www.azcentral.com

A force to reckon with

Can Janet Napolitano be beaten?

Richard de Uriarte
The Arizona Republic
Aug. 21, 2005 12:00 AM

Janet Napolitano is firmly in command. Right now, the governor holds the political advantage on virtually all fronts. She is well liked in a state that has been kind to incumbents. She has solid poll numbers, ratings that President Bush only dreams of. Arizonans like her confidence, her determination, her moderation. She has an experienced political team that hasn't made a lot of mistakes.

Worse for Republicans, the party's bigger names - J.D. Hayworth, Rick Renzi and Rick Romley - studied the 2006 election battleground and took a pass. The GOP doesn't have a well-known, tested candidate yet. An extended, hard-fought primary campaign next year could produce a wounded nominee with little time or enough money to topple a popular governor.

Republicans had better not rely on a badly bruised last-minute candidate. Napolitano is formidable. She is the first governor in 20 years with sizable long-standing cross-party support.

She may be partisan, but her management skills, work ethic, cautious policies and personal style have all struck a chord with Arizona voters. She has muted many of the concerns that she would be too liberal, too profligate a spender and out of touch.

She shows up at ballgames and classrooms. People know her face, and they seem to like her.

The most compelling question for Republicans then is this: Can Janet be beaten?

The answer is yes.

As former Gov. Bruce Babbitt once said of his home state: If a Republican can walk and chew gum at the same time, he should win Arizona. And scores of Arizona political insiders, Republican and Democrat, agree that the governor could lose in 2006.

"Need we enumerate the sure-thing candidates who were unceremoniously ousted?" quipped Barry Aarons, a veteran campaign operative who was an aide to Gov. Fife Symington. "Does the name George H.W. Bush ring any bells?"

Republican strategists, still smarting from their defeat in 2002, disparage Napolitano's narrow 12,000-vote victory as the result of a "perfect storm" of political factors working against them. They reason:


• The gaming initiatives on the general election ballot drew a higher-than-normal turnout of Native Americans, padding Napolitano's margins in rural Apache, Coconino and Navajo counties. In a non-presidential year, that Democratic turnout might not materialize.

In addition, the initiatives talked about for next year, a ban on gay marriage or a tax-cutting measure, may generate greater conservative turnout.


• Between former party Chairman Jim Pederson's financial support and the equalizing provisions of the Clean Elections law, Democrats actually enjoyed a spending advantage over the GOP in 2002. This time, the Republican will run under Clean Elections funding, too, and independent expenditures from national conservative groups eager to tarnish Napolitano's image may tilt spending to the GOP's favor.


• Democrat Richard Mahoney's quirky independent bid hurt Mesa Republican Matt Salmon last time. Mahoney questioned whether Salmon, a Mormon, could take on fundamentalists in Colorado City. The issue reminded voters of Latter-day Saints' political power and made it easier to paint Salmon as extreme.

Napolitano successfully peeled away those coveted moderate Republican women from Tucson, Phoenix, Scottsdale and Ahwatukee as she had done in her race for attorney general in 1998.

Two years later, without a third-party candidate casting about for imaginary issues, the religious issue probably won't have as much traction.


GOP hopes


Republicans take heart, and Democrat political insiders don't disagree, that the GOP candidate, even a second-teamer, will count other strategic assets next year:


• "Republicans have a 150,000 voter registration edge (as of April) and traditionally have a higher turnout percentage," according to GOP activist and former lawmaker Greg Patterson. Buoyed by George W. Bush's 210,000-vote state victory over John Kerry in 2004, Republican strategists are boasting they have engineered a turnout machine that will grind the Democrats in 2006.

Tucson-based pollster Margaret Kenski outlines the Bush blueprint: "Karl Rove and (pollster) Matthew Dowd assume it's hard to persuade voters to your side anymore. You must find those who agree with you and get them to vote."


• The relatively sudden rise of illegal immigration as the state's leading political issue and Napolitano's belated response so far. She has a lot of company on this score. Democrats and moderate Republicans can't get a handle on it and have been grasping at half-measures.

As Phoenix political consultant Steve Tuttle commented: "The governor is on the wrong side of public opinion on this issue." Opportunistic Republicans, using her opposition to Proposition 200 and a string of vetoes during the past legislative session, portray her as "the illegal immigrants' best friend."

That's unfair to an issue as complicated as immigration. Truth be told, the simplistic, punitive proposals pushed by conservatives could have worsened the situation in several ways. And Napolitano can counter that her position mirrors proposals offered by Republican lawmakers John McCain, Jeff Flake, Jim Kolbe and Jon Kyl. Or she can blame Washington, a tactic she has employed more openly in recent days.

But so far, Napolitano has been unable to dominate immigration as she has virtually every other issue in the state's agenda. Only last week, she declared a "state of emergency" along the border. Staffers will develop and unveil a series of initiatives as well.

Of course, political history has repeatedly told us that elections are often less about specific issues as personal commitments, emotional attachments, comfort levels.


Where governor excels


It is here where Napolitano, to the baffled chagrin of her critics, seems to excel.

"She's affable, skilled, issue-oriented and determined," Phoenix pollster Earl de Berge said he has found. "There is a thirst for moderation in Arizona, and that is her greatest strength." People like her style, and they are comfortable with divided government, although, as de Berge points out, tired of extreme partisanship.

"Napolitano looks pretty sane and moderate to most voters," he concludes, describing it as "charisma."

In contrast, Republicans don't have a well-known candidate yet. Senate President Ken Bennett, who is considering the race, has a Boy Scout persona and a common-sense grasp of the issues that will serve him well in any debate or forum.

But Napolitano has a 10-year head start as a public figure.

In any discussion of politics in Arizona, independents loom larger with each passing year. They now make up almost 25 percent of registered voters, up 14,000 from last November. Historically, candidates could ignore unaffiliated voters. They didn't vote in larger numbers. For a long time in American politics, "independent" meant "does not care."

No longer. The new independents are engaged but disaffected partisans, uncomfortable with elements of both parties. Independents have generally followed larger electoral trends, but there is something about each party that turns these voters off. Napolitano took the majority of them in 2002 and continues to do well among their ranks.

Kenski admires how hard the governor works rural counties and the media. "She uses every opportunity an incumbent has in a way I have not seen around here," Kenski said. "When a problem comes up, like the (military-base closures) issue, she presents a positive image."

Insiders also respect Napolitano's knack at non-political, image-enhancing photo ops. She is on the bench for women's basketball and Arizona Diamondbacks and enjoying herself. Just last Sunday, Napolitano was arriving at Sky Harbor International Airport from a conference in Colorado. Simultaneously, a northwest Valley fast-pitch girls softball team landed fresh from a Little League World Series.

A little staff work brought TV cameras and reporters out to record a beaming Napolitano welcoming the team. The ballplayers and their appreciative parents knew the media attention came only because of the governor's interest.

Luck and nimble staff work help on the political battleground.

As a single woman, Napolitano can devote all hours of the day to her work and political image.

Kenski, who advises Republicans, says Napolitano continues to record solid favorability ratings throughout the state, though voters cannot specify exactly what her administration has accomplished. That is something both sides will work to change next year.


Arizona's landscape


Arizona's fast-growing population will surely alter its political landscape. Newcomers from California are credited with moderating state politics in the 1990s, passing several ballot initiatives and delivering Arizona's electoral votes to Bill Clinton in 1996.

Rural Arizona is changing as well. It has become more populated than heavily Democratic Pima County. Long a bastion of culturally conservative Democrats, out-county folks are seeing the same stresses from growth that Tucson and Scottsdale voters complain about. Pollsters are not sure what political consequences will occur, but Kenski and de Berge notice quality-of-life issues worrying voters from Flagstaff to Casa Grande and Sierra Vista.

Latino voters are increasing as well, now representing 10 percent of the Election Day turnout. That's up 3 percentage points from earlier days.

Historically, Hispanics register 65 percent Democratic in Arizona. George W. Bush cut into that margin in 2004, using well-calculated messages to the Latinos' cultural conservatism and military ties. Many Hispanics feel threatened by immigrants for jobs.

However, the younger, emerging middle-class Latinos, often overlooked by the uproar over immigration, might resent what de Berge calls the Republicans' "ungenerous" policies. Napolitano looks sympathetic, statesmanlike, in comparison.

Michael Frias, a Democratic political operative, sees both parties mimicking the Bush strategy: Keep your base happy, be strong and consistent on core issues. Be opportunistic, try to pick off other groups at the margins.

Napolitano confidant Barry Dill, a consultant with Hamilton, Gullett, Davis and Roman, sees Napolitano as a mirror of other successful Western Democrat governors, able to cross partisan lines and convince independents.

In 2002, it is estimated she captured 23 percent of the GOP women's vote and 60 percent of the independents to win 46 percent of the vote. And that's with Mahoney, a Democrat, pulling 85,000 votes, or 6.9 percent of the total, largely from her.

Republicans can grow even more, according to Democrat Frias and a host of GOP insiders. In 2002, Salmon received 554,465 votes, 60 percent of them from Maricopa County. Two years later, Bush almost doubled that with 1.1 million votes. That's where Republicans will seek their new numbers, concentrating on cultural and religious conservatives, Latinos and rural Democrats while trying to hold their moderate women.

In contrast, Napolitano's troops will focus on the 325,000 Kerry added to the Democrat vote in 2004, seeking to hold their proportion of moderate Republican women, independents and rural Democrats.

Nearly 14 months before the election, the battleground is already taking shape. The targets selected. Soon the troops will be marching.