexicans don't vote." Therefore, combined with gerrymandering and voter suppression, this phenomenon means Democrats will be waiting a very long time for Latino Salvation. An angry, old, white minority can rule in perpetuity. The apathy is especially startling considering how Anglo Arizona has been viciously racist against Hispanics, in a way not seen in much of Texas.

Phoenix in the seventies

Central Avenue and Van Buren in 1972. Note the full block of businesses heading north to the Westward Ho. Central was still a two-way street.

No series of events better epitomized the 1970s and the turning point they marked in Phoenix than the fight over freeways, specifically the "inner loop" of the Papago Freeway.

Most Phoenicians had a vague idea that freeways were a possibility since the Wilber Smith & Associates plan was adopted in 1960. Interstate 10 had been completed to Tucson and was abuilding from the west. By mid-decade it had reached Tonopah, requiring a long drive over largely country roads to reach. Real-estate values plummeted along the path of the inner loop. But by 1970, Phoenix's freeway "system" consisted of only the Black Canyon (Interstate 17) which curved at Durango to become the Maricopa (I-10).

All this changed as the new decade opened and the plan's stark reality became clear. Specifically, the Papago would vault into the air, reaching 100 feet as it crossed Central Avenue. Traffic would enter and exit via massive "helicoils" at Third Avenue and Third Street. The freeway was promoted as being Phoenix's defining piece of architecture.

It didn't take Eugene Pulliam and the anti-freeway advocacy of the Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette to make most Phoenicians horrified. In 1973, voters vehemently rejected the inner loop. They only had to look 372 miles west to see the destruction wrought by freeways. They didn't want Phoenix to "become another Los Angeles."

Lies, damned lies and water

Whiskey's for drinking and water's for fighting over — old adage.

So Doug Ducey and Fred DuVal have laid out their plans for addressing a water shortage in Arizona. DuVal, naturally, comes off as the sanest, including asking the state Department of Water Resources "to develop a detailed analysis of the Groundwater Management Act and provide specific recommendations for improving the law."

That's good. I don't trust ADWR or have confidence that the law is being adequately enforced or monitored.

DuVal is less convincing when he told the Arizona Republic that the state needs to "go big" on new water projects, including desalination. As regular readers know, the feds aren't going to invest in more waterworks. California and the Upper Basin states would also resist them with all their might (see here and here).

Ducey comes off full kook, including his insinuation that trees are to blame for drought. The last thing Phoenix needs to do is further degrade its historic oasis. Central Phoenix, especially, needs more trees to offset the heat island and climate change.

But nobody dared wake the elephant. You know, the one in the room

The Arizona experiment

Much has been made by "left-leaning" commentators, notably Thomas Frank, about the disaster created in Kansas by Gov. Sam Brownback's enactment of conservative policies. And yet check out this chart:

And this:

Not to diminish "What's the Matter With Kansas," but Arizona is in worse shape. It arguably offers the better example of what happens when orthodox right-wing policies are enacted in a state without the oil and massive federal investments enjoyed by Texas. That Arizona is a growing, highly urbanized state brings into even starker relief the complete bankruptcy of the Kookocracy's "conservative ideas."

And they own this mess. The interregnum of St. Janet saw a constitutionally weak governor playing defense and never tackling the sacred cows of land use, revenue or water. Arizona's ongoing woes are the work of the regressive right that has taken over the Republican Party.

And yet, polls show at best a dead heat between Democratic gubernatorial candidate Fred DuVal — in every way the superior contender — and Republican Doug Ducey. And no chance for Democrats to gain control of the truly powerful branch of government, the state Legislature.

While I was away

John Sperling passed on. I am mindful of Horace's de mortuis nil nisi bonum, but Sperling was a public figure of consequence, deserving an assessment. In keeping with the life he led, Sperling died in the Bay Area, not the city whose name he took for his empire of for-profit education.

The New York Times wrote, "A survivor of childhood illness, learning disability, poverty and physical abuse, he earned a doctorate from the University of Cambridge; a liberal former union organizer, he spent years battling government regulation; a longtime professor who did not enter business until his 50s, he became a spectacularly successful capitalist."

The University of Phoenix made him fabulously wealthy. His net worth in 2002 was $1.1 billion and he spent 20 years on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans. With the troubles of parent company Apollo and its stock drop, he was below a billion in 2013.

He reveled in being quirky, combative and rebellious, especially against the education establishment and the government. And yet the GI Bill — authored by Arizona Sen. Ernest McFarland — allowed Sperling to get his bachelor's degree from Reed College in Portland, Ore. Federal student loans turned what would have once been considered a "business college" into a mighty profit engine.

Among the individuals who wrecked the commons, Sperling is right up there. Privatizing profits, socializing losses, the cost and quality of an education at the University of Phoenix and other for-profit schools deeply questionable.

Borderline personality disorder

Here's the way the media see things. "House Republican Flailing Over Border Bill Drags On," from Daily Kos. "House GOP Abandons Border Crisis Bill Amid Conservative Opposition," from Talking Points Memo. The New York Times writes:

Many Republicans worried that leaving for the break without passing any border legislation would be damaging to them politically in the midterm elections, and vowed to stay as long as was necessary to reach a compromise within their own ranks.

The House may pass some kind of bill, but the meme, among some smart journalists, rests on some questionable assumptions.

One, that Republicans want to make a constructive response to the "border crisis" of the moment. Two, that the GOP is terrified that it must address this and other immigration issues or lose the future to changing demographics. Thus, failure to "do something" is a Republican defeat. Three, that there is a split within the Republican Party that has any real meaning.

I addressed the third point in a previous post. Today, I want to explore the first two assumptions.

The 1:57 to Florence

Joseph Wood III was declared fully sedated ay 1:57 p.m. in the death chamber in Florence. But because of incompetence or a bad execution drug cocktail, he wasn't pronounced dead until 3:49 p.m.

This event has brought more of the kind of national news coverage to Arizona that can only enhance its reputation as a cruel and hapless place to the talented, compassionate and those who make decisions about where to deploy capital. A sampling is here. Even John McCain, who would know, called it "torture."

On the other hand, probably a majority of Arizonans would share the comment of someone from Phoenix on Facebook: "I saw nothing wrong with it...he did NOT suffer...just slept longer." When challenged, he added, "I hope the bastard rots in hell!!!" According to the Pew Research Center, 55 percent of Americans favored the death penalty in 2013, down from a high of 78 percent in the 1980s.

Wood was convicted in 1991 for the murder of his ex-girlfriend Debra Dietz and her father, Eugene. He also pointed the gun at police, who shot him.

The Southern poverty bloc

I'm not sure if the cottage industry of explaining away Arizona's reality is on vacation in cooler climes or will scramble to attack this telling map that went with a story headlined: "The South is Essentially a Solid, Grim Bloc of Poverty."

Arizona Territory sent a delegate to the Confederate Congress throughout the War Between the States, so the apple doesn't fall very far from the tree.

Seriously, the data come from a new report by the Census Bureau of people living in "concentrated poverty areas." It digs down to the Census tract level, finding that more than 2 million Arizonans, or 33 percent, lived in tracts with highly concentrated poverty. That compares with 1.2 million, or 24 percent, in 2000. The comparable national averages were 25.7 percent and 18.1 percent respectively.

These areas have "higher crime rates, poor housing conditions, and fewer job opportunities." They breed a feedback loop of poverty.

It's easy to blame much or all of this on the Great Recession. Arizona's dependence on the housing sector left it in a virtual depression after the collapse. There's some truth to this, but the problems go much deeper.

The troll

If you've been away on Mars thanks to the miracles of the private-sector space program that has replaced NASA, you missed John Huppenthal's star turn on the national stage. The Arizona pol was caught making anonymous posts on Internet sites under the names "Thucydides" and "Falcon9."

Among other things, he compared Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger to the Nazis, called those who receive public assistance "lazy pigs," and called for stomping out Spanish-language television and newspapers. Oh, and FDR was responsible for the rise of Hitler (even though both were elected at the same time).

As you can see on Arizona's Continuing Crisis this played far beyond "the Valley," providing more of the kind of publicity that is so helpful to Arizona's reputation.

First, Huppenthal gave the standard non-apology, "I sincerely regret if my comments have offended anyone." On Thursday, the Internet pressure had grown so great that he was forced to call a tearful press conference at which he "renounced and repudiated" the posts. But he declined to resign, as some demanded, including Lisa Graham Keegan, who is now to the left of today's GOP.

Huppenthal should resign, but not over being an Internet troll.

The governor's race: a primer

Here's the short course: If you don't vote for Fred DuVal, you're an idiot. See you in November.

Here's the longer course: Most of what we will read and hear about the Arizona gubernatorial race will be worthless. There will be much sound and fury, signifying nothing.

A big example will be the Republican primary. The entertainment factor is not to be discounted if one is blessed or cursed with an acerbic wit. Who can be the craziest? Behind this, however, will be the reality that all Republicans are Kooks or under the thumb of the Kooks. I like former Mesa Mayor Scott Smith, and in a different Arizona he might make a great governor. These attributes will no doubt doom him. If he succeeds, he will be a prisoner of the Kookocracy.

Little or nothing will be said about how the party has become exclusively the province of extremists. The era of the "Sue Nation" (Gerard, Grace, etc.) and Carolyn Allen and even Gov. Jane Dee Hull is gone. The few non-crazy Republicans in office must carefully toe the line or be branded RINOs and destroyed.

The state that empowered a centrist, pragmatic wing of the GOP, the one that existed up through 2000 when experts kept predicting that population growth would turn the state purple or blue, is arguably gone. The state that Bill Clinton carried in 1996, gone. In its place is a Big Sort place where people of the same political leanings have gathered. In our Cold Civil War, Arizona is solidly in the New Confederacy.

Strong mayor

Phoenix is the most populous city in America with the council-manager form of government. Council sets policy which is carried out by a professional city manager.

The only places that come close are San Antonio (where the city manager is the former deputy city manager in Phoenix, Sheryl Sculley) and Dallas. San Diego abandoned council-manager in 2006.

The alternative is the strong mayor form, where the mayor acts as a largely independent chief executive and the city council is a legislative body. Think: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Detroit and Seattle.

Twelve of the 20 most populous American cities have strong mayors. The remainder are council-manager. Now there is at least a boomlet to bring a strong mayor form to Phoenix.