Factors saved Mayor Gordon from recall
Experts note organizers' woes, mayor's popularity
by Casey Newton - Aug. 30, 2008 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic
Mayor Phil Gordon's continuing popularity and key logistical hurdles faced by organizers helped ensure the failure of this summer's recall effort against the mayor, analysts said.

A Rocky Mountain Poll released this month showed that 53 percent of residents think Gordon is doing a good job, with only 14 percent rating his performance unfavorably.

That support, which has remained strong despite Gordon's support of an unpopular immigration-reform plan, is among the reasons anti-illegal-immigration activists failed to collect the signatures needed to force a recall election.
American Citizens United had four months to gather 23,571 valid signatures. But when Thursday's deadline came, organizers stayed home, saying they had not collected the 40,000 signatures they believed were needed to ensure they had enough eligible voters.

"Overall, most people think Mayor Gordon's been a pretty good mayor," said Bruce Merrill, a political scientist and pollster at Arizona State University.

Recall organizers were stymied by several factors, including summer weather that kept many potential signers indoors and a lack of venues to set up tables and ask for signatures.

"There weren't that many public places we could be at," said Phillip Quihuis, whose volunteers gathered mainly at public libraries.

Merrill said the group was likely doomed by its decision to use volunteer signature gatherers instead of raising money and hiring professionals.

Doug Cole, a Republican political strategist and friend of Gordon's, noted that even professionals struggled this summer, with several well-funded statewide measures failing to make the ballot because of a lack of valid signatures.

"This has been a tough season for getting people to sign," Cole said. "With volunteers in the Phoenix summer, it's a difficult undertaking."

Gordon supporters were vindicated by the group's failure, saying the result proved that a politician could remain popular despite taking a moderate stance on immigration enforcement.

Until Thursday, Gordon couldn't take that popularity for granted. Despite taking 77 percent of the vote in his re-election bid last year, he has been hammered relentlessly since then by talk-radio show hosts and other critics saying Phoenix does not do enough to stop illegal immigration.

Gordon advocates a plan that would combine enhanced border security with a path to citizenship for those already living in the country illegally. A version of that plan failed in Congress two years ago after receiving fierce criticism from the public.

To date, though, the mayor's views on immigration have not significantly hurt his popularity.

It helps that Phoenix residents are generally happy with life in the city. In a biennial community-attitudes survey released this week, 88 percent of Phoenix residents said they were satisfied or very satisfied with the city's overall performance. More than 9 in 10 residents say it's a good place to live.

That level of satisfaction can help protect a politician from recall, analysts said.

"A recall is a very serious measure to take," Cole said. "It sets a higher bar."

Finally, never underestimate the power of apathy. In the 2007 mayoral election, 81 percent of registered voters failed to cast a ballot.

Given that lack of involvement, Merrill said, Gordon's dodging of a recall indicates the public hasn't endorsed Gordon's views on immigration so much as it has shrugged them off.


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